tinyows_1.1.0-3_amd64.changes REJECTED

[Thorsten Alteholz]

Hi Bas,

On Sat, 4 Jan 2014, Sebastiaan Couwenberg wrote:
> To my best understanding only the OGC Standards documents fall under the
> OGC Document Notice.
>
> http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/document
>
> Schemas and software are covered by the OGC Software Notice.
>
> http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/software

Ok, the first paragraph of the Software Notice says:
   By obtaining, using and/or copying this work, you (the licensee) agree
   that you have read, understood, and will comply with the following terms
   and conditions.
So in my understanding the enduser has to accept the conditions of this 
notice before he gets the work ("By obtaining (...) this work you agree 
that you have read, (...) and will comply (...)). I guess this is not 
possible with Debians package management.
At least he needs to comply when he uses it. I haven't looked that 
deeply at your package, but does it tell the user about this?


> 5.10 Is a schema or document definition (DTD) covered by the document
> or software terms?
>
> Schemas (and DTDs) are frequently part of our specifications and
> seemingly fall under the document copyright terms [2]. However, as
> long as you do not use the same formal namespace or public identifier
> to identify that modified OGC schema/DTD (which might confuse
> applications), you may treat the schema/DTD under the software terms.
> [3] This means that you are permitted to make a derivative or modified
> OGC schema/DTD, but even under the software terms [3] you are
> obligated to include/retain the OGC copyright notice. We further
> appreciate a couple sentences regarding who made the modifications,
> when, and what changes were made in the original DTD -- a common
> software documentation practice.
>
> We expect to revisit this topic as metadata schemas become an
> increasingly important part of OGC specifications and as the metadata
> schema definition capabilities of XML and other XML technologies
> advance.
>
> http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/legalfaq#DTD

Ok, if this entry of the FAQ is really part of the license, I see another 
problem. The first sentence says that schemas are covered by the Document 
Notice (= no modifications allowed = non-free). Only if you use a 
different namespace, you may apply the Software Notice and do 
modifications. I think this is against DFSG#3 and not covered by the 
compromise in DFSG#4.

> The WFS tests are not explicitly mentioned as falling under the OGC
> Software Notice. So it can be argued that because they are conformance
> tests for the OGC Standards that OGC doesn't allow their modification.
>
> On the other hand the conformance tests are intended to be included in
> OGC compliant open source software, which is the reason for the more
> liberal OGC Software Notice.

We could speculate about this, but I think a clear statement from OGC is 
needed here.

> Do you consider the OGC Sofware Notice used in this change to comply
> with the DFSG?

I would say no, but the opinion of other ftpmasters is very welcome :-).

    Thorsten