[aur-general] Fwd: Stolen material

[Aaron "Hussein" Griffin]

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 1:45 PM, Imanol Celaya
<ornitorrincos at archlinux-es.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 6:33 PM, Aaron Hussein Griffin
> <aaronmgriffin at 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.