Re: [Notion-devel] Getting notion out of Debian/non-free

[Dima K. <no...@di...>]

no...@bz... writes:

> On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 1:39 PM, Jeff Backus <jef...@gm...> wrote:
>
>>
>>> There is, however, also good news: as far as I can see, the things that
>>> are considered 'too restrictive' are not in the license itself, but in
>>> claims/interpretations/expressed 'intentions' by Tuomo. Basically those are
>>> irrelevant: what's relevant is what's actually in the license, not what has
>>> been said about it after the fact.
>>>
>>>
>> With the exception that he agrees that the name Notion does not violate
>> the license. That bit is relevant. :)
>>
>
> Well, sure, but not to the question whether or not the license is DFSG-free.
>
> I'm still waiting for a response from RedHat Legal re: Fedora. Their
>> response may help convince the Debian team.
>>
>
> Looking forward to it!

Hi.

First off, in 2009 Tuomo updated the license, removing the 28-day
clause. Notion's LICENSE file did not have this change. I'm attaching a
patch with the update. The mailing list post is

 https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/ion-general/2009-September/001730.html[1]


Second, I re-read Ben Hutchings's post at

 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=544848#20[2]

and I now understand what you are saying, Arnout. The DFSG allows
licenses to dictate the naming of projects, but NOT names of source
files, configuration files, etc. So if notion's license dictates more
than just the project name, the DFSG is not satisfied. Notion's license
states

  If the name Ion(tm) or other names that can be associated with the Ion
  project are used to distribute this software, then ...

    < stuff we do not want to do >

  Versions for which the above conditions are not satisfied, must be
  renamed so that they can not be associated with the Ion project, their
  executables must be given names that do not conflict with the copyright
  holder's version, and neither the copyright holder nor the Ion project
  may be referred to for support.


This text clearly states that if 'Ion(tm)' can be associated with the
software, then the software must be renamed (i.e. an association comes
from the name). I think a strong case can be made that this is
DFSG-compliant. Ben's personal communication with Tuomo seems to
indicate a stronger condition than the text, but the text is what
defines the license, as you say. When did you bring this up with
debian-legal? Possibly we should bring this up again. I can do this, if
you like. Doing lots of debian things these days...


dima