Bug#908784: nethack: license incompatibility results in non-distributable binaries

[Vincent Cheng]

Hi James,

On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 2:51 PM James Cowgill <jcowgill at debian.org> wrote:
>
> Source: nethack
> Version: 3.4.3-14
> Severity: serious
> X-Debbugs-CC: vcheng at debian.org
>
> Hi,
>
> While reviewing the copyright file for the NetHack 3.6.1 upload, I
> noticed that the debian directory (and its patches) are marked as under
> the GPL-2.0. Unfortunately NetHack's special NGPL license is not
> compatible with the GPL (both are copyleft with some conflicting terms),
> so I have come to the conclusion that Debian's version of NetHack is not
> distributable in binary form at all.
>
> Thankfully I think this can be resolved fairly smoothly. If I look at
> the package history, I see that before 3.4.3-14 everything was licensed
> under the NGPL (except for the lisp patches). In this version, the
> copyright file was changed to relicense(?!) the debian/ directory under
> the GPL. Vincent and I are the only people who have claimed copyright
> since that point, and I am fine with licensing my stuff under the NGPL,
> so Vincent is the only person who needs asking.
>
> Vincent, can all your changes to the nethack package be licensed under
> the NGPL instead of the GPL-2.0?

Yes, I'm fine with licensing my changes to nethack under the NGPL as well.

Regards,
Vincent