[pkg-crosswire-devel] Bug#984526: sword-text-kjv: Package is non-free

[Bastian Germann]

Source: sword-text-kjv
Severity: serious
Version: 2.10-1

sword-text-kjv is non-free in all of its versions. The details are in 
https://gitlab.com/crosswire-bible-society/kjv/-/commit/0203c85010a9a

For the (binary) sword module a "General public license for distribution 
for any purpose" is granted, which does not explicitly allow 
distributions of modified versions. The more verbose license text is: 
"Any copyright that might be obtained for this effort is held by 
CrossWire Bible Society (c) 2003-2016 and CrossWire Bible Society hereby 
grants a general public license to use this text for any purpose."

"Use for any purpose" does not necessarily contain modified redistribution.

The source was never in Debian versions before 2.10-1. It was recently 
published by mistake and it was assumed that the license for the binary 
module also applies to the source. Even if it did, it would still not be 
DFSG-compliant because the distribution of modified versions is not allowed.

The binary module would be perfectly fine for Debian's non-free section. 
I propose to move the last source-less version there. There is an issue 
with the version number being 2.9.1-4, which has an additional ".1" 
compared with the upstream version. This should also be fixed with the 
non-free upload, so the new non-free version should be "2.10+really2.9-1".

I prepared this suggestion at 
https://salsa.debian.org/pkg-crosswire-team/sword-text-kjv/-/tree/debian/latest 
which should be force-pushed to master (as well as the upstream and 
pristine-tar branches to their 2.9.1 versions) if we go this route.