Henry Jensen wrote:
Hello,.
a user of my distro asked if we can include dosemu, another user said, that
we can't because dosemu has freedom issues.
To quote the user:
"the DOS part needs OpenWatcom (OSS, but NOT libre) or TurboC/TurboC++ (gratis not libre)
to build." The "DOS part" refers to FreeDOS.
So dosemu is libre and FreeDOS is libre, but FreeDOS can only be built
with non-free tools? That last step is not good, but it's beyond what we
should worry about, IMO. If we have to check the build tools of software
that we don't carry but could be used with one of our packages, then we
should also check the build tools of those build tools and so on.
OpenWatcom is released under the "Open Watcom Public License". The FSF license list don't
mention it.
Has anyone more insight regarding this matter?
There's a debian-legal thread about it [1].
At first glance I'd say at least section 2.2(c) is a problem: if you
modify the software and install it at your workplace, then you have to
make your modifications available to everyone, not just those you gave
the binaries to.
[1] http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-legal@lists.debian.org/msg34680.html