Bug#449475: Serious doubts about the distributability of a file

[John Halton]

On Jan 7, 2008 1:38 PM, Vincent Fourmond <fourmond at gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems to me that
> the copyright notices conflict, and effectively render the file not
> distributable, but I am not quite sure; if this file is effectively a
> derived work from the work copyrighted by the Universtity of North
> Carolina, it is not distributable. It all depends on the meaning of
> "based on". What do you think ? What should be done ?

I agree that the notices are incompatible, but I think the problem is
more fundamental. The big problem is in the licence terms for the UNC
code:

>   Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this software and its
>   documentation for educational, research and non-profit purposes, without
>   fee, and without a written agreement is hereby granted,

This limitation to "educational, research and non-profit purposes"
makes the UNC code non-free. So if any UNC code is included in the
file in question, then this makes the file undistributable in main.
Probably OK in non-free given that Debian is a non-profit
organisation.

John

(TINLA)