mingw-w64: Vague permission grant for embedded Cephes math lib
mappu <[email protected]> Fri, 9 May 2025 17:11:35 +1200
| Newsgroups | gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Hi, The mingw-w64 package is a compiler and runtime library, that includes math functions copyrighted by Stephen L. Moshier. The license text contains this blurb [1]: FIXME: Cephes math lib Copyright (C) 1984-1998 Stephen L. Moshier It sounds vague, but as to be found at <http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/12/msg00295.html>, it gives an impression that the author could be willing to give an explicit permission to distribute those files e.g. under a BSD style license. So probably there is no problem here, although it could be good to get a permission from the author and then add a license into the Cephes files in MinGW runtime. At least on follow-up it is marked that debian sees the version a-like BSD one. As MinGW.org (where those cephes parts are coming from) distributes them now over 6 years, it should be fine. I believe mingw-w64 is extremely widely used and this package is almost certainly dfsg-free. However, I'm having a difficult time explaining that to a lawyer. Upon inspection of this paragraph, this seems like a weak justification and nothing like what is considered a modern license grant. The linked thread also does not really make a convincing argument. I asked upstream[2] but didn't make much progress yet. Dear debian-legal, do you have any advice on what grounds can this package be considered free software? Thanks for your time, and apologies in advance if this is the wrong communication channel, Regards mappu 1. https://salsa.debian.org/mingw-w64-team/mingw-w64/-/blob/master/COPYING.MinGW-w64-runtime/COPYING.MinGW-w64-runtime.txt?ref_type=heads#L209 2. https://github.com/mingw-w64/mingw-w64/issues/64