legal December 2009

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

27 participants
21 discussions

cascading the CC licenses
by Karsten Wade 07 Dec '09

07 Dec '09

Some questions about how to reuse/remix CC content in to our wiki and other content locations. Given: our content is now CC BY SA 3.0. What happens when we reuse CC BY content in to our wiki? Is it OK that it turns in to SA after that? Or what does it become? If not, do we have to do something special when mixing CC BY content in? I know we cannot reuse NC content, but what about reuse/remix/redistribution of: * CC BY 3.0 * CC BY SA 2.x * CC BY ND I'm guessing that the no-derivatives content can be redistributed by us, but we don't want to because then we create a mixed work that cannot be free? - Karsten -- Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Community Gardener http://quaid.fedorapeople.org AD0E0C41

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Fedora and MS-PL (Dynamic Language Runtime)
by saulgoode＠flashingtwelve.brickfilms.com 06 Dec '09

06 Dec '09

I apologize if resurrecting such an old thread is considered poor etiquette for this list; however, it seems that the discussion in this thread served as a predicate for the MS-PL being deemed acceptable for inclusion in Fedora[1], and I wish to raise a question about that decision[2]. While the discussion in this thread effectively addressed the incompatibility between the Microsoft Public License and GNU's General Public license, it focused upon terms of the GPL and whether they might preclude inclusion of MS-PLed code in Fedora. I feel it is far more incumbent to examine the terms and conditions of the MS-PL and consider whether those terms can be satisfied should both MS-PLed code and GPLed code be provided together on a CD/DVD or in a corresponding ISO file. In brief, my concern lies with the fact that there is no explicit exception included in the MS-PL for "collective works" or "compilations" as defined under U.S. copyright law[3]; instead the MS-PL is based[4] upon the U.S. Copyright Act's definition of "derivative works"[5] and a license-explicit definition of a "contribution"[6], and it claims for its applicable scope all derivative works of the contribution. This is problematic for a Fedora distribution because, though Fedora should rightly fit the definition for a "compilation", it may still qualify as a "derivative work" as those terms are defined in the U.S. Copyright Act. The two classifications are not of necessity mutually exclusive; as stated in the congressional footnotes to the Copyright Act[7]: "Between them the terms 'compilations' and 'derivative works' which are defined in section 101, comprehend every copyrightable work that employs preexisting material or data of any kind. THERE IS NECESSARILY SOME OVERLAPPING BETWEEN THE TWO, but they basically represent different concepts." (emphasis mine) Further coverage of the legal uncertainty at to whether a compilation (or even collective work) can be considered a derivative work can be found in the Copyright Office's "Copyright Registration for Derivative Works" circular[8 (PDF)], and in the first chapter[9] of Lee A. Hollaar's "Legal Protection of Digital Information". Though I am an engineer (not a lawyer), it seems the distinction being made in the Copyright Act phraseology is owing to the legislature's desire to clarify the durations and protections of copyright obtained in the constituent parts of a collection or compilation, and not a presumption of the law to interfere with the exclusive rights of the copyright holder to decide the terms and scope under which his work might be licensed. In other words, I find it entirely conceivable that a court would find that it is within an author's rights to prohibit distribution of his work in collections/compilations containing other works which the author may find objectionable. While my interpretation is by no means conclusive (and certainly not authoritative), it should be noted that it is this legal uncertainty which has prompted other reciprocal licenses to provide explicit exceptions for "collective works". This is addressed employing the term "mere aggregation" in Section 3 of the GPLv2[10], and the term "aggregate" in Section 5 of the GPLv3[11] and in Section 7 of the GNU Free Document License[12]. It is addressed in the Creative Commons Share-Alike by providing a license-specific definition of a "collection" and exempting such collections from reciprocity terms[13]. I won't speculate as to whether it was the intent of the authors of the Microsoft Public License to consider "mere aggregation" to be excluded from the scope of their reciprocal terms and conditions[14], but regardless of their intent it seems that lack of an exception being explicitly provided within the license itself may potentially lead to a court decision that inclusion of both MS-PLed and GPLed software within a Fedora distribution constitutes copyright infringement -- not because the terms of the GPL weren't met, but that those of the MS-PL were not met. Any clarification on this issue would be appreciated. Regards. ---------------------------------- [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Software_License_List MS-PL listed under "Software Licenses that are OK for Fedora" [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-legal-list/2009-August/msg00017.html "The MS Public License is acceptable for Fedora, Free but GPL incompatible. I'm adding it to the table now." -- Tom Calloway [3] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/usc_sec_17_00000101----000-.html "A 'collective work' is a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology, or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole. "A 'compilation' is a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship. The term 'compilation' includes collective works." -- USC Title 17 Section 101 [4] http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/licenses.mspx#Ms-PL "The terms 'reproduce', 'reproduction', 'derivative works', and 'distribution' have the same meaning here as under U.S. copyright law." -- MS-PL: Definitions [5] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/usc_sec_17_00000101----000-.html "A 'derivative work' is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a 'derivative work'." -- USC Title 17 Section 101 [6] http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/licenses.mspx#Ms-PL "A 'contribution' is the original software, or any additions or changes to the software." -- MS-PL: Definitions [7] http://digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise6.html "Between them the terms 'compilations' and 'derivative works' which are defined in section 101, comprehend every copyrightable work that employs preexisting material or data of any kind. There is necessarily some overlapping between the two, but they basically represent different concepts. A ?compilation? results from a process of selecting, bringing together, organizing, and arranging previously existing material of all kinds, regardless of whether the individual items in the material have been or ever could have been subject to copyright. A ?derivative work,? on the other hand, requires a process of recasting, transforming, or adapting ?one or more preexisting works?; the ?preexisting work? must come within the general subject matter of copyright set forth in section 102, regardless of whether it is or was ever copyrighted." FN31: H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476 [8] http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.html [9] http://digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/treatise6.html [10] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html "In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License." -- GPLv2 [11] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html "Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate." -- GPLv3 [12] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html "When the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document." -- GFDL [13] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode "A work that constitutes a Collection will not be considered an Adaptation (as defined below) for the purposes of this License." -- CC-SA [14] http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/licenses.mspx#Ms-PL "If you distribute any portion of the software in source code form, you may do so only under this license by including a complete copy of this license with your distribution. If you distribute any portion of the software in compiled or object code form, you may only do so under a license that complies with this license." -- MS-PL Section 3d)

