Dear Michael, we, the Debian Med project (CCed on its public mailing list), are redistributing a large number of bioinformatics software through the Debian GNU/Linux operating system package archive, and as you probably know we care deeply about ensuring that what we distribute is Free.
I am contacting you because one of the packages that we distribute, cluster3, contains code derived from your Cluster software, and therefore inherited its license. https://web.archive.org/web/20150109081227/http://rana.lbl.gov/EisenSoftwareSource.htm Unfortunately, as this license is restricted to the academic/non-profit community, it does not pass Debian's criteria for freedom. https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines Nevertheless, I was delighted to read on your lab's website that you are “in the process of making sure our legacy software is all available and has appropriate open source licenses attached”. http://www.eisenlab.org/software.html I was wondering if you had an estimate timeline for that, or if in the meantime you could give us and the authors of cluster3 the permission to relicense the cluster derived code under a standard Free license ? Have a nice week-end, -- Charles Plessy Debian Med packaging team, http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med Akano, Uruma, Okinawa, Japan
