legal November 2008

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

18 participants
13 discussions

License opinion required
by David Carter 01 Dec '08

01 Dec '08

Hi, I'm packaging software with the following license on part of the code, and I need to know if it's OK. License Agreement for Application Response Measurement (ARM) Version 4.0 Software Development Kit (SDK) YOU MUST AGREE TO THESE TERMS BEFORE YOU DOWNLOAD OR USE THIS PROGRAM. ANY SUCH USE OR DOWNLOADING INDICATES YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THESE TERMS. Hewlett-Packard Corporation (HP) and tang-IT Consulting GmbH (tang-IT) grant you a license to use the ARM SDK. The ARM SDK is copyrighted and licensed (not sold). HP and tang-IT do not transfer title to the ARM SDK to you. You obtain no rights other than those granted under this license. Under this license, you may: 1. Use the ARM SDK on one or more machines at a time; 2. Make copies of the ARM SDK for use or backup purposes within your enterprise; 3. Modify the ARM SDK and merge it into another program; and 4. Make copies of the original file you download and distribute it, provided that you transfer a copy of this license agreement to the other party, and provided that the other party agrees to all terms of this license. You must reproduce the copyright notice and any other legend of ownership on each copy or partial copy of the ARM SDK. You may NOT sublicense, rent, lease, or assign the ARM SDK or any part of the ARM SDK. Except as expressly stated above, HP and tang-IT grant no other licenses, express or implied, by estoppel or otherwise, to any intellectual property rights. HP tang-IT do not warrant that the ARM SDK is free from claims by any party of copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, or any other intellectual property infringement. LIMITED LIABILITY Under no circumstances are HP and tang-IT liable for any of the following, even if HP and tang-IT are informed of their possibility: 1. third party claims against you for losses or damages; 2. loss of, or damage to, your records or data; or 3. economic consequential damages (including lost profits or savings) or incremental damages. 4. punitive or non-compensatory damages of any sort NO WARRANTIES THIS PROGRAM IS PROVIDED "AS IS." HP AND tang-IT DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. HP and tang-IT do not warrant uninterrupted or error free operation of the SDK. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties or limits on liability, so the above exclusions may not apply to you. HP and tang-IT have no obligation to provide service, defect correction, or any maintenance for the SDK. HP and tang-IT have no obligation to supply any ARM SDK updates or enhancements to you even if such are or later become available. You may terminate this license at any time. HP and tang-IT may terminate this license if you fail to comply with any of its terms. In either event, you must destroy all your copies of the ARM SDK. You are responsible for the payment of any taxes resulting from this license. You may not sell, transfer, assign, or subcontract any of your rights or obligations under this license. Any attempt to do so is void. No licensee may bring a legal action more than two years after the cause of action arose. You hereby waive your right to a trial by jury and agree that any action arising from the relationship of the parties to this license shall be decided by a court without a jury. TIA, Dave

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e legal issue question
by Oguz Yarimtepe 24 Nov '08

24 Nov '08

Hi, I need an information about the legal statement about using Fedora. My company is an ODM and producing laptops. One of our customer is asked the laptops Linux installed. There will not be any charge for the operating system. I was checking the Fedora TradeMark GuideLines. I haven't seems any restriction for selling laptops with Fedora installed. But i want to get that info from the first hand. After the installation, third party wlan and modem drivers will be installed. Also will be installed a GPL application that shows on screen display when the wireless is on and off from hotkeys. So according to the TradeMark Policy indicating these software are not provided and maintained by the Fedora Project and also applying the Logo Usage Guidelines to the DVD itself will be fine. Will be happy if you give information about this issue. Regards, Oğuz Yarımtepe

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cc65 license
by Dan Horák 19 Nov '08

19 Nov '08

Hi, can someone check the cc65 cross-compiler environment license at http://www.cc65.org/#Copyright ? The second part related to libs and utils is "zlib/libpng license", but I cannot decode the first part. Thanks, Dan

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THOR Public License (based on MPL)
by Dan Horák 19 Nov '08

19 Nov '08

Hi, I am preparing a package (Atari++, http://www.math.tu-berlin.de/% 7Ethor/atari++/) that is using a clone of the MPLv1.1. What License: tag should I use? All files related to licensing are attached, source files contain a header like in adrspace.cpp. Thanks, Dan

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Licence of glew documentation ok now?
by Jochen Schmitt 16 Nov '08

