[Pkg-db-devel] Bug#256332: Clarification of redistribution

[Brian M. Carlson]

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[CC'ing debian-legal for their opinion]

On Wednesday 30 June 2004 14:44, Michael Olson wrote:
> Matthew,
>
> Thanks for your message.  You wrote:
> > Good morning.  I am one of the Debian maintainers for the Berkeley
> > DB packages.  One of our users recently noticed a discrepancy
> > between http://www.sleepycat.com/docs/sleepycat/legal.html and
> > http://www.sleepycat.com/docs/sleepycat/license.html .  The former
> > (legal.html) states:
> >
> > 	Permission to use this publication or portions of this publication
> > 	is granted by Sleepycat Software provided that the above copyright
> > 	notice appears in all copies and that use of such publications
> > 	is for non-commercial use only and no modifications of the
> > 	publication is made.
> >
> > while the latter (license.html) has no such restriction on
> > commercial use and http://sleepycat.com/download/index.shtml makes
> > no reference to commercial use being prohibited.
> >
> > Could you please clarify this point?
>
> Thanks for calling this to our attention.  I believe that Keith
> Bostic here has been in touch with others on the Debian project about
> this same issue.
>
> The problematic language you cite above, prohibiting commercial use,
> is an artifact of an old publishing contract we had for a book that
> is no longer in print.  That restriction is no longer important, and
> we are glad to remove the language from the Web site.  In fact, with
> our 4.3 release, we'll be releasing the entire doc set under a
> Creative Commons license (their "attribution share-alike" license),
> which encourages collaboration, requires sharing and permits
> commercial and non-commercial use on non-discriminatory terms.
>
> Sleepycat won't enforce any non-commercial prohibition; the language
> is an error.
>
> We'll be making our 4.3 release available soon, and will absolutely
> change the site then.  Is this explanation and assurance sufficient?

Actually, the Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike Licenses from=20
Creative Commons are not DFSG-free. See the summary on debian-legal=20
[0]. It would probably work best if you just licensed the docs under=20
the same license as the code.

If you do insist in licensing under the Attribution Share-Alike license,=20
then Debian will not be able to distribute the documentation, which is=20
a shame, considering that I use them plenty.

IANAL. IANADD.

[0] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/04/msg00031.html
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