re: Re: Dosemu

On 11 Nov 2002 [email protected] wrote:

> El dom, 10-11-2002 a las 22:43, Kenneth J Davis escribi=F3:
> ...
> > else; does anyone here happen to use Debian or are more familiar
> > with it that can tell me if this still holds (FreeDOS not complying
> > with Debian requirements) and if so, what in particular it does
> > not comply with.  If someone could help me find this information,
> ...
>
> A quick scan over the licenses shows, that various programs use the
> "Express Software Public License", which does not appear on the list of
> GPL compatible Licenses at www.gnu.org.  This does not mean it is not
> compatible, but maybe the debian-package-maintainer did not have time or
> interest to undergo a legal research about this issue.
>
> debug.com says: "This program is copyrighted, but feel free to
> distribute and use it as you wish." an issue which surely is
> incompatible with Debian's License criteria.

yes. shsucdx is similar.

> The maintainer of the package is Herbert Xu, <[email protected]>, which
> surely can give you the whole details.

his opinion is (I don't think this is meant to be private, since he stated
it in other words publically before):

<quote>
Even though the sources are available, it is difficult to
1. Collect them all -- They are spread over a lot of files.
2. Verify that they match the binary -- Only the person who compiled it
can do so.

Until this is resolved, the easiest way out for us is still to get
the users to fetch it from dosemu.org.
</quote>

Jeremy's Ripcord collection satisfies requirement 1. As for requirement
2. he clarified that that means that "the source code should be the one
used to generate the binary"

there's also the discussion at
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/debian-legal-200106/msg00080.html=

but he agrees now that linking against the Borland libc isn't a problem.

So I think it's now more a question of time than of legal issues.

Bart