From: Richard C. <r.c...@ed...> - 2013-07-23 15:12:13
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>>> Good solution for the short term. The longer term we need a clean room >>> implementation in order to look like standard. >>> >>> Even if your solution is free , it will impose that ADMS model are >>> under GPL2+ due to including this two files. Even if it is free it is >>> not really nice to our user. >>> >>> Thanks to keep freeness of qucs >>> >> Roucaires, if you are able to organise a clean-room implementation, we will >> certainly include it in Qucs. Since we are all familiar with the files none >> of us can do it anyway. >> >> Remember we don't even want to distribute or maintain ADMS, we are just >> forced into this. It is not part of Qucs, and we would in fact all much >> prefer that it was a separate package developed by someone else. Qucs is >> just using the output of another program (ADMS), just as it uses the output >> of Bison and Flex to create it's parser. The licence of ADMS therefore does >> not have any affect on the licence of Qucs. >> >> Also, to clarify, the models generated by ADMS are not under GPLv2 or any >> other licence. They are simply data output from the program, and as such not >> covered by the GPL or any other licence. The GPL covers the program itself, >> not the output (consider my Bison and Flex example above). > Not true depend on the juridiction. > > And your example are bad, flex is under BSD2 and bison have: > Conditions for Using Bison > > Well, maybe the Bison example isn't the best, but in general, data processed by a program retains the original copyright of the input data. Proprietary copyrighted input to Flex for example will not produce BSD copyrighted output. This will certainly be the case with ADMS, i.e. we are now inputting GPLv2 data ( our version of disciplines.vams and constants.vams, and the other Qucs model files ), and what we get out are GPLv2 models suitable for use with Qucs. From the GPL: "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.*"* Bison requires an exception because it copies parts of itself to the output. If people out there want to use ADMS to make models using other inputs that is their business, we only distribute ADMS as a convenience because it is not easy to get hold of elsewhere in a suitable form, and we wished to secure it's existence. We are not developing it or maintaining it, I even went to the trouble of adding a configure option --with-adms=external which uses an installed version of ADMS on the local system rather than our bundled version. We now have everything Qucs requires, and it meets the debian requirements as far as I can tell. If other folk out there need ADMS to have a full version of these files, well, that's really up to them, ours is just a fork from the official version we're using for our own narrow purpose, and that purpose is fulfilled with these limited files. If someone out there does a clean room re-engineering of the standard files, I will be happy to vote to incorporate them, but I will not hold up distribution of Qucs while we wait for that to happen, and I personally have neither the interest or skills to help with the process of re-engineering. If the proposed solution, does not now meet the debian requirements could outline exactly how not, or do you agree there is no longer a legal problem for Qucs distribution? Richard |