Debian Bug: license.terms not included

[adn]

Following up to Debian bug #411078 (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=411078).

Hi aMSN team,

I am Mohammed Adnène Trojette and I am a Debian Developer. I am currently working on
a release critical bug for Debian in aMSN about the licensing of some files in the source.

It would be really great if you could please confirm the statement below as soon as possible,
so that we can keep aMSN in our stable release.

--------------------
The following files and directories are released under the Tcl-license terms (see below):
utils/base64/base64.tcl
utils/base64/uuencode.tcl
utils/macosx/QuickTimeTcl3.1/movie.tcl
utils/BWidget-1.7.0/
utils/http2.4/http.tcl

The authors hereby grant permission to use, copy, modify, distribute,
and license this software and its documentation for any purpose, provided
that existing copyright notices are retained in all copies and that this
notice is included verbatim in any distributions. No written agreement,
license, or royalty fee is required for any of the authorized uses.
Modifications to this software may be copyrighted by their authors
and need not follow the licensing terms described here, provided that
the new terms are clearly indicated on the first page of each file where
they apply.

IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR DISTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY
FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, ITS DOCUMENTATION, OR ANY
DERIVATIVES THEREOF, EVEN IF THE AUTHORS HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

THE AUTHORS AND DISTRIBUTORS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTIES,
INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.  THIS SOFTWARE
IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS, AND THE AUTHORS AND DISTRIBUTORS HAVE
NO OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE MAINTENANCE, SUPPORT, UPDATES, ENHANCEMENTS, OR
MODIFICATIONS.

GOVERNMENT USE: If you are acquiring this software on behalf of the
U.S. government, the Government shall have only "Restricted Rights"
in the software and related documentation as defined in the Federal
Acquisition Regulations (FARs) in Clause 52.227.19 (c) (2).  If you
are acquiring the software on behalf of the Department of Defense, the
software shall be classified as "Commercial Computer Software" and the
Government shall have only "Restricted Rights" as defined in Clause
252.227-7013 (c) (1) of DFARs.  Notwithstanding the foregoing, the
authors grant the U.S. Government and others acting in its behalf
permission to use and distribute the software in accordance with the
terms specified in this license.
--------------------

Please could you also include license.terms in aMSN's sources for the next release as specified:

Code:

% grep -r license.terms *
utils/base64/yencode.tcl:# See the file "license.terms" for information on usage and redistribution
utils/base64/base64.tcl:# See the file "license.terms" for information on usage and redistribution
utils/base64/uuencode.tcl:# See the file "license.terms" for information on usage and redistribution
utils/macosx/QuickTimeTcl3.1/movie.tcl:# See the file "license.terms" for information on usage and redistribution
utils/BWidget-1.7.0/Makefile.in:# See the file "license.terms" for information on usage and redistribution
utils/BWidget-1.7.0/ChangeLog:  * LICENSE.txt: Removed LGPL license; added Tcl-license terms.
utils/http2.4/http.tcl:# See the file "license.terms" for information on usage and

Thanks for your work on aMSN and for your help.

[kakaroto]

Hi Mohammed,
Thanks for noticing, we just added those license files in our SVN version, for the paths listed above and some others you missed.
But the quicktimetcl3.1/movie.tcl refers to license.terms but I couldn't find the associated license.terms file, it doesn't even exist in the official zip file provided by http://quicktimetcl.sourceforge.net/ so I couldn't add it...
If it's ok with you, then good, if it's not, then please tell us what we should do to correct this issue.
Thanks a lot.

[adn]

Hi again, and thank you for being so fast addressing the issue.

Please, could you point me at the exact changeset on your SVN repository (on your web
SVN browser, for example) so that I can backport it for our stable release?

About the missing file, I guess the best would be to contact the upstream authors to check
with them what file they are referring to. Could you please do that?

Thanks again!

[adn]

Oh, I just found it: r8153.

I'll backport the patch and wait for more input from you about quicktimetcl3.1/movie.tcl.

Good night.

[kakaroto]

Hi,
Indeed, it was r8153. You will notice some differences, like bwidget-1.8.0 is used in SVN, compared to bwidget-1.7.0 in the 0.96 release, (Version 1.8.0 uses a file LICENSE.txt instead of license.terms in 1.7.0) as well as some other directories with a LICENSE file.
About the QuicktimeTcl extension, I just mailed the author and I'll let you know what his response is.

Btw, I'd like to ask you something, you said that this is a release critical bug, do you know when the next debian release will be ? also, I just noticed in the Debian bug thread that this applies to 0.95... but it should also apply to 0.96 and I was actually hoping that 0.96 would be the latest release in Debian repositories.. is it not ? (0.96 was released on November 1st 2006). Could you confirm which is the latest release of amsn in the Debian repositories ?
we're also currently working hard on getting the 0.97 release out, I wonder if we would have enough time to get it out and for it to be included in the next Debian release. What are your deadlines ? and how much time would the Debian team need for testing the app for stability? Is it already too late ?
Thanks.

[adn]

> You will notice some differences, like bwidget-1.8.0 is used in SVN, compared to
> bwidget-1.7.0 in the 0.96 release, (Version 1.8.0 uses a file LICENSE.txt instead
> of license.terms in 1.7.0) as well as some other directories with a LICENSE file.

Thanks for letting me know. I'll adapt the patch accordingly while backporting.

> About the QuicktimeTcl extension, I just mailed the author and I'll let you know what his response is.

Great!

> Btw, I'd like to ask you something, you said that this is a release critical bug, do you know when the next debian release will be ?

We are currently frozen and the debian-installer is on its way to be released too.
But we also have to fix most of the release critical issues before we are able to release Etch.

> also, I just noticed in the Debian bug thread that this applies to 0.95...

True. However, we are only considering 0.95 for the release. I think the official Debian maintainer
for amsn did not have the time to package 0.96 before the freeze (which occurred in the first
days of December) or made the choice to ship 0.95. We'll also check whether he is still active so that
we are able to update amsn soon.

> What are your deadlines ? and how much time would the Debian team need for testing the app for stability? Is it already too late ?

Unfortunately, yes, it is too late to get 0.97 in :( The release policy does not allow new upstream
releases during the freeze.

We are going to release amsn 0.95 with only backported fix for release-critical or very important
issues or documentation improvements.

Thanks for your interest in Debian.

[kakaroto]

Hi,
I received the answer from the QuicktimeTcl author, Mats Bengtsson

Hi,

It is distributed under the BSD style license which is the most liberal one.
You may redistribute it under any license you want.

Hope this helps,   Mats

As I'm not very good at understanding licenses, what would you suggest us to do exactly to fix this ?

About the next Debian release, thanks for the clarification, I was pretty sure it was too late for 0.97 anyways :p but I'm surprised 0.96 couldn't get in, which is just too bad...  
looking here : http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=amsn&searchon=names&version=all&release=all&exact=1
I see that there is no 0.96 deb package... does that mean that the package maintainer is not maintaining aMSN anymore ? or he just doesn't know a release was out 4 months ago ? if you don't know, it's ok

Thanks