Recently, I wanted to package hxd/hx/ghx for Debian. So, as
I was writing the package information, I came across the
copyright file. I pondered for a minute thinking what the
copyright line should be and what license hxd has. To my
surprise there was none.
On further investigation, I found a bunch of stuff in
violation of the GNU General
Public License. For example hx 0.7.x had a COPYING file
but it was questionable. It mentioned GPL version 69 [ or
earlier ]. Obviously, Ryan Nielsen's idea of a joke. hxd
0.1.33 does not contain any COPYING file at all. It does
however, contain GPL'd code from GNU Readline and
strptime.
Even if hxd did not violate the GPL, it still could not be
put into Debian as it has no license. Certain rights,
required by the DFSG (Debian Free Software Guidlines), are
not implied unless specifically stated. For example, the
right to distribute modified source is not implied.
aaronl and I confronted Ryan
Nielsen, the author of hxd,
and asked him what was up with this. He basically said that
licenses suck and expressed his unwillingness to correct
this potentially serious problem. He also inquired aaronl
whether he had sex with an elephant woman during this
conversation.