[EMBOSS] About the EMBOSS quick guide.

[Charles Plessy]

Dear EMBOSS developpers,

I am member of a packaging team that takes care of integrating EMBOSS in
Debian. I just realised today that the Quick Guide to EMBOSS is
released under a "noncommercial" licence.

file:///usr/share/EMBOSS/doc/manuals/emboss_qg.pdf

Debian puts a strong emphasis on not mixing programs which do not meet
the "Debian Free Software Guidelines" (DFSG) with the ones which do. In
our case, EMBOSS is free according to the DFSG, but not the Quick Guide,
as restrictions on commercial use do not comply whith the guideline
number 6:

  No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

  The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a
  specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program
  from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

>From my packager point of view, the simplest way to solve this problem
would be that you relicence the Quick Guide under a free licence
according to the DFSG, such as BSD or GPL for instance. Unfortunately,
the guide's author, David Martin, left EMBnet and I do not know how to
contact him.

Importantly, the DFSG also require the sources of works distributed in
Debian to be available. If it is possible to relicence the Quick Guide,
could somebody send me its sources ? Debian integrates a bug reporting
and tracking system, and having the sources available in Debian could
bring opportunities to receive patches.

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian-Med packaging team.
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Wako, Saitama, Japan