[Pkg-scicomp-devel] Bug#491794: Bug#491794: arpack: DFSG-incompatible license

[Ondrej Certik]

On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 11:54 PM, Timothy G Abbott <tabbott at mit.edu> wrote:
> Package: arpack
> Severity: serious
>
> I believe the Rice BSD Software License of arpack violates the Debian Free
> Software guidelines (I've included it below for convenience of reference).
>
> Both parts of the fourth clause of the license below seem to violate the
> DFSG.  The first violates the standard Desert Island and Dissident tests. I
> believe it has also been concluded in the past that requiring users to cite
> software is not allowed, which the second sentence violates.
>
> The third clause also seems to violate clause (4) of the DFSG, since it is a
> restriction on distributing modifications other than the specifically
> allowed restriction of requiring the separate distribution of patch files.
>
>        -Tim Abbott
>
> The ARPACK license is BSD-like.
> http://www.caam.rice.edu/software/ARPACK/RiceBSD.doc
>
> Rice BSD Software License
> Permits source and binary redistribution of the software ARPACK and
> P_ARPACK  for both non-commercial and commercial use.
>
>   Copyright ((c)) 2001, Rice University
>   Developed by D.C. Sorensen, R.B. Lehoucq, C. Yang, and K. Maschhoff.
>   All rights reserved.
>
>   Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
>   modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
>   met:
>    . Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
>      this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
>    . Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
>      notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
>      documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
>    . If you modify the source for these routines we ask that you change the
>      name of the routine and comment the changes made to the original.
>    . Written notification is provided to the developers of  intent to use
>      this software.  Also, we ask that use of ARPACK is properly cited in
>      any resulting publications or software documentation.

Yes, I think this ^^ makes it non-free. I didn't know arpack uses such
a crappy license. Thanks for noticing!

Christophe, I think we need to move the package to non-free.

Ondrej