Alan interpreter license
Ben Cressey
Sylvain Beucler
On Thu, Jan 06, 2011 at 10:03:51AM -0800, Ben Cressey wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I meant to announce this back in October: Thomas Nilsson has generously
> decided to release the Alan source code under the terms of the Artistic
> License 2.0<http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/licenses/Artistic+License+2.0.txt>
> .
>
> I believe this means that the gargoyle-free package variants can now include
> the Alan 2 and Alan 3 interpreters.
>
> Kent Tessman tells me that a revamp of the Hugo source code is on his
> projects list, and that a licensing decision will be made when he revisits
> the code. I am hopeful that this will result in a DFSG compliant license in
> the not too distant future.
This is great news!
Is there a place where the author official says this?
Ideally the Alan copyright notices in its source code would be updated.
--
Sylvain
Ben Cressey
Is there a place where the author official says this?
Ideally the Alan copyright notices in its source code would be updated.
Sylvain Beucler
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 02:37:22PM -0800, Ben Cressey wrote:
> > Is there a place where the author official says this?
> > Ideally the Alan copyright notices in its source code would be updated.
> >
> The note about a licensing change appeared here:
> http://www.alanif.se/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=137:changes-in-v30alpha9&catid=29&Itemid=16
> I added the referenced COPYING file to the Gargoyle licenses directory,
> changing only the filename.
>
> http://code.google.com/p/garglk/source/browse/trunk/licenses/Artistic+License+2.0.txt
>
> I can rename it to Alan License if that would be helpful. I don't believe
> the actual alan3 sources have any copyright information.
Indeed.
For the Debian package, we can either:
- make a new version of gargoyle-free with only the new alan3 (not
sure if that requires much work?)
- wait for the next Gargoyle release (and bug you into releasing it :))
Renaming the license file is not necessary I think.
> I asked for and received clarification from Thomas that the license change
> is also meant to apply to the Alan 2 sources. However, the Alan 2 sources
> are no longer available for download from the alanif.se site. The most
> recent release is apparently 2.8.7 (interpreter287src.tgz), though I cannot
> find it anywhere.
True, sources should be available from
http://www.alanif.se/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=112&Itemid=22#source
but when I download them I get truncated files. We could report it.
Versions before 3.0a9 are not explicitely relicensed, so we can't
include them in the Debian package, unless we contact the author and
ask for confirmation on a public place. If Thomas mentioned it to you
directly, this shouldn't be a problem.
Do you want to contact him or should I?
--
Sylvain
Akien
> I asked for and received clarification from Thomas that the license change
> is also meant to apply to the Alan 2 sources. However, the Alan 2 sources
> are no longer available for download from the alanif.se site. The most
> recent release is apparently 2.8.7 (interpreter287src.tgz), though I cannot
> find it anywhere.True, sources should be available from
http://www.alanif.se/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=112&Itemid=22#source
but when I download them I get truncated files. We could report it.Versions before 3.0a9 are not explicitely relicensed, so we can't
include them in the Debian package, unless we contact the author and
ask for confirmation on a public place. If Thomas mentioned it to you
directly, this shouldn't be a problem.Do you want to contact him or should I?
I'm looking at updating Mageia's package for gargoyle (free), which we still sync with Sylvain's Debian package.
Did you get any info on whether Alan2 is also open-sourced, and could be included in the free package of gargoyle?
It would be nice from Alan's upstream to clarify the situation and issue an update source package of Alan2 with the proper license.
I can confirm that the download of interpreter287src.tgz still yields a broken file.
Regards,
Rémi V. / Akien
Sylvain Beucler
That's great, I think we just need more people to bug Thomas into making a public statement about the license :)
My last public report is here:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-games/2012/02/msg00064.html
showing that Thomas is applying the same license to Alan 2 and 3.
Attached is the actual conversation I had with Thomas, which ended on my request of a public statement on the website (rather than me copy/pasting the mail from the non-archived Alan mailing list).
I didn't ask him again because at that point I didn't want to be too
pushed and kinda lost motivation. Go ahead now, Akien :)
- Sylvain