Mattia Verga <mattia.verga(a)tiscali.it> writes:
I'm having a discussion on the Legal mailing list about the usage
of
databases like the Saguaro Astronomy Club catalog [2] or Dr. Wolfgang
Steinicke NGC database [2].
[2]
http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/ngcic/ngcic_e.htm
[3]
https://github.com/KDE/kstars/tree/master/kstars/data
I have a quite similar problem with the ngc2000 catalog that is used in
astrometry.net (being its Debian maintainer). In the moment, this
catalog had to be removed from our distribution due to a non-commercial
restriction, and the Fedora package of
astrometry.net will also need to
have it removed.
I discussed this for more than 6 months with the copyright holder (F&W
Media, the editors of Sky and Telescope), and they finally definitely
refused to change the license.
So, having the Steinicke catalog free would be great not only for
kstars, but also for other packages like
astrometry.net. Maybe we could
try jointly to discuss this issue with Wolfgang Steinicke to convince
him to give *his* version under a license that is acceptable by Fedora
and Debian?
Best regards
Ole