Bug#617613: FreeCAD not in Testing

[Francesco Poli]

On Thu, 15 Dec 2011 21:00:39 -0500 Adam C Powell IV wrote:

> Hi Francesco,

Hi Adam!

> 
> On Sun, 2011-11-13 at 19:30 +0100, Francesco Poli wrote:
[...]
> > Please let me understand:
> > 
> >  (0) you (still) don't think that the OCTPL is GPL-incompatible
> > 
> > or
> > 
> >  (1) you agree that the OCTPL is GPL-incompatible, but you think that
> >      this is not an issue for the package freecad linked with
> >      libopencascade-*
> > 
> > Is it (0) or (1)?
> 
> It's 0, I don't see any clauses in the OCTPL itself which render it
> GPL-incompatible, agreeing with Denis' interpretation.

As I said in the original bug report [1]:

| it implements a copyleft mechanism and has no explicit
| GPL-compatibility clause.

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/617613#5

Let me be more explicit.

I think that you agree that the OCTPL includes restrictions
not present in the GNU GPL v2.
At the very least, the following one [2], which is part of clause 4:

| If you distribute or sublicense the Software (as modified by You
| or on Your behalf as the case may be), You cause such Software to
| be licensed as a whole, at no charge, to all third parties, under
| the terms and conditions of the License, making in particular
| available to all third parties the source code of the Software;

[2] http://www.opencascade.org/getocc/license/

This clause implements a (weak form of) copyleft mechanism by
mandating that any derivative work be licensed as a whole
under the terms of the OCTPL.
This is a restriction which is certainly not included in the GNU GPL v2.

If you try to combine a GPLv2-licensed work and an OCTPLv6.5-licensed
work, the resulting combination must be licensed as a whole under the
terms of the GNU GPL v2 (to comply with the license of the first work),
but also under the terms of the OCTPL v6.5 (to comply with the license
of the second work).
But the GPL mandates that no further restrictions may be added to
the derivative work, and the OCTPL includes clauses that are
further restrictions (from the GPL point of view).

As a consequence, you cannot legally distribute the resulting
combination and comply with both the GPLv2 and the OCTPLv6.5 .
These two licenses are therefore incompatible with each other.

[...]
> > When I filed the bug report, the GPL-incompatibility had been
> > acknowledged by Open CASCADE S.A.S. itself (that is to say, the authors
> > of the OCTPL!).
> 
> Do you have a link where they acknowledge GPL incompatibility?  The
> preamble isn't part of the legally-binding text.

The GPL-incompatibility is not acknowledged in the preamble.
It's acknowledged in the FAQ, as I said in the original bug report [1]
(please re-read at least what I originally wrote when reporting
this bug, otherwise we will run forever in circles...).

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/617613#5

[...]
> > An official ruling on the fact that a GPL'ed package which links with
> > both a GPL'ed library and a GPL-incompatible library has a serious bug?!?
> > 
> > I thought this was agreed upon long time ago within the Debian Project.
> > I have seen so many packages with such issues reported as serious bugs
> > (for instance for GPL programs linking with OpenSSL), that I think it
> > goes without saying!
> 
> No, I meant that until December 2, Debian had not given an official
> ruling indicating whether OCTPL is GPL-compatible.  Now they have issued
> a ruling but without any clarity or justification.
> 
> I'm going to ask Joerg for a clarification on his email of December 2.

I think the GPLv2-incompatibility of the OCTPLv6.5 is pretty clear and
uncontroversial: I am not sure why some people still seem to have
doubts and ask for official Debian rulings or statements from
the ftp-masters...



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