Bug 244356 – media-sound/gsm and derivatives not legally redistributable (including media-sound/sox and net-misc/asterisk)

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Luke-Jr 2008-10-25 18:43:56 UTC]

It is not legal to redistribute SRC_URI, so Gentoo should not mirror it.

[Comment 1 Wormo (RETIRED) 2008-10-25 19:24:09 UTC]

Please explain why it is not legally redistributable; are you talking about the license, or some patent problem? The license appears to be pretty Free to me:

Any use of this software is permitted provided that this notice is not
removed and that neither the authors nor the Technische Universitaet Berlin
are deemed to have made any representations as to the suitability of this
software for any purpose nor are held responsible for any defects of
this software.  THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY FOR THIS SOFTWARE.

http://kbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~jutta/gsm/COPYRIGHT

[Comment 2 Luke-Jr 2008-10-25 19:50:57 UTC]

gsm's license only permits use, not modification nor redistribution.

[Comment 3 Luke-Jr 2008-10-25 20:11:12 UTC]

For the record, Debian tried to contact Carsten Bormann in 2006 with no result: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=397047
Also, I emailed Jutta Degener 3 weeks ago about this, and have not heard back.
I am considering giving one or both of them a call at work sometime (tel numbers on their respective homepages).

[Comment 4 Mike Auty (RETIRED) 2008-10-26 00:04:39 UTC]

*** Bug 244362 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Comment 5 Mike Auty (RETIRED) 2008-10-26 00:06:51 UTC]

Robbat2 suggested on IRC that the RESTRICT="mirror" be added for now, and the bug left open until Debian resolve the issue or someone manages to contact the authors and get a response...

[Comment 6 Luke-Jr 2008-10-26 00:59:27 UTC]

A USE flag for a Free media-sound/sox would still be appreciated in the meantime as well, as I like sox, but do not wish to have non-Free software...

[Comment 7 Luke-Jr 2008-10-26 00:59:43 UTC]

(USE=gsm might be an alternate to the earlier-mentioned USE=Free)

[Comment 8 Alexis Ballier 2008-10-26 10:04:46 UTC]

If gsm has to be mirror restricted, sox too, as libgsm isn't optional here, it either uses its own local copy or the system one. If it's about redistribution of the source code, sox has the same problem.

[Comment 9 Luke-Jr 2008-10-26 21:15:57 UTC]

Yes, I assumed he meant RESTRICT=mirror on both.

[Comment 10 Luke-Jr 2008-11-11 17:11:52 UTC]

This issue infects Asterisk as well.

[Comment 11 Alexis Ballier 2008-11-14 15:24:12 UTC]

any news on this?
has anyone tried to contact sox upstream? (they're including and distributing libgsm too...)

[Comment 12 Samuli Suominen (RETIRED) 2009-05-04 18:02:17 UTC]

Debian distributes libgsm as well.. and they are very careful about this..

[Comment 13 Samuli Suominen (RETIRED) 2009-05-04 18:03:37 UTC]

Bah.. Nevermind, should have read the whole bug

[Comment 14 Luke-Jr 2009-08-20 15:49:39 UTC]

Version bump of gsm changing only the license: "By special request, we've now explicitly listed a number of uses that the words "any use" in our copyright notice were meant to cover. There has not been a functional change relative to version 12."

The new license seems to be clearly a BSD-style license, including distribution and modification rights. Please bump and update license file, then this bug is fixed upstream.

[Comment 15 Samuli Suominen (RETIRED) 2009-08-28 14:27:49 UTC]

Done. License updated and version bumped.