[Xastir-dev] Re: [suse-ham-e] ham radio files missing (fwd)

[Curt, WE7U]

This is of interest to us.  It explains why Xastir is no longer on
SuSE CD's.  Can anyone shed some light on the legal matters here?
Should we ask the author of rotated.c/rotated.h to release it under
GPL for us?  If we can't obtain that, should we get replace that
part of the code?  Might we have other licensing issues elsewhere in
the code that also need to be handled?

Please don't e-mail Joerg Reuter.  I just did as you can see below.
I want to get a discussion going with him to see what he thinks
it'll take, and I don't want him inundated with similar e-mails.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 12:42:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Curt, WE7U" <archer at eskimo.com>
To: Joerg Reuter <jreuter at suse.de>
Cc: "Curt Mills, WE7U" <archer at eskimo.com>
Subject: Re: [suse-ham-e] ham radio files missing



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joerg Reuter [mailto:jreuter at suse.de]
> Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 7:54 AM
> To: suse-ham-e at suse.com
> Subject: Re: [suse-ham-e] ham radio files missing
>
> On Mon, Apr 18, 2005 at 10:03:34AM -0400, Jim Hartzell wrote:
>
> > Some programs have newer versions out there but SUSE RPMs
> > for them are hard to find, XASTIR is one.
>
> Hmm, IIRC Xastir has a licence issue...
>
> Ah, yes, found it. rotated.c states:
>
> /* xvertext 5.0, Copyright (c) 1993 Alan Richardson
> (mppa3 at uk.ac.sussex.syma)
>  *
>  * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
>  * documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted,
> provided
>  * that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both
> the
>  * copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting
>  * documentation.  All work developed as a consequence of the use of
>  * this program should duly acknowledge such use. No representations are
>  * made about the suitability of this software for any purpose.  It is
>  * provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
>  */
>
> IMHO (however, IANAL) this is is incompatible to the GPL ("without fee"
> collides with section 6 of the GPL: "You may not impose any further
> restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.")
>
> Thus I feel reluctant to package Xastir, despite Xastir being an
> excellent
> program...

A friend of mine sent me the above text.  I'm one of the Xastir
developers.

I'm curious why you think that is incompatible with the GPL.  That
particular source file (and perhaps the rotated.h file that goes
with it) are under one license, while other parts of the code are
under GPL.

We'd certainly like to have Xastir distributed on the SuSE disks.
In fact I've recommended SuSE to a whole lot of people over the
years.  I run it myself.

If we could get one of the latest development snapshots on there,
it'd make a lot of hams happy.

--
Curt, WE7U.   APRS Client Comparisons: http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
"Lotto:    A tax on people who are bad at math." -- unknown
"Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates." -- WE7U
"The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"