dcraw license change: (see bug #424663)

Dear All,

The licensing of dcraw has recently changed:

A clause concerning the mandatory distribution of source code has been
modified with the following footnote added:

>If you have not modified dcraw.c in any way, a link to my
>homepage qualifies as "full source code".

To me, this seems *less* restrictive than the clause without this footnote.
It seems that you only need to include a link to the source code (which is
already present in the copyright file), and don't need to make the source
available.

However I would appreciate it if the assembled masses of legal experts
could confirm that they agree that this is the case.

Thanks,

link to source code (containing full license)
http://cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/dcraw.c

--
Steve King


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Package: dcraw
Version: 7.02-1
Severity: serious

On Thu, 05 Jul 2007, Steve King wrote:
> However I would appreciate it if the assembled masses of legal
> experts could confirm that they agree that this is the case.

There's actually an even more fundamental problem with dcraw.c:

/*
dcraw.c -- Dave Coffin's raw photo decoder
Copyright 1997-2007 by Dave Coffin, dcoffin a cybercom o net

This is a command-line ANSI C program to convert raw photos from
any digital camera on any computer running any operating system.

No license is required to download and use dcraw.c. However,
to lawfully redistribute this code, you must either (a) include
full source code* for all executable files containing RESTRICTED
functions, (b) remove all RESTRICTED functions, re-implement them,
or copy them from an earlier, unrestricted Revision of dcraw.c,
or (c) purchase a license from the author.

The functions that process Foveon images have been RESTRICTED
since Revision 1.237. All other code remains free for all uses.

*If you have not modified dcraw.c in any way, a link to my
homepage qualifies as "full source code".

$Revision: 1.387 $
$Date: 2007/06/24 00:18:52 $
*/


You'll notice that we have no permission to distribute modified
versions of dcraw.c as required by the DFSG. Secondly, it appears that
we must include full source code if we've modified dcraw.c, but we
don't do that. We distribute source alongside.

If you could get Dave Coffin to explicitely dual license under the
GPL, that'd clarify this entire problem. [He seems to want a copyleft,
which the GPL would grant.]

Text like:

Alternately, you can redistribute and/or modify this work under the
terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.

would do the trick.


Don Armstrong

--
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked
something.
-- Steven Wright

http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu


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