[l2h] latex2html non-free?

[Roland Stigge]

Hi,

unfortunately, at Debian, we would have to remove the package latex2html
from our distribution because of a license issue we consider non-free [1]
if the license doesn't change.

The license part in question is:

/usr/share/doc/latex2html/copyright (by Nikos Drakos):
========================================================================
[...]
Use and copying of this software and the preparation of derivative
works based on this software are permitted, so long as the following
conditions are met:
[...]
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.
[...]
========================================================================

Our guidelines forbid us to distribute software whose redistribution is
restricted (here: no fee is allowed at all). It would be nice to have
latex2html licensed under a free (in our sense) license, e.g. the GPL.
At least, free redistribution and modification (and in turn, its
redistribution) would be needed.

Note: This concerns all free Linux (or whatever) distributions, not just
Debian.

Thanks for considering.

Roland Stigge
Debian Project

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=204684
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