[cmucl-imp] Debian bug 821150: problems with the PCL license [resend]

[Peter Van Eynde]

Hello Michael and friends,

On 10/06/16 17:53, Michael McDonald wrote:
> What’s the problem with the clause? Since it’s a “request”, it’s
> completely optional. So essentially a no op.

"I am not a lawyer" and "English is not my native language", but for
example the text "Send me a postcard if you like this software.", which
to me sounds like an even more vague request, has been declared as
problematic. As I understand it if the license were to use rfc2119 then
there would be less of a problem, but standard English is too vague.

See also https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html


> But I personally wouldn’t be changing someone else’s license clauses
> without very explicit permission to do so. I’d probably just put a
> note below the license documenting that the contact info is dead as
> of whatever date you tried.

Agreed, however as Stas noted the SBCL people just removed the clause as
it is 'dead'. Adding a note would not help with the DFSG.

If the clause is not removed (either directly or by declaring to use the
SBCL PCL version) then cmucl will get pulled from Debian, and probably
as a consequence from the other Linux distributions. However SBCL would
remain in Debian and the other distributions.

Best regards, Peter


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