On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 1:45 PM, Imanol Celaya <ornitorrincos@archlinux-es.org> wrote:
On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 6:33 PM, Aaron Hussein Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey guys,
I just got the email below and want to take this opportunity to point a few things out:
Licenses are important. If a project has no license that DOES NOT mean you are able to redistribute it by adding a file that says "Free to use". Just because it is in the AUR doesn't mean we are in the clear.
That said, I believe this email is a little silly for three reasons: a) Nothing there is stolen. It is a PKGBUILD. If it is illegal to redistribute the source, then the end user is liable (something we DON'T want). b) The original tarball no longer exists. c) I have seen no proof of copyright.
Still, I do want to take this opportunity to point out that we NEED to be more careful here.
although the COPYING file it's wrong, isn't this the same "trick" we use with acroread?
Not necessarily. acroread says that anyone may download it but may not redistribute it. Therefore, when a user runs makepkg, they're doing completely what is expected of them. Downloading it and installing without redistributing it at all. If I had to guess, the original package here had no such license.