[Debian-med-packaging] Support needed by other Debian Med members (Was: Please consider relicensing of old version of hep.aida to enable free colt.jar)

Tue Feb 25 10:26:01 UTC 2014

Hi fellows,

IMHO it could really help if some more people would start nagging a bit.
If I might remain the only one Tony might regard me as "the boring /
crazy guy with the stupid licensing issue who should be killfiled".

Thanks

      Andreas.

On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 02:37:44PM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
> Hi Tony,
> 
> as I said the prefered quick solution for us would be relicensing the
> old code of hep by droping the additional clause.  It would be of
> really great help because it drastically simplifies our work with the
> dependant packages.
> 
> BTW, practically speaking:  Considering how hidden the non-free code is
> inside a JAR bundled with the colt library I bet nobody (even people
> working for the army) would ever read the license and I think I would
> win any bet that the code is actively used in military purposes.  So
> what is the sense of the license restriction if nobody really puts it
> into effect?
> 
> Thanks for considering to help Debian and its user community
> 
>       Andreas.
> 
> On Fri, Nov 08, 2013 at 01:23:03PM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > Hi Tony,
> > 
> > many thanks for your quick reply.
> > 
> > On Fri, Nov 08, 2013 at 03:11:28AM -0800, Tony Johnson wrote:
> > > Hi, the version of hep.aida packaged with colt is very old, and not
> > > 100% compatible with the current version.
> > 
> > Yes, this is what I was told from a Debian Java team member.
> > 
> > > I would personally like to
> > > see hep.aida removed from colt, when we use colt we need to make our
> > > own distribution which removes the obsolete version of hep.aida.
> > 
> > Does this mean you could provide a new colt version adapted to current
> > hep.aida?  This would definitely help as well.  Unfortunately I only
> > found the old copy.  I'm no Java expert at all but from my naive view on
> > the file names in the FreeHEP implementations a lot of file names have
> > changed and I guess that it does not work with the old colt library.
> > 
> > > I am not sure where the licenses included with colt came from.
> > 
> > Same for me.  My idea was just that you as one of its named authors
> > might be autorised to relicense under the same conditions as recent
> > versions of FreeHEP (== just droping the additional clause).  This would
> > be the easiest and quickest help - even if I admit that switching to
> > more recent and maintained code would be the better way to go in the
> > long run.
> > 
> > > The current version of hep.aida is here:
> > > 
> > > http://aida.freehep.org/
> > > 
> > > It is unambigously licensed under pure LGPL. hep.aida only specifies
> > > the interface, the java implementation can be found here:
> > > 
> > > http://java.freehep.org/jaida/
> > > 
> > > again licensed under pure LGPL. Please let me know if I can help further.
> > 
> > Thanks for the offer to help.  As I said the quick (and not terrribly
> > dirty) help would be to give permission to drop the extra clause from
> > the license.  I guess sending this in publich to the mailing list in
> > CC would be perfectly sufficient.
> > 
> > The long term help would be a hint to a more recent colt version that
> > might work together with current FreeHEP aida.
> > 
> > Thanks for your offer to help
> > 
> >       Andreas.
> >  
> > > Tony
> > > 
> > > On 11/08/2013 02:51 AM, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > > >Hi Tony,
> > > >
> > > >I have packaged the colt Java library for the Debian distributions
> > > >because there are at least two packages needing this library.  The colt
> > > >library contains a copy of the hep.aida.* code which has a license[1]
> > > >that is considered non-free according to the Debian Free Software
> > > >Guidelines (DFSG [2]) since it violates item 6.  We understand the
> > > >intention behind the restriction that was put in addition to LGPL but
> > > >there is some consensus that this type of licenses are doing more bad
> > > >than good in general.
> > > >
> > > >Unfortunately there was no information how to contact the authors and
> > > >you seem to be the only one who remains connected to the successor of
> > > >hep.aida.* inside the FreeHEP project.  Could you do us a big favour and
> > > >either
> > > >
> > > >   1. Relicense the old hep.aida.* code to pure LGPL (or whatever free
> > > >      license you might prefer) or
> > > >
> > > >   2. give us a pointer to the author of hep.aida.* who might help us
> > > >      with our problem.
> > > >
> > > >Kind regards and thanks for your work on Free Software
> > > >
> > > >      Andreas.
> > > >
> > > >[1] http://acs.lbl.gov/software/colt/license.html
> > > >[2] http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
> > > >
> > > 
> > 
> > -- 
> > http://fam-tille.de
> > 
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