[aspell-devel] Problems with aspell-en license

[Brian Nelson]

I'm working on packaging the new upstream GNU/aspell, and I've
discovered a problem with the (attached) license of the English
dictionary.  The license, which is a mishmash of mostly free licenses,is
not DFSG free as I understand it due to the DEC Word list license
(beginning on line 134).

The version of aspell-en currently in the archives is also licensed
under this non-free license, but the package's copyright file falsely
states it's licensed under the LGPL.  That's bad.

With the release of aspell 0.50, the English dictionary has been
packaged separately.  However, prior to 0.50, this English dictionary
was distributed with the aspell source tarball.  This is true for the
version of aspell currently in the Debian archives.  Would this license
contaminate the whole aspell source package and thus make aspell,
aspell-doc, aspell-en, libaspell-dev, libaspell10, libaspell4
non-distributable?  It's not clear to me because the license is so
vague, and also because I'm not familiar with license issues regarding
source packages.

I'll get in contact with upstream about packaging a DFSG-free version of
the English dictionary.  But, in the meantime, I think the aspell-en
package, and possibly all of aspell, should be removed from the Debian
archives.

-- 
People said I was dumb, but I proved them!

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