[ On Thu, December 11, 1997 at 22:59:08 (+0100), Hubert Feyrer wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: PKG: ncurses status
>
> Eric Raymond decided he didn't like ncurses 4, claimed that the
> original license did not permit distributing a modified, and
> threatened to sue people.  Although it's unlikely that a reasonable
> court would buy his story, many people aren't willing to distribute
> ncurses 4 any more.

Are you talking about putting a Makefile in /usr/pkgsrc, or about
pulling the whole thing into /usr/src/lib?

If the former then what are you worried about?  You're only
"distributing" something if you provide the copy.  If it's up to the
user to download and compile and use a package then the "distributor" is
the person running the ftp site it comes from, not the user, and not the
person or organization that lists the ftp site.  Distributing patches
alone should not be of any concern either (unless they're so pervasive
they encompass the entire original work ;-).

I guess one could argue that there's the possiblity of binaries of ports
being distributed, but perhaps there needs to be some way in the ports
system to indicate that binaries are not to be made available without
first checking with the copyright....

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 443-1734			VE3TCP			robohack!woods
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets Of The Weird <woods@weird.com>