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List:       kde-edu-devel
Subject:    Re: [kde-edu-devel]  [Ben Burton <bab@debian.org>] Removing kstars
From:       Javier =?iso-8859-1?Q?Fern=E1ndez-Sanguino_Pe=F1a?= <jfs () computer ! org>
Date:       2003-06-24 16:18:47
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On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 01:33:01AM +1000, Ben Burton wrote:
> 
> Hi.
> 
> (CCing this to the person who reported the kstars licensing issue and to
> the corresponding debian bug number.)
> 
> > This is a non-issue; we don't use non-free data in kstars.  The star catalog 
> > is not the Yale Bright Star Catalog, it's (a subset of) the SAO star catalog, 
> > from the ADC.
> > 
> > As stated in the ADC FAQ, all of its data catalogs are in the public domain, 
> > unless otherwise stated in the catalog's README:
> > http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov/adc/questions_feedback.html#policies1%22
> 
> Rightio.  I'll add this information to the kstars copyright file and
> keep it in kdeedu (in debian main).  It might be worth adding this
> information (including the appropriate extract from the ADC FAQ) to a
> README file of some sort in the kstars distribution, in order to avoid
> further confusion for other distributions.

Not trying to be a smart ass here. But the ADC FAQ talks about the ADC 
data, that is, that produced by the NASA Astronomical Data Center. The SAO 
was provided by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory which is hardly 
the same institution.

Following Jason's reasoning it would seem that the ADC "public-domain" 
license would apply also to the Hipparcos star data catalogue, developed by 
the ESA (which is not even in the same country) and this is hardly the 
case. Miguel Coca (spacechart's upstream maintainer) contacted the ESA 
people and they did say that he was free to use this catalogue in 
spacechart, redistribute it and modify it, but they did not mention it was 
in the public domain (please see spacechart's debian/copyright file for 
more information on this).

I do not think ADC's FAQ applies to the SAO data. ADC will no longer exist 
in some time, it's replacement's (such as the French Vizier [1]) does not 
say catalogues are in the public domain.

Could someone please approach people working at either of these places and 
clarify this issue? A search on "star catalogues licenses" in google brings 
nothing really useful.

Regards

Javi


[1] http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/CDS.html

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