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List:       kde-edu-devel
Subject:    Re: [kde-edu-devel] update on copyright status of catalogs
From:       Dominique Devriese <dominique.devriese () student ! kuleuven ! ac ! be>
Date:       2003-06-26 15:51:22
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Jason Harris writes:

> Laurent was kind enough to follow-up at 06:20 this morning (EDT): :
> Dear Jason,
> : 
> : > KStars itself is absolutely non-commercial; it is part of the
> : > Educational module for KDE, a desktop environment for Linux and 
> : > other Unixes, which is also absolutely non-commercial.  However, 
> : > the GPL does not prohibit other people from distributing my 
> : > program,
> : 
> : That's fine. As long as Kstars itself remains free there is no problem for
> : using any catalogs we have here. Don't forget to mention somewhere 
> : which catalogs you use and their provenance (Hipparcos comes from 
> : ESA, SAO from USNO).  By the way, we would recommend the use of 
> : Hipparcos rather than the SAO catalog. It is more accurate and goes 
> : deeper.
> : 
> : best regards,
> : Laurent

> So I think I made it as clear as possible what the consequences of
> including the catalogs in a GPL'd application might be, and they
> still have no problem with the inclusion of their catalogs.

> If this isn't good enough, then I would ask what exactly is the
> hypothetical situation we are worried about here?  KStars (and other
> GPL'd astronomy apps) distribute these data catalogs under the GPL,
> so they cannot legally be made proprietary, even if a company tries
> to make money by selling a KStars derivative (an extremely remote
> possibility, IMO, since the derivative would necessarily be GPL'd
> also).

I think they don't care about whether their catalogs are distributed
as "proprietary" or "GPL" or whatever, but whether people charge money
for it ( "commercial" software ).  The GPL perfectly allows people to
do this, and a lot of companies do so.  Thus, I don't think that them
saying that it's fine to use the catalogs for non-commercial purposes
( "As long as Kstars itself remains free" ), but I think the only
valid option is to get them to explicitly give you ( and/or other
people ) a GPL-compatible license to the catalogs, or to find another
catalog that is available in the public domain or under a
GPL-compatible license.

cheers
domi
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