Package: fbreader Version: 0.10.7dfsg-4 Severity: serious Justification: Policy 2.2.1
Hello Eugene and thanks for maintaining FBReader in Debian! I noticed something awkward in the debian/copyright file: [...] | Html entity files (fbreader/data/formats/docbook/*.ent) with | these licenses: | | <!-- Portions (C) International Organization for Standardization 1986 | Permission to copy in any form is granted for use with | conforming SGML systems and applications as defined in | ISO 8879, provided this notice is included in all copies. | --> | | <!-- Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 Organization for the Advancement of Structured | Information Standards (OASIS). | | Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this entity set | and its accompanying documentation for any purpose and without | fee is hereby granted in perpetuity, provided that the above | copyright notice and this paragraph appear in all copies. The | copyright holders make no representation about the suitability of | the entities for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without | expressed or implied warranty. | | --> [...] The problem is: among these two licenses, the first one is non-free, as it does not grant permission to modify (thus failing DFSG#3) and only grants a limited permission to copy and use, restricting the field of endeavor to conforming SGML systems and applications as defined in ISO 8879 (thus failing DFSG#6). The second license is instead fine for Debian main. By only reading the debian/copyright file, it was not clear to me whether both licenses apply (which would mean that these files are non-free in fbreader) or, instead, whether the recipient may choose which of the two licenses will apply (which would mean that we can choose the second license and everything is fine for fbreader). This freeness issue has been discussed on the debian-legal mailing list: https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2015/11/msg00048.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2015/11/msg00049.html During that debian-legal thread, I was pointed out that the licensing of those files in fbreader is a bit different from what is documented in the fbreader debian/copyright file: https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2015/11/msg00050.html And indeed, the files under consideration include that permission grant, saying that the DFSG-free license applies, but that the files are derived, in part, from files (copyrighted by ISO) which grant no permission to modify. As I said in https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2015/11/msg00051.html I cannot fully understand how those files could be derived from the ISO files in the first place, if the ISO files are not legally modifiable. Maybe OASIS obtained a special permission from ISO, but this does not seem to be documented. Otherwise, this looks like a copyright violation, which, if confirmed, would result in undistributable files. An FTP Assitant confirmed that files under the ISO license under consideration are not fit for Debian main: https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2015/12/msg00000.html Please investigate and clarify and/or fix this issue. Possible solutions I can think of: A) clarify the licensing status of those files and find out that they are distributable under DFSG-free terms; explain and document why this is the case B) get in touch with the copyright holder (ISO) and persuade them to re-license the ISO files in a DFSG-free manner C) find DFSG-free replacements for the non-free files D) drop the non-free files from the package, assuming they are not strictly needed for the package to provide significant functionality Thanks for your time!
