[Debian-med-packaging] BLAT license

[Thorsten Alteholz]

Hi Jim,

On Thu, 13 Mar 2014, Jim Kent wrote:

> It is a short license.  It does not forbid modification, and we got no
> problem with that.

if you have a look at other licenses (for exmaple http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expat_License)
these licenses explicitly allow to "(...)use, copy, modify, merge, publish, 
distribute, sublicense, (...)".
Your license only allows to "use" the software, so as you claim all other 
rights with your copyright, I am not allowed to modify or distribute it.

> Hopefully this clears things up, but if not let me know, and we can add a
> few more words to the license if you like.

Yes, please add some more words to the license. Maybe you can use a 
standard license and just add a clause for commercial use? This would make 
things easier ...

Further you write in your global README: "A license is also granted for 
the contents of the top level lib and inc directories for commercial 
users."
But inc/cda.h, inc/cheapcgi.h, inc/crudeali.h and many other contain the 
sentence: "Commercial use permitted only by explicit agreement with Jim Kent 
(jim_kent at pacbell.net)"
For inc/jointalign.h I also have to talk to Ryan Weber (weber at cse.ucsc.edu) 
as well.

    Thorsten