[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#807580: More licensing issues (Was: BLAT license)

[Andreas Tille]

Hi Jim,

hmmm, I do not remember any supposed license change from your side.  May
be I was missing some mail?

Any clarification would be helpful

      Andreas.


On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 08:15:20AM +0100, Jim Kent wrote:
> Hi Andreas, I thought I'd left the ball in your court....
> 
> 
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 10:28 PM, Andreas Tille <andreas at an3as.eu> wrote:
> 
> > Hi Jim,
> >
> > its a long time ago and I have not heard from you back then when we were
> > discussing the license of BLAT.
> >
> > As you can read in the bug log of the Debian package of the BioConductor
> > component rtracklayer here
> >
> >    https://bugs.debian.org/807580
> >
> > this code is based upon code obtained from
> >
> >    http://genome-source.cse.ucsc.edu/gitweb/?p=kent.git
> >
> > and thus covered by your license that is not compatible with DFSG
> > guidelines.  It would be really great if we could refresh the past
> > discussion to find a free license for this code.  The alternative would
> > be that we need to kick a chain of about 10 dependencies of BioConductor
> > packages out of Debian.
> >
> > 'm not sure whether I mentioned it before but we had a long standing
> > discussion with Joe Felsenstein about PHYLIP and finally he confirmed
> > that the gain he had over *years* was so small that the loss to get
> > better distribution, cooperation and patches might outweight this by
> > far.  I wonder whether you might be interested in this kind of
> > experiences - at least Joe has decided in 2014 for a BSD-2-clause
> > license.
> >
> > Kind regards
> >
> >        Andreas.
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 04:22:12PM -0700, Jim Kent wrote:
> > > Hmm.  The reason I'm comfortable having you redistribute it is that I
> > know
> > > you will put it in a section where it is clearly marked as license
> > > required.
> > >
> > > The tricky part is where re-redistribution comes in.
> > >
> > > Perhaps in your files is a license that has a word or two on this subject
> > > already?  If not then I must pause and think, and discuss with my people
> > as
> > > well.
> > >
> > >
> > > On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 2:15 PM, Andreas Tille <tille at debian.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi Jim,
> > > >
> > > > On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 01:57:39PM -0700, Jim Kent wrote:
> > > > > It is a short license.  It does not forbid modification, and we got
> > no
> > > > > problem with that.  We do want to _check_ on redistribution to make
> > sure
> > > > > that it is clear we reserve commercial licensing rights.
> > > > >
> > > > > 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.
> > > >
> > > > I think this is the problematic part:  How do you practically want to
> > > > check the redistribution via Debian?  Even if the non-free section is
> > > > not official Debian the package would available from the Debian mirrors
> > > > and from several potential derivatives.  Surely it is no dedicated
> > > > distribution of BLAT but the license is not totally clear whether we
> > are
> > > > allowed to do what we intend to do (distributing BLAT in source and
> > > > binary form) even if it is the users obligation to read the license
> > text
> > > > and check whether he is allowed to use the program.
> > > >
> > > > Kind regards
> > > >
> > > >       Andreas.
> > > >
> > > > > On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 1:12 PM, Andreas Tille <tille at debian.org>
> > wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > Hi Jim,
> > > > > >
> > > > > > could you please give some clarification about the BLAT license.
> > Our
> > > > > > ftpmaster interprets it as not distributable.  We are aware that it
> > > > > > needs to go into the non-free section but it would be a shame if it
> > > > > > could not even go there.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Kind regards
> > > > > >
> > > > > >       Andreas.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On Thu, Mar 13, 2014 at 08:01:50PM +0100, Thorsten Alteholz wrote:
> > > > > > > Hi,
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > the license of BLAT is a bit strange. It just allows the use of
> > the
> > > > > > > software but no modification and no distribution. Did I miss
> > > > > > > anything?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >   Thorsten
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > --
> > > > > > http://fam-tille.de
> > > > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > http://fam-tille.de
> > > >
> >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Debian-med-packaging mailing list
> > > Debian-med-packaging at lists.alioth.debian.org
> > >
> > http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debian-med-packaging
> >
> >
> > --
> > http://fam-tille.de
> >

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