On Fri, May 18, 2001 at 10:01:02AM +0200, Roderich Schupp wrote: > I'm looking at lmbench-2beta3. I guess you refer to the file > COPYING-2 which reads: > > > The set of programs and documentation known as "lmbench" are distributed > under the Free Software Foundation's General Public License with the > following additional restrictions (which override any conflicting > restrictions in the GPL): > > 1. You may not distribute results in any public forum, in any publication, > or in any other way if you have modified the benchmarks. > > 2. You may not distribute the results for a fee of any kind. This includes > web sites which generate revenue from advertising. > > If you have modifications or enhancements that you wish included in > future versions, please mail those to me, Larry McVoy, at [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > Your "severe limitation" seems to be the prohibition to publish > results FROM A MODIFIED VERSION of the benchmarks. Well, that's > actually in the nature of a benchmark - if you can tweak it, > then any results are useless. About the same as altering the text of a RFC > and distributing it.
Yes, it's in the nature of benchmarks. More particularly, that's a limitation on modification - the modified version does not carry the same rights as the original. As important is #2, which is a restriction on use. Both of these violate the Debian Free Software Guidlines. lmbench can not go in main. What's worse is that 'modified the benchmarks' is not terribly well defined; if you need to apply a patch to the Debian package, will it even produce publishable numbers? -- Daniel Jacobowitz Debian GNU/Linux Developer Monta Vista Software Debian Security Team