[PolyORB-users] Questions about licensing after close scrutiny by Debian

[Thomas Quinot]

* Ludovic Brenta, 2009-08-24 :

> OK, since this license is very non-free these files cannot be distributed in
> main; they have to go into a separate package in non-free or not be
> distributed at all. I think we'll settle for not distributing them at all. 

In that case what you'll be distributing will be a severely stripped
down version of PolyORB (in particular it won't be usable at all as a
CORBA implementation). If you decide to go that way I would appreciate
that you change the name of your package so as to clarify that it is not
a full distribution of PolyORB, but just a very limited part of it.

> I'll investigate orbit and omniORB to see what their orig.tar.gz contains;
> thanks for the pointers.  If they contain these non-free files, I will of
> course file release-critical bugs against them.

Well just look at subdirectory src/idl in ORBit2-2.14.17.orig.tar.gz,
it has basically all of the OMG standard IDL sources, which are covered
by the same terms as those I quoted for RTCORBA (see section B.3
"license" in http://www.omg.org/docs/formal/08-01-04.pdf).

> P.S. Whether the name of a particular file in the repository appears in
> another particular file named MANIFEST is irrelevant to its licensing terms. 
> Any file present on your public Subversion repository is, by definition of
> the word "public", published. AdaCore is therefore responsible for obeying
> the licensing terms of every single file.  Similarly, Debian is responsible
> (and Debian Developers are personally responsible) for publishing files; that
> is why we take copyright issues so seriously and why our due diligence
> process is so thorough.  I'm sorry if I sound pedantic with all that but I
> wouldn't be an Ada programmer if I weren't a perfectionist control freak :)

I do not understand what point you are trying to make. MANIFEST lists
the file that are intended for inclusion in source distributions of
PolyORB. As long as Debian distributes only files listed in MANIFEST,
license terms covering files NOT listed there are irrelevant to Debian.

-- 
Thomas Quinot, Ph.D. ** quinot at adacore.com ** Senior Software Engineer
               AdaCore -- Paris, France -- New York, USA