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Author Licensing issues...
Robert Ribnitz

2004-07-22, 7:55 am

Hello List,

I am in the process of making my package ('htdig') lintian-clean. Part
of that cleanness (lintian does not complain about) is getting a summary
of all the licenses used into the copyright file.

My situation is as follows (for htdig 3.1.6):

htdig itself is GPL, more recent versions are LGPL
config.guess/config.sub is GPL
Berkley DB (v. 2.6.4) comes with a sleepycat license (4-clause BSD
style), the current sleepycat license is a 3-clause BSD-style license.
They extended Berkeley DB in some way, I guess those extensions are
BSD-style, hopefully a 3 clause one.

Here's my set of questions:

1) Can I assume the more recent 3-clause BSD to also apply to that
version of Berkeley DB, or am I bound by the 4 clause one?
2) Can I reasonably argue that htdig is gpl (or lgpl) if its linked
against a 3 or a 4 cloause BSD license? - htdig .3.1.6 builds static
libraries (.a) it links against.

In thope to not to be completely off-topic here

Robert Ribnitz
Debian Maintainer of htdig, NM in application.



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Andreas Metzler

2004-07-22, 7:55 am

On 2004-07-22 Robert Ribnitz <ribnitz@linuxbourg.ch> wrote:
> I am in the process of making my package ('htdig') lintian-clean. Part
> of that cleanness (lintian does not complain about) is getting a summary
> of all the licenses used into the copyright file.


> My situation is as follows (for htdig 3.1.6):


> htdig itself is GPL, more recent versions are LGPL
> config.guess/config.sub is GPL

[...]

Afaik no need to list this in debian/copyright.
# As a special exception to the GNU General Public License, if you
# distribute this file as part of a program that contains a
# configuration script generated by Autoconf, you may include it under
# the same distribution terms that you use for the rest of that program.
cu andreas


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Steve Greenland

2004-07-22, 8:48 pm

On 22-Jul-04, 04:06 (CDT), Robert Ribnitz <ribnitz@linuxbourg.ch> wrote:
> Berkley DB (v. 2.6.4) comes with a sleepycat license (4-clause BSD
> style), the current sleepycat license is a 3-clause BSD-style license.


The Sleepycat license is most certainly not a BSD-style license, in
either 3- or 4- clause form. Go read the third clause again.

(I'm NOT claiming that the Sleepycat license is not DFSG, or in anyway
"bad", but to most people a "BSD-style license" implies the ability to
use the licensed code in a non-free app, which is not the case with the
Sleepycat license.)

Steve

--
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world. -- seen on the net


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