FS#13693 - ftgl package violates the ftgl license by not including the ftgl COPYING file

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Bryan Ischo (bji) - Saturday, 07 March 2009, 12:03 GMT
Last edited by Eric Belanger (Snowman) - Saturday, 21 March 2009, 07:48 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To No-one
Architecture All
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description:

The ftgl package in extra does not include the copyright notice as required by the license for ftgl.

The ftgl license, from the COPYING file in the ftgl source distribution, reads, in part:

"The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."

No such copyright notice is included with the ftgl package.

I believe that the correct place to put nonstandard licenses is in /usr/share/licenses/{package}. Putting the COPYING file from the ftgl source distribution into this directory would remedy this problem.

I have marked the severity as medium as license noncompliance is not something to be shrugged off as low priority. Without license compliance, Arch Linus is violating copyright by distributing ftgl contrary to the license terms it prescribes. Violating copyright isn't cool.

Additional info:
* package version(s)
* config and/or log files etc.


Steps to reproduce:
This task depends upon

Closed by  Eric Belanger (Snowman)
Saturday, 21 March 2009, 07:48 GMT
Reason for closing:  Fixed
Comment by Eric Belanger (Snowman) - Saturday, 07 March 2009, 17:15 GMT
We're currently in the process of fixing these license issues. Please see http://www.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2009-February/010403.html
In this case, we just need to add the license field. We already provide a LGPL license in /usr/share/licenses/common/
Comment by Bryan Ischo (bji) - Saturday, 07 March 2009, 20:00 GMT
That confuses me. What does the LGPL have to do with the ftgl package? The ftgl package is not released under LGPL so LGPL is irrelevent here.

Please note that the ftgl package also lists its license as "None", which is also wrong. It should be listed as "Custom" according to the Arch Packaging Standards documentation.
Comment by Eric Belanger (Snowman) - Saturday, 07 March 2009, 20:54 GMT
According to sourceforge ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/ftgl/#item3rd-1 ) the license is LGPL. I didn't actually checked the license so it's possible that this information from sourceforge is incorrect.

The package list the license as "None" because there is no licence information in the package metadata. As I said earlier, the package needs to be fixed/updated with the correct license information.
Comment by Bryan Ischo (bji) - Saturday, 07 March 2009, 20:58 GMT
OK, that makes sense. SourceForge is definitely wrong, FTGL is not licensed under LGPL, it uses a custom license which it includes in its COPYING file.

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