OGC schemas, licensing & non-free [Was: pycsw_1.10.0+dfsg-1_amd64.changes REJECTED]

[Johan Van de Wauw]

On Fri, Nov 28, 2014 at 5:24 PM, Sebastiaan Couwenberg
<sebastic at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> Hi Johan,
>
> On 11/19/2014 10:08 PM, Johan Van de Wauw wrote:
>> Just for clarity, pycsw only contains the schemas, and not the
>> testcases mentioned for tinyOWS.
>>
>> I would like to point out that regarding these schemas there is
>> actually no difference between the licenses used by W3C and OGC (apart
>> from the copyrightholders). Indeed, the OGC software license [2] is
>> identical to the W3C license [3] (OSGI approved [4]).
>>
>> The document license for OGC [5] is again identical to the document
>> license for W3C [6]. W3C schemas (eg xml.xsd) are used by *many*
>> debian packages. Is there an exemption in W3C which I missed (and
>> which we could suggest to OGC), or is there a more general problem
>> here? I think standards are one of the cases where I find the DFSG #4
>> exemption is defendable.
>
> Regarding the above, and what you wrote on #osgeo-live:
>
> 23:09 < johanvdw> I actually talked about it with Bart Delathouwer from OGC
> 23:09 < johanvdw> just earlier today
> 23:10 < johanvdw> I'll try to convince the ftp-masters that it can fall
> under DFSG 4 exemption
> 23:10 < johanvdw> In the mean time upload to non-free
>
> Do know if Bart is planning to come to FOSDEM? I would love to have a
> face to face conversation about the OGC licensing and Debian. I asked
> around last year if any of the Geo people knew if any OGC folks were
> around, but it didn't seem to be the case.

I'll invite him, but I don't know what his plans are. At least he
knows since yesterday that we are organizing this track. For the
record, he likes tinkering
with debian on this raspberry pi - you have conversation starter :-)

Anyway: it will be hard to convince him that it is useful to allow
modifications of the XSD's ("Why on earth would you want to do that").
And I actually think that the license exemption in the their FAQ
allowing it given that you use a different namespace is not
unreasonable, and very close to DFSG #4 exemption.

If we propose a wording to OGC which both covers their concerns (don't
just change an XSD and distritbute it as if it is the original
standard) and which is acceptable to the FTP masters, I think OGC may
confirm this interpretation.

For me the ball is in their (FTP-masters) camp.

If I read the original mail for tinyows [1] they have a few concerns:
1) questions whether the Software license is DFSG free

I think the correct answer is it is free. At least according to OSI
and Fedora it is. It is used by many other packages in debian (as the
W3C software license).

2) Whether the license FAQ is really part of the license:

I think it clearly is, it is linked from the page and mentioned in the
license. Question: Do the FTP-master agree? Do we need a seperate
statement from OGC that it really is part of the license?

3) "
The first sentence says that schemas are covered by the Document
Notice (= no modifications allowed = non-free). Only if you use a
different namespace, you may apply the Software Notice and do
modifications. I think this is against DFSG#3 and not covered by the
compromise in DFSG#4.
"
"I think" is not a clear signal here. Can we get a clear answer from
the FRP masters? If it is not covered by the compromise, can the FTP
masters suggest a wording that would be covered by the exemption? So
we can propose it to OGC?

Johan
[1] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grass-devel/2014-January/017321.html