dosemu, elligible for extras or does it have legal issues?

[Hans de Goede]

Hi,

I seem to have a knack for choosing legally touch and go software to 
package.

I'm thinking about packaging dosemu. Which despite the name is not 
really an emulator. It is virtual pc software much like vmware, except 
that it only emulates enough PC to get dos and dpmi apps running and not 
enough for any protected mode software which does not use DPMI, like say 
windows.

One big advantage it has over vmware is that its limited virtual PC 
emulated can be done without any kernel patches, and even without any 
root rights.


Its license is basic GPL with some extra conditions:

              Copyright of DOSEMU, October 2000
              =================================

1.   All sources in the official distribution of DOSEMU are
      (C) Copyright 1992, ..., 2005 the "DOSEMU-Development-Team"
      unless explicitly stated otherwise.

      The DOSEMU-Development-Team is legally represented by its
      current co-ordinator:

        1992          Matthias Lautner
        1993          Robert Sanders <gt8134b at prism.gatech.edu>
        1994 .. 1996  James MacLean <macleajb at ednet.ns.ca>
        1997 .. 2001  Hans Lermen <lermen at fgan.de>
        2001 .. now   Bart Oldeman <bart at dosemu.org>

      Every co-ordinator passes on the right to represent to his
      successor.

2.   This copyright does not cover all parts of the DOSEMU code!
      Parts of the code not covered by the GPL are marked explicitly
      within the code, the rest of the code _is_ GPL.

3.   Some code, that was covered by GNU LIBRARY GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
      (GLGPL) has been transformed to GPL as is allowed by the GLGPL
      section 3. This code is marked with an appropriate text at the
      beginning of each file involved.

4.   The nature of DOSEMU requires the use of (ie "booting") a DOS,
      which may be proprietary. This could be interpreted as 'library
      linking'   the DOS functions to DOSEMU (this view comes from
      interpreting more into the current version (2) of the GPL than is
      actually defined).   However, recent discussions about the scope of
      'library linking' with GPL code and the possibility that future
      versions of the GPL may define this issue in a more restrictive
      manner, make it necessary to
      restrict the DOSEMU copyright explicitly to version 2 of the GPL.
                                               ============        ===

      We grant the right to use a proprietary DOS together with DOSEMU.

5.   Redistributors of DOSEMU sources must not re-package the official
      DOSEMU packages, including the compression method.
      Putting the unchanged compressed DOSEMU packages within envelops
      (e.g. *.rpm, *.deb, double compress) is allowed.

6.   This file (COPYING) has to be distributed unchanged together with
      the DOSEMU distribution or any derivative work. This prefix and
      the following appended GPL must not be separated.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

                     GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
                        Version 2, June 1991
<rest of GPL follows>

Point 2 is AFAIK the only probable problem, but I've taken a look at all
copyright headers and there are the following non GPL copyrights:
-BSD (X11) like
-old XFree86 (X11)
-old Wine license (X11 like)
-LGPL
-public domain

These are AFAIK all GPL compatible and thus (IANAL) no problem.

So my question is can this be packaged as part of Fedora? It has been 
part of Debian in the main repo, but currently is unmaintained in Debian.


Thanks & Regards,

Hans