[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#694908: Bug#694908: Contains non-free data

[Charles Plessy]

> On Sun, Dec  2, 2012 at 09:39:14 +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> > 
> > As discussed in the following message, EMBOSS contains non-free data.
> > 
> >   https://lists.debian.org/20120918045219.GA26402@falafel.plessy.net
> > 
> > We need to consider short- and long-term solutions to this problem.  For the
> > short-term solution, I think that I will not have time to split free and
> > non-free parts of EMBOSS, so we need again to consider to move it altogether to
> > non-free.  In contrary to the UniProt files which were in the test suite, the
> > Gene Ontology files are needed by EMBOSS to run some of its programs.

Le Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 06:46:20PM +0100, Julien Cristau a écrit :
> 
> Does that mean emboss and embassy-* need to be removed from wheezy?

I am contacting Gene Ontology's helpdesk to make sure that we have the right to
redistribute the datai (copy pasted below).  Once this is confirmed, this bug
can be addressed by ignoring, downgrading, removing, or re-uploading to
non-free (sorted by increasing amounts of work).

I think that the release team has to decide which way to take: if I understand
correctly you are tagging wheezy-ignore other license issues (GFDL, non-free
PostScript code), but I do not know what are the criterion you follow, so I can
not decide for you.

Please let me know if you need further information.  Also, I would be
interested to hear the opinion of Debian Med's members about moving EMBOSS to
non-free.

Bon dimanche,

-- Charles



------ Message posted this morining on GO's contact page --------

Dear GO consortium,

I found on the page <http://www.geneontology.org/GO.cite.shtml> of your website some instructions on how to use GO without license.  However, I have not found an explicit right to redistribute the data.

The Debian operating system is currently redistributing some files from GO indirectly, as we redistribute the EMBOSS package, which incorporates some GO files since its version 6.4 (http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/emboss).

Debian considers copyrights and licenses very seriously, and our system only contains Free software, that is, materials that our users can freely use, modify and redistribute themselves. In addition to our system, we have a "non-free" archive in which, as a convenience for our users, we redistribute works that give less freedoms to our users.

In order to evaluate if works containing GO files can at least be distributed in our "non-free" area, I would like to know if GO is available under other terms of use or licenses, that allow redistributing GO files.

Lastly, have you considered distributing GO under less restrictive terms, to ease its use in Free software projects ?

Best regards,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian Med team
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med