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[Savannah-hackers] Re: mldonkey licensing


From: MLdonkey
Subject: [Savannah-hackers] Re: mldonkey licensing
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 18:48:31 +0200 (CEST)

Hi,

>  Apparently, you do not provide a source code's tarball for each
>  mldonkey releases but only binaries: there's no such source code's
>  tarball in your download area, neither exists file including pointers to
>  such tarball somewhere else.

Yes, that is right. mldonkey sources are provided via savannah CVS
server. I didn't know that tarballs also had to be provided, since it
is possible to get the sources for each version via CVS tags. For next
release, I will provide the sources as a tarball.

>  Are "the protocol files" part of mldonkey? Are "the protocol files"
>  required in order to run mldonkey?  If so, it means that your
>  project depends on undefined licensed software - that we cannot
>  qualify as free.  You never talked about this particular
>  requirement.

No, the eDonkey protocol files are not distributed as sources with
mldonkey. They are not required to compile and run mldonkey. Only the
eDonkey plugin depends on these files. I found it was more convenient
for mldonkey users to have a binary version of these files in the
package to directly compile this plugins with other ones, instead of
putting this plugin on another site, and have each mldonkey user
download it separately. If it is required, I will do it anyway.

Without this plugin, mldonkey still contains a lot of functionnalities:
- Access to Open Napster, Gnutella, OpenFT, Soulseek and Direct
     Connect networks.
- Two different GUIs.
- Different libraries and Ocaml modules that can be used independantly
     of mldonkey core.
- A chat program.

>  In the same package, I find no licensing informations, despite the
>  fact that at the project registration we (savannah-hackers)
>  explicitely asked you to insert statements about copying conditions
>  and copyright notices, as it must be to avoid any legal issues.

But all the source files contain the GPL header ! Maybe some new
documentation files have been forgotten. The COPYING file is present
at the root of the sources, but has been forgotten in binary releases
(which are built in a sub-directory). It will be added asap.

>  This two problems are very serious to us: it constitutes violation of
>  the license you chose and, so, a serious injury to the savannah policy.

>From my point of view, the GPL licence is applied to each ocaml source
file of the mldonkey CVS repository, allowing other developpers to use
them in their projects. If the 1% of the code which is not opened,
which is only part of one mldonkey plugin, forces us to leave savannah
and to remove the 99% remaining sources from the open-source domain, I
don't understand the final goal of GNU anymore.

Best Regards,

- Fabrice (MLDonkey)




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