Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] Savannah hosting request

[Benedict Verhegghe]

Hi Karl,

That looks fine to me.

I had a look at the netcc project:
https://savannah.gnu.org/task/?11397

I intended to answer as follows:

====================================
Hi,

I'm evaluating the project you submitted for approval in Savannah. While
doing so I have noticed a few problems which are described below.


1) README, netccd.1, netccsvd.1  all use "Linux".
"Linux" is just a kernel of a more complex system that we like to refer
to as GNU/Linux, to emphasize the ideals of the Free Software movement.

Would you mind changing references to Linux as an OS to GNU/Linux?

For more information, see http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html.


2) Licensing under the "GNU GPL v2 only" is problematic.  Would you
agree to license your project under the "GNU GPL v2 or later"?

We can explain the issue in more detail if you wish. If you have
concerns about "GNU GPL v2 or later", we'd be happy to address them too.


3) Copyright and License notices should by preference be formulated as
described in
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html#TOC4.

Files like README and BUGS should also get such notices.


4) The address of the FSF has changed, and is now:

  51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA

Please update your license notices.

Please update the copy of the license in your package as well.

Updated versions of the GPL can also be found at:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/

Best wishes,
Benedict

===================================

There are two things that I am not sure of:

- do we enforce formulating the Copyright/License notices as under 3),
or are shorter formulations also acceptable ?

- (part of) the software is also licensed under an alternate license to
a single company, giving it the right to use parts of it without the
requirement to distribute the source. While this looks like an
acceptable dual licensing scheme, as the netcc software will always be
available under the GPL, I would like to here what others think about
it. Here's the license:

--------------------------------------
Special License for:

D.O.M. Datenverarbeitung GmbH
Bahnhofstr. 41
D-90402 Nürnberg
Germany

In addition to the GPL V2 the above company (*) is allowed to use parts
of the code for ongoing commercial projects without the need to provide
source code and without any kind of attribution as appropriate. The only
restriction to this is any product resulting in similar or
at least partial equivalent to netcc functionality on any
platform or for any compiler or other similar tool in which case
the original GPL V2 license applies to full extend. This is
true not only for products of the above company but extends also
to any product developed at least in part by the above company
for any third party.

(*) Only the company stated as above in its current legal form and no
    kind of legal successor.
-------------------------------------

I hope you find my review helpfull. Please tell me if/when I can go
ahead and submit my remarks on the tracker, or whether I should look
further into something.

Benedict


On 11/15/2011 11:54 PM, Karl Berry wrote:
> Hi Benedict,
> 
> Thanks for offering to help!
> 
> What's required as far as new project submissions go is to apply the
> (stringent) Savannah requirements to new submissions:
> https://savannah.gnu.org/register/requirements.php
> 
> With more details:
> http://savannah.gnu.org/maintenance/HowToGetYourProjectApprovedQuickly 
> 
> For even more details, there is "Mario's guide" at:
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/savannah-hackers-public/2010-08/msg00026.html
> 
> The basic idea is to carefully go through the tarball and look for
> problems.  The most likely are 1) missing/wrong copyright notices,
> and 2) use of "Linux" for the system instead of "GNU/Linux",
> or "open source" (vs. "free software").  As you can imagine, it is
> pretty laborious.
> 
> (We have a fossology installation available that might be able to help
> in the future, but haven't got that whole process worked out.)
> 
> If this sounds ok, we'll go forward.  As it happens, I'm going to be
> gone the next three days (back Saturday), but perhaps one of the other
> new, or old, volunteers :) can move things along.
> 
> Thanks again,
> karl