Thread: [Ngspice-users] License of the various source files in ngspice-27

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Hi,

I mainly work on packaging the KiCad EDA tool [1] for Debian. The next
version 5 of KiCad has implemented Spice simulation based on libngspice.
Unfortunately due some license issues the ngspice package is not part of
the official Debian part and only available in the non-free repositories
[2]. So right now I can't rely and depend on ngspice for KiCad. If I
want to do that I need to make ngspice fit for the Debian main archive.

In the past there was some started effort to solve the licensing issue
on the ngspice source that was also forwarded to the debian-legal
mailing list [3].

Now a new version ngspice-27 was released and so far I could read and
understand the file COPYING in the top root folder of the source some
re-licensing was done. Yeah!

Unfortunately this is not really helpful for me, as we need to be sure
the source we try to bring into Debian main is compatible with the
Debian Fee Software Guide (DFSG) [4], the ftpmasters and other Debian
Developers taking the DFSG really serious (that's fully correct!) and
files or folder with no clear license can't be introduced into the main
archive.

So for me it would really useful if Upstream could help me to figure out
what file is licensed by which license.

The file COPYING contains the following part:

> The following table is a summary of license status:
>           Author            License  Notes
> 
> numparam  Georg Post        LGPL     Applies to the code in
>                                      frontend/numparam
> adms      Laurent Lemaitre  LGPL     Applies to scripts in the
>                                      spicelib/dev/adms
> tclspice  Stefan Jones      LGPL     TCL integration
> cider     U. of California  New BSD  Device level simulator
> xspice    Georgia Tech.     Public D Mixed signals
> spice     U. of California  New BSD  Analog circuit simulation
> table.cm  Holger Vogt       GPL      Code model shared library
>                                      containing GPLed code.

For me as one person which is not familiar the details of the ngspice
source it's not clear what this list is meaning. What is the respective
addressed source in this list?

A lot of the folders inside the source doesn't contain any extra
licensing information and it's really hard to collect the various
licensing information.  :-/
The folder ./doc can't distributed in Debian at all due the used
SPICEDOC license (according to doc/ngspice.texi).

Would it be possible if the devs could help me to write down the used
licenses for the various parts of ngspice?

So far I got the following assumption about used licenses.

./contrib, mix of LGPL-2, GPL-2, GPL-2+, BSD-3-clause
./doc, SPICEDOC (not DFSG clean)
./examples, which license? new BSD?
./man, probably new BSD?
.src, probably all files new BSD
 ├── ciderlib
 ├── frontend, parts use GPL-2
 ├── include
 ├── maths
 ├── misc
 ├── spicelib, contains some non-free licensed files e.g NXP
 ├── unsupported
 └── xspice
./tests, probably all files new BSD
./visualc, doesn't interesting for Debian
./xgraph, BSD-3-clause

If the license question could be made clear it would also help other
users of ngspice. Thanks!

[1] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/kicad
[2] https://packages.debian.org/source/unstable/ngspice
[3] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2016/10/msg00022.html
[4] https://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses

-- 
Regards
Carsten Schoenert

Thread: [Ngspice-users] License of the various source files in ngspice-27

ngspice-users