This package was debianized by Javier Fernandez-Sanguino Peña Tue, 13 Mar 2001 01:28:57 +0100. It was originally downloaded from http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/starplot.html and was available to the public at http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov. As of october 1, 2002, however, NASA discontinued the publication of this data is now available at other Astronomical Data Center such as CDS-France. The CDS service for astronomical catalogues is available at http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/cats/Cats.htx, and specifically, "The Bright Star Catalogue, 5th Revised Ed. (Preliminary Version)" can be retrieved from: http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/Cat?V/50 Upstream Author: Hoffleit E.D., Warren Jr. W.H. Copyright: 1991 (c) Hoffleit E.D., Warren Jr. W.H. COPYRIGHT NOTE It is safe to redistribute the files in the orig-data directory, which, as noted above, are freely available on Astronomical Data Center web sites. However, since these are copyrighted data, you may NOT redistribute modified versions of them. This is why some astronomic software in Debian which uses this data has to either use this raw data or, if the program wants to use another format, needs to parse and reformat this package's data on postinst. For example, starplot will generate StarPlot-format data files (*.stars) at install time instead of providing them in the package. I would advise that you NOT redistribute these *.stars data files. See below for a detailed explanation. The Makefile and .spec file of this data set are licensed under the GNU GPL either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version (GPL license file located in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2), of which you should have received a copy with the StarPlot documentation. The GPL also applies to the text documentation (README, INSTALL) for this data set, except where it would conflict with the licensing requirements described below. The GPL does ***NOT*** apply to the star data files enclosed or generated. The data files in the orig-data directory originate from the Astronomical Data Center (http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and are copyrighted by their respective authors. Upon asking the ADC about the permissibility of their redistribution, I was told the following: Yes, you are free to distribute the files with your program. Although, we do ask that you acknowledge, your source (the ADC) and the original authors. See: http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov/adc/acknowledge_adc.html for more information. My conclusions are that (1) you are free to redistribute the ADC data files. However, (2) you must not delete any documentation giving credit for the data files, for example in the README; and (3) the data files must NOT be altered in any way (without permission of the original authors). Therefore (4) it is NOT permissible to redistribute the *.stars files which the StarPlot conversion program creates from the ADC data files. I have confirmed these conclusions with the ADC.