[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#807580: More licensing issues (Was: BLAT license)

Andreas Tille tille at debian.org
Wed Mar 16 13:54:11 UTC 2016


Hi Jim,

I noticed that BioConductor folks have clarified their licensing statement
in version 1.30.3 of rtracklayer by adding a LICENSE file saying:

  The contents of "src/ucsc" fall under the license below. Note that
  the "src/lib", "src/inc" and "src/utils" refer to directories within
  the original Kent source tree. In rtracklayer, the files are all under
  "src/ucsc".
  
  All files are copyrighted, but license is hereby granted for personal,
  academic, and non-profit use.  A license is also granted for the
  contents of the src/lib, src/inc and src/utils and python directories
  for commercial users.

While this is probably sufficient for BioConductor use the issue remains
for Debian since it is per definition non-free (as we discussed before).
In your mail below you wrote you "can release under MPL".  Would you
actually do this by declaring it somewhere on the download place at least
(preferably inside the code but that's probably more work than needed
for the moment).

Kind regards

        Andreas.

On Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 08:37:36AM -0800, Jim Kent wrote:
> Actually though, looking at Mozilla Public LIcense, the only differences I
> don't care much about,  so if it makes it easier, I can release it under
> that as well.
> 
> On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 9:14 PM, Michael Lawrence <lawrence.michael at gene.com
> > wrote:
> 
> > Are you guys saying that an R package that depends on another R
> > package is considered a derivative work? If so, there are probably an
> > enormous number of CRAN/Bioc packages in violation. My choice of
> > license for rtracklayer should not affect the
> >
> > On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 9:07 PM, Charles Plessy <plessy at debian.org> wrote:
> > > Le Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 08:47:42AM -0800, Jim Kent a écrit :
> > >> Sorry not to get back to you sooner.  I'm just getting a lot of
> > >> post-vacation mail pile up.
> > >>
> > >> A copyleft license sounds like it would work.  In particular I would be
> > >> happy to distribute it under Common Development and Distribution License
> > >
> > > Thanks Jim for your help !
> > >
> > > The GNU General Public License is said to be incompatible with the Common
> > > Development and Distribution License, and I worry that it may cause
> > problem to
> > > Bioconductor modules that directly or transitively depend or import from
> > > rtracklayer.
> > >
> > > If you are looking for a non-GPL alternative, the Mozilla Public License
> > > version 2.0 has similar features to the CDDL (it shares a common
> > ancestor), but
> > > is compatible with the GPL.
> > >
> > > Have a nice Sunday,
> > >
> > > --
> > > Charles Plessy
> > > Debian Med packaging team,
> > > http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
> > > Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan
> >

> _______________________________________________
> Debian-med-packaging mailing list
> Debian-med-packaging at lists.alioth.debian.org
> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/debian-med-packaging


-- 
http://fam-tille.de



More information about the Debian-med-packaging mailing list