Bug#618696: closed by Adam C Powell IV <hazelsct at debian.org> (Re: elmer: multiple licensing issues)

[Francesco Poli]

On Sun, 08 May 2011 15:28:23 +0200 Sylvestre Ledru wrote:

> Le dimanche 08 mai 2011 à 15:18 +0200, Francesco Poli a écrit :
> > On Sat, 07 May 2011 23:38:38 +0200 Sylvestre Ledru wrote:
> > 
> > > Le samedi 07 mai 2011 à 23:20 +0200, Francesco Poli a écrit :
> > > > since I don't think CeCILL-C meets the DFSG: 
> > > A bit out of topic but you are probably wrong here. All CeCILL licenses
> > > are DFSG compliant.
[...]
> > I am only aware of the following analysis:
> > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2008/01/msg00171.html
> > Please note that I have already cited this analysis, see
> > http://bugs.debian.org/618696#41
> > 
> > The analysis by Joe Smith highlights the GPL-incompatibility

> CeCILL-C is equivalent to the LGPL, not GPL.

Yes, more or less.
But CeCILL-C seems to be GPL-incompatible, which is really unfortunate.

Please note that the GNU LGPL v2.1 is GPL-compatible thanks to an
explicit conversion-to-GPL clause (included in section 3): hence,
I don't think that a license that is just similar to the LGPL can be
considered automatically GPL-compatible.

> CeCILL is GPL compabible.

The CeCILL license is GPL-compatible thanks to an explicit
conversion-to-GPL clause (see section 5.3.4).

Unfortunately, the CeCILL-C license does not have any explicit
conversion-to-GPL or conversion-to-LGPL clause...   :-(

> It has been designed with the FSF to be fully compatible with the LGPL.

Could you please provide any evidence for this (URLs or something)?

If you only mean that one can link an LGPL-licensed work with a
CeCILL-C-licensed work, then I think it is probably true, since both
licenses pose very few restrictions on what is on the other side of a
linking relationship.

But compatibility between two licenses means much more, AFAICT.
It means that one must be allowed to combine two works, one available
under the terms of the first license, the other under the terms of the
second license, and distribute the resulting combined work, while
complying with the licenses of both base works at the same time.

I am under the impression that CeCILL-C is LGPL-incompatible.
And it also shows clear signs of GPL-incompatibility.

By the way, the FSF license list talks about the CeCILL license:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CeCILL
acknowledging its GPL-compatibility, but does not seem to make any
mention of the CeCILL-C license...

> It is why I stated that the CeCILL-C is DFSG. After that, I apologize if
> it has been considered as not DFSG on debian-legal mailing list. I
> wasn't aware of that.

There's no need to apologize, really.
I replied just because I could be unaware of some relevant information
about the CeCILL-C license and wanted to check.



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