[slime-devel] Re: Slime license annoyances

[Peter Van Eynde]

Hello,

After seeing a lot of progress being made I went and investigated the
sources a little more in detail and I've found: (you might want to skip
towards to end because there is a slight problem)


Are covered by the GPL:
swank-clisp.lisp bridge.el hyperspec.el slime.el
swank-openmcl.lisp tree-widget.el

Are in the public domain:
mkdist.sh present.lisp swank-abcl.lisp swank-allegro.lisp
swank.asd swank-backend.lisp swank-cmucl.lisp swank-gray.lisp
swank.lisp swank-lispworks.lisp swank-loader.lisp swank-sbcl.lisp
swank-source-file-cache.lisp swank-source-path-parser.lisp
test-all.sh test.sh doc/slime.texi doc/texinfo-tabulate.awk
metering.lisp nregex.lisp

BSD-like license:
swank-corman.lisp (I think will pose no problem)

Are without licenses:
swank-ecl.lisp
ChangeLog
doc/Makefile
HACKING
NEWS
PROBLEMS
README

I think placing them into the public domain would also be easiest.

Then came a surprise, and I'm at a loss to explain how I missed it. My
apologies for this.

The file xref.lisp is not PD or GPL (unlike my greps showed) but has a
rather obnoxious license that says:

...
;;; 	o  No fees or compensation are charged for use, copies, or
;;; 	   access to this software. You may charge a nominal
;;; 	   distribution fee for the physical act of transferring a
;;; 	   copy, but you may not charge for the program itself. 

This means you cannot put it into a distribution, and makes it DFSG
unfree (even with the later clauses taken into consideration). To add
insult to injury it has:

;;; 	o  Any work distributed or published that in whole or in part
;;; 	   contains or is a derivative of this software or any part 
;;; 	   thereof is subject to the terms of this agreement. The 
;;; 	   aggregation of another unrelated program with this software
;;; 	   or its derivative on a volume of storage or distribution
;;; 	   medium does not bring the other program under the scope
;;; 	   of these terms.

As this file is part of slime, all of slime is under this agreement.
Talk about a viral license ;-).

But then we have:

;;; 	o  Permission is granted to manufacturers and distributors of
;;; 	   lisp compilers and interpreters to include this software
;;; 	   with their distribution. 

So we can distribute it, if and only if we include also a lisp compiler?
Strange, but it still makes it DFSG non-free.

What are our options for this?

Groetjes, Peter

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