[EMBOSS] [SOLVED] Re: Files included in EMBOSS but licensed ...

[Charles Plessy]

Le Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 09:58:07AM +0100, Peter Rice a écrit :
> 
> The no-derivatives version is specifically there to
> prevent derivatives - for example Debian distributing a modified
> UniProt without permission.

Dear Peter and everybody,

it is my pleasure to announce that EMBOSS 6.4.0 has just been uploaded to
Debian, thanks to a fruitful discussion with the UniProt consortium where we
confirmed that the license indicated on each record is there to protect the
database as a whole, and after disucssion within Debian where there was no
opposition to the idea of ignoring this non-free license for the isolated
records distributed in the test suite of EMBOSS, as we consider them to be a
collection of facts with no creative work (the creative work being the database
itself).  Of course, only databases that also give the freedom to distribute
modified copies are fitting with Debian's ideals, so the take home message is
not that such non-free license is a good thing from Debian's point of view.
But I am very pleased that we could work out this difference in a constructive
way.

I would like give many thanks to UniProt and everybody who helped or proposed
their help to solve this issue.

Have a nice day,

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