The following packages are currently labelled "as-is". I cannot find any license in their distfiles or on their homepages: sci-astronomy/cdsclient sci-biology/trf sci-chemistry/babel sci-chemistry/gopenmol sci-chemistry/mars sci-chemistry/mm-align sci-chemistry/pdbmat sci-chemistry/xdsi sci-electronics/voacapl sci-libs/libcmatrix sci-libs/parmgridgen sci-mathematics/diagrtb sci-physics/herwig Unless someone can provide information on their distribution terms, I suggest that we change them to LICENSE="all-rights-reserved" and add mirror and bindist restriction.
> sci-electronics/voacapl One of the last sentences at http://www.qsl.net/hz1jw/voacapl said: "This software is supplied 'as is' without any warranty, implied or otherwise." I am not quite sure if that qualifies for an 'as-is' license? Comments please.
Quoting the BSD license THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE This one also says "as-is". As far as I understand our "as-is" license is only a palceholder. If nothing is stated, then all rights stay with the creator which results in the new all-rights-reserved license.
(In reply to comment #1) > > sci-electronics/voacapl > > One of the last sentences at http://www.qsl.net/hz1jw/voacapl said: > > "This software is supplied 'as is' without any warranty, implied or > otherwise." > > I am not quite sure if that qualifies for an 'as-is' license? Comments > please. That's not a license, but just a warranty disclaimer. These have completely different functions: - A license gives additional rights to the _user_ that he normally doesn't have, e.g. the right to distribute the software or the right to make modified versions. - A warranty disclaimer protects the _author_ by limiting the obligations he has against the user (usually it says that the author has no obligations whatsoever). It doesn't give the user any additional rights. (In reply to comment #2) > Quoting the BSD license > > THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" > AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE > > This one also says "as-is". Same as above, this is a disclaimer only. However, the important difference is that in the case of the BSD license it is preceded by a true license: "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: [...]"
(In reply to comment #3) > That's not a license, but just a warranty disclaimer. These have completely > different functions: > > - A license gives additional rights to the _user_ that he normally doesn't > have, e.g. the right to distribute the software or the right to make > modified versions. > > - A warranty disclaimer protects the _author_ by limiting the obligations he > has against the user (usually it says that the author has no obligations > whatsoever). It doesn't give the user any additional rights. > > Ok, I see. Thanks for clarification. Will change the ebuild as suggested and ask upstream to specify a license for future reference.
wrt voacapl, the file voacapl/itshfbc/news/2000_all.txt notes that itshfbc is a work of the us government and thus public domain. Things might be similar for the other listed packages.
(In reply to comment #5) > wrt voacapl, the file voacapl/itshfbc/news/2000_all.txt notes that itshfbc > is a work of the us government and thus public domain. > > Things might be similar for the other listed packages. That got confirmed by the follwoing upstream response to my question: "The original voacap code has been released by the US government without any licence or copyright. I've respected this and not tried to add any licence to the modifications that I've made. Even a GPL style licence would impose a restriction in that users who take the code would be obliged to share their modifications. While this is obviously desirable, it's a limitation that was not present in the original code. I'm no lawyer but suspect that the Apache licence is probably the closest to the intentions of the original authors as it doesn't impose restrictions that would prevent the code entering the closed source domain. However, out of respect to the original authors, I didn't attempt to retrospectively apply a licence to work that I had no part in creating. I'll write to Greg ad see if he has any thoughts on how to licence the work "
Note that it is not that the original authors released it w/o license. It is that, as US fed govt employees creating a work as a part of their job, neither they nor the govt is permitted to copyright the work. The US constitution declares that all output of out federal govt is in the public domain. The changes and additons, however, are by default copyrighted and need to be licensed to the rest of us. A 2-clause or 3-clause BSD license would be best for those.
Should we split this bug, one bug per package? Otherwise, I fear that there will be little progress.
(In reply to comment #8) > Should we split this bug, one bug per package? > Otherwise, I fear that there will be little progress. I would prefer splitting
(In reply to comment #9) > (In reply to comment #8) > > Should we split this bug, one bug per package? > > I would prefer splitting Done, therefore closing this bug. sci-astronomy/cdsclient -> bug 470776 sci-biology/trf -> bug 470778 sci-chemistry/babel -> bug 470780 sci-chemistry/gopenmol -> bug 470782 sci-chemistry/mars -> bug 470784 sci-chemistry/mm-align -> bug 470786 sci-chemistry/pdbmat -> bug 470788 sci-chemistry/xdsi -> bug 470790 sci-electronics/voacapl -> fixed, see comment #4 sci-libs/libcmatrix -> bug 470794 sci-libs/parmgridgen -> bug 470796 sci-mathematics/diagrtb -> bug 470798 sci-physics/herwig -> bug 470800