16 Nov '08

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hallo, in the past the documentation of the glew package was removed because it was licensed with a non-redistributable license. After I have filled a bug on upstreams bug tracking system the license was changed. The new license text is attached on the and of this mail. Now I want to ask, it this ok for Fedora. From my point of view, it is. Best Regards: Jochen Schmitt The OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library Copyright (C) 2002-2008, Milan Ikits <milan ikits[]ieee org> Copyright (C) 2002-2008, Marcelo E. Magallon <mmagallo[]debian org> Copyright (C) 2002, Lev Povalahev All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. * The name of the author may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkkghzoACgkQT2AHK6txfgwQ2wCdFYU8Vb/d62EwIAG71I4dTNGT 2M8An1fcrRpHBJYVGvGkq1NYC7wbV0bd =V/l9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Mutual Termination for Patent Action on webmin
by Mamoru Tasaka 13 Nov '08

13 Nov '08

Hello. I am trying to look at webmin review request (bug 468570) because this is the second package the reporter (and my sponsornee) submitted. Then: webmin 1.430 has "PATENTS" file which contains: -------------------------------------------------------------------- Mutual Termination for Patent Action. The License for the use of Webmin shall terminate automatically and You may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to You by this License if: 1. You file a lawsuit in any court alleging that any software that is licensed under this license infringes any patent claims that are essential to use that software. 2. You file a lawsuit in any court alleging that any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing a "Mutual Termination for Patent Action" clause infringes any patent claims that are essential to use that software. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Can we treat this as one of the "licenses"? If so, I would appreciate it if this "license" is named if this is free and want to know if this is compatible with GPLv3 (perhaps this is not compatible with GPLv2). I guess this is very similar with what ASL 2.0 section 3 wants to say. Also it seems that the section 2 of this "license" is the same as the section 9 of OSI 1.0. Note: for the review request itself, I would appreciate anyone's help. Regards, Mamoru

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reviving pdftk
by Orcan Ogetbil 11 Nov '08

11 Nov '08

pdftk had been removed from Fedora because it contained itext code which had licensing issues. Please see: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=236310 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?component=pdftk&product=Fedora But since the itext's license issue is resolved, (see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=465511#c4 ) can we allow pdftk in Fedora again? Orcan "oget" Ogetbil

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Can I talk about RPM Fusion?
by Steven Moix 04 Nov '08

04 Nov '08

Hello fedora-legal people! I'd like to know if I'm allowed to talk about RPM Fusion in a news I'm going to send to the French press? We don't have software patents in Europe, but I'm still not sure if it conflicts with some other guideline or legal issue. Thanks Steven Moix moixs(a)fedoraproject.org

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Re: Software is once again unpatentable in the United States
by Matthew Woehlke 04 Nov '08

04 Nov '08

Jon Ciesla wrote: > Matthew Woehlke wrote: >> Also from http://ben.klemens.org/blog/arch/00000009.htm: >>> Despite claiming that all that matters is the >>> machine-or-transformation test, the ruling also bears in mind many >>> other necessary conditions for patentability, such as the rule that a >>> patent may not �wholly pre-empt� a law of nature or principle or >>> mathematical formula. Also, if you wholly pre-empt a mathematical >>> algorithm within some narrow field of endeavor, the court rules that >>> this is still a pre-emption. I'll have a little more on this below. >> Note "a patent may not 'wholly pre-empt' ... a mathematical formula". >> >> ...which means all those codecs from livna/rpmfusion just became 100% >> legal, no royalty required*. >> >> (* assuming the copyright license is not an issue, of course) > > I assume an "official" statement on this from Fedora/RedHat legal folk > will be forthcoming. > > Unless it already has, and I missed it, which is entirely possible. Jeff already pointed out RH's press release. As has been stated, the Bilski decision does not paint the issue in black and white, and as such, I don't expect *Red Hat* to decide that including e.g. lame in Fedora is now okay. Nevertheless, if the rule that math cannot be patented is upheld, I think victory, at least for some areas that have historically caused much friction (i.e. multimedia codecs) is inevitable. (And since other areas fall more closely into "business methods", well... those patents are in for rough times as well.) And it's ammunition for non-paid "patented" codec users to say (rightfully) that the patents they are allegedly violating are, in fact, illegal. -- Matthew Please do not quote my e-mail address unobfuscated in message bodies. -- Igor Peshansky: Don't hippos love water even more than dogs? Dave Korn: Don't ask me. I didn't even know that hippos loved dogs.

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Is the EUPL v1.0 (European Union Public Licence) acceptable in Fedora
by Caolán McNamara 04 Nov '08

04 Nov '08

Here's one I hadn't be aware of before, the EUPL, European Union Public Licence: http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/eupl which affects something I was considering packaging. It does have in it an explicit ... Compatibility clause: If the Licensee Distributes ... derivative Works ... this Distribution ... can be done under the terms of this Compatible Licence. “Compatible Licences” according to article 5 EUPL are: − General Public License (GPL) v. 2 − Open Software License (OSL) v. 2.1, v. 3.0 − Common Public License v. 1.0 − Eclipse Public License v. 1.0 − Cecill v. 2.0 C.

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legal November 2008