legal September 2007

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

16 participants
14 discussions

License tag status - 2007/08/29
by Todd Zullinger 06 Sep '07

06 Sep '07

Sometime over the past few days the status of license tags crossed the 50% mark. Current status: 47.03% of spec files (2204 out of 4686) have invalid licenses (as of Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:26:29 +0000) Attached are lists grouped by owner and package. I have a few questions after poking through these lists. There are multiple versions of the GFDL license (currently it's at 1.2 on the FSF site). However, the Licensing page doesn't mention any versions. Several packages (21 to be precise), use GFDL+ as part of the license tag. This is flagged as incorrect in the current report (and by rpmlint). But should it be? If for some reason a package ends up using GDFL 1.1 without any "or later version" statement, shouldn't that be respected? Several perl packages (including perl itself) use the license tag: (GPL+ or Artistic) and (GPLv2+ or Artistic) This isn't being parsed correctly by the regex used in rpmlint (which I've stolen and used in the check-licenses script). The regex is: '\s(?:and|or)\s|[()]' Does anyone have suggestions for improving this regex so it won't fail to parse the above license tag and others like it? -- Todd OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception. -- Groucho Marx

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GPL with font exception
by Jens-Ulrik Petersen 06 Sep '07

06 Sep '07

Hi, How should we treat GPLv2 + with font embedding exception? Can it be denoted just "GPLv2"? I am asking in the context of wqy-bitmap-fonts. Currently the package carries GPL v2 COPYING and the font source files state: COMMENT Copyright: (C)2004-2007, The WenQuanYi Project COMMENT Board of Trustees and Qianqian Fang COMMENT License : GPL v2.0 (with font embedding exception) http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FontException I guess it would be good to include the exception text in the tarball too. The author has communicated that he prefers to keep it at GPL v2.0 for now. Thanks, Jens

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dcraw.c licensing ambiguity
by Nils Philippsen 05 Sep '07

05 Sep '07

Hi Dave, I'm the Fedora/Red Hat Enterprise Linux package maintainer for dcraw and when going over the licenses of some of my packages I found that the licensing blurb of dcraw.c has changed like this ("-": old, "+": new version): --- 8< --- - Attention! Some parts of this program are restricted under the - terms of the GNU General Public License. Such code is enclosed - in "BEGIN GPL BLOCK" and "END GPL BLOCK" declarations. - Any code not declared GPL is free for all uses. + No license is required to download and use dcraw.c. However, + to lawfully redistribute this code, you must either (a) include + full source code* for all executable files containing RESTRICTED + functions, (b) remove all RESTRICTED functions, re-implement them, + or copy them from an earlier, unrestricted Revision of dcraw.c, + or (c) purchase a license from the author. - Starting in Revision 1.237, the code to support Foveon cameras - is under GPL. + The functions that process Foveon images have been RESTRICTED + since Revision 1.237. All other code remains free for all uses. - To lawfully redistribute dcraw.c, you must either (a) include - full source code for all executable files containing restricted - functions, (b) remove these functions, re-implement them, or - copy them from an earlier, non-GPL Revision of dcraw.c, or (c) - purchase a license from the author. + *If you have not modified dcraw.c in any way, a link to my + homepage qualifies as "full source code". --- >8 --- With the upcoming Fedora version 8, we want all packages' licensing terms be listed in the package (e.g. "GPLv2+" for GNU GPL Version 2 or later"). Now I'm a bit unsure about what to do about the terms of dcraw.c and whether they are still GPL compatible(*) and so forth. (*): IIRC, GPL allows distribution of a binary without source code but a written offer to ship it on request. The source code provisions in the dcraw terms might be "additional restrictions" that aren't GPL compatible. Would you please shed some light on this? I'd very much appreciate it. Thanks in advance, Nils -- Nils Philippsen / Red Hat / nphilipp(a)redhat.com "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- B. Franklin, 1759 PGP fingerprint: C4A8 9474 5C4C ADE3 2B8F 656D 47D8 9B65 6951 3011

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XANO mincho's font license
by Akira TAGOH 02 Sep '07

02 Sep '07

Hi, There are a Japanese TrueType font, called XANO mincho though, I'm not sure if that license is comfortable for us to include into Fedora. So it would be appreciated if someone can review it before going to proceed the package review. TIA, -- Akira TAGOH Copyright (c) 2003 Hitachi, Ltd. and TypeBank Co., Ltd. Copyright (c) 2003 UCHIDA Akira Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of the fonts accompanying this license ("Fonts") and associated documentation files (the "Font Software"), to reproduce and distribute the Font Software, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, and/or sell copies of the Font Software, and to permit persons to whom the Font Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies of one or more of the Font Software typefaces. The Font Software may be sold as part of a larger software package but no copy of one or more of the Font Software typefaces may be sold by itself. The end-user documentation included with the derived work, if any, must include the following acknowledgment: This product is derived by using the right to use "Hitachi-Mincho 32x32-dot weight 3 Font" possessed by Hitachi, Ltd. and TypeBank Co., Ltd. Alternately, this acknowledgment may appear in the Font Software itself, if and wherever such third-party acknowledgments normally appear. THE FONT SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT, PATENT, TRADEMARK, OR OTHER RIGHT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE FONT SOFTWARE OR FROM OTHER DEALINGS IN THE FONT SOFTWARE.

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legal September 2007