Question about KStars accessing (but not shipping) non-distributable data

[Akarsh Simha]

Hi

KStars wishes to use the following website to get updates on
supernovae:
http://www.cbat.eps.harvard.edu/lists/RecentSupernovae.html

The website says:

"This list may be freely pointed-to from your own Web site, but must
not be copied to your own site or otherwise redistributed."

However, KStars does not ship with any supernovae data by default. It
only downloads this list like any other HTTP client (using Python +
KIO), and then does some parsing to create a data file held in the
user's home directory.

This appears fair game to me, because well, it's just a HTTP client,
and you're downloading the data for personal use and running it
through some parsing.

But I'd like to verify if it's okay from the licensing gurus out here.

Thanks.

Regards
Akarsh
The KStars Team

PS: I'm copying this mail to the SoK student who wrote this feature,
and I'd appreciate if you could "reply all", since he's not a
member of this list.

[Jonathan Riddell]

Post by Akarsh Simha
Hi
KStars wishes to use the following website to get updates on
http://www.cbat.eps.harvard.edu/lists/RecentSupernovae.html
"This list may be freely pointed-to from your own Web site, but must
not be copied to your own site or otherwise redistributed."
However, KStars does not ship with any supernovae data by default. It
only downloads this list like any other HTTP client (using Python +
KIO), and then does some parsing to create a data file held in the
user's home directory.
This appears fair game to me, because well, it's just a HTTP client,
and you're downloading the data for personal use and running it
through some parsing.

Should be ok, at least it's not any different from Amarok downloading
album covers.

But best to note it in a README and maybe have a compile switch incase
any distros don't want to ship it.

Jonathan