On Wed, 05 Jul 2017, KatolaZ wrote:

> DR D1Rs,
>
> yesterday I was reviewing a new package made by Daniel Abrecht (DPA),
> a little library that implements the sd_journal_* functions by
> redirecting the calls to syslog. The project can be found here:
>
> https://git.devuan.org/DPA/sd_journal_shim
>
> This would allow to avoid to link against libsystemd0 if the program
> wants just to use systemd logging facilities.
>
> I was about to move it under devuan-packages to build it for
> experimental, but I noticed that the License (an almost regular
> Expat/MIT license, for the rest) contained an additional clause:
>
> "This software shall not be used to encourage others to use the
> systemd journal API, or any of it's sd_journal_* functions."
>
> so I immediately held my horses. My main complaint here is that this
> clause makes the software non compliant with freedom 0 (the freedom to
> use the software for whatever aim and task), so technically speaking
> the package is not free-software, and cannot go in Devuan/main. Aside
> from that, that clause makes the library GPL-incompatible, which would
> undermine the good intentions of DPA. making the library practically
> useless (unless the programs linking it are not GPL).
>
> In a word, I would not agree to include this package in Devuan/main,
> unless that clause is removed. But just for the sake of clarity (and
> because I think this can create a nasty precedent) I thought it was
> good to ask here.

That clause itself is not a big problem, but IMHO it should rather be
moved to the README file or something similar rather than the license
itself where it actually *is* putting restrictions and in the case of
FSF would not be considered free software.

--
~ parazyd
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