XSkat license

[Christian Krause]

Hi,

I'd like to package the card game "xskat": ( 
http://www.xskat.de/xskat.html ) which is distributed under the 
following license:

-------------------------------------------------------------
This program is free software; you can redistribute it freely.
Use it at your own risk; there is NO WARRANTY.

Redistribution of modified versions is permitted
provided that the following conditions are met:
1. All copyright & permission notices are preserved.
2.a) Only changes required for packaging or porting are made.
   or
2.b) It is clearly stated who last changed the program.
      The program is renamed or
      the version number is of the form x.y.z,
      where x.y is the version of the original program
      and z is an arbitrary suffix.
-------------------------------------------------------------

Both Debian and Mandriva are shipping it, so it looks like that for them 
the license is acceptable. ;-)

Is this license acceptable for Fedora too and if yes, what should I put 
in RPM's License tag?

Do we have to handle the version in the rpm package differently or can 
we assume that our regular NVR is sufficient to fulfill 2.b?

Best regards,
Christian

[Tom Callaway]

On 11/02/2009 04:53 PM, Christian Krause wrote:
> Is this license acceptable for Fedora too and if yes, what should I put
> in RPM's License tag?

If (and only if) clause 2.b is used instead of clause 2.a (the license
explicitly gives you a choice), then the license is Free but GPL
incompatible. I've added it to the list as "XSkat", use that in the
License tag.
> Do we have to handle the version in the rpm package differently or can
> we assume that our regular NVR is sufficient to fulfill 2.b?

You do need to handle it differently. I suggest that you simply always
add a .0 to the end of the upstream version in the RPM package. You need
to do this, and not simply use the regular NVR to fulfill 2.b, because
the license explicitly specifies the versioning schema x.y.z, which is
different from how RPM displays it (x.y-z). Just add a dummy .0 to the
end of the version then increment the Release field like any other package.

The RPM changelog is sufficient to meet the other requirement of 2.b, to
"clearly state who last changed the program".

The license page for XSkat also covers this, in case any other program
uses this license (or code from XSkat).

~spot