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Re: sRGB ICC profiles in Fedora
by Richard Hughes 06 Dec '09

06 Dec '09

2009/12/4 Richard Hughes <hughsient(a)gmail.com>: > I have a legal question regarding distributing Abobe RGB ICC profiles in Fedora. Another email about profiles (sorry!), just a different licence this time. I want to ship the official ICC sRGB profiles available here in Fedora: http://www.color.org/srgbprofiles.xalter This states: Terms of use: To anyone who acknowledges that the file "sRGB_v4_ICC_preference.icc" is provided "AS IS" WITH NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY, permission to use, copy and distribute this file for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the file is not changed including the ICC copyright notice tag, and that the name of ICC shall not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission. ICC makes no representations about the suitability of this software for any purpose. Suitable for Fedora or one for rpmfusion? Thanks. Richard.

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Good, not Evil in jsmin-php
by David Nalley 06 Dec '09

06 Dec '09

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 An update to zikula bundles jsmin-php (http://code.google.com/p/jsmin-php/) I started to work on packaging this, and struck upon this potential licensing issue. Google lists this as MIT licensed, however the text of the license contains this line in addition to the MIT license: * The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil. That strikes me as non-free, but figured I would ask. Thoughts? -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Use GnuPG with Firefox : http://getfiregpg.org (Version: 0.7.10) iEYEARECAAYFAksb0YEACgkQkZOYj+cNI1dVcQCeMMmitiEupLk41lzU6qDoFtdz pecAmgKVIQ+kfIFmP16CZ+TY1VKGdl0g =lWI2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Including of MARS code in cryptopp package
by alekcejk＠googlemail.com 06 Dec '09

06 Dec '09

Hi All, There is IBM implementation of MARS code in cryptopp 5.6.0 an it was removed from Fedora cryptopp package. But SVN 479 version of cryptopp contains mars.cpp that was written and placed in the public domain by Wei Dai. https://cryptopp.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/cryptopp/trunk/c5/mars.cpp Can we include this MARS code in Fedora cryptopp package? Alexey Kurov <nucleo(a)fedoraproject.org>

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Re: Abobe RGB ICC profiles in Fedora
by Richard Hughes 04 Dec '09

04 Dec '09

2009/12/4 Richard Hughes <hughsient(a)gmail.com>: > Can anyone give me any advice on whether the Adobe licence agreement > would be valid for profiles shipped in Fedora? This may be of interest: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/openicc/2005q4/000668.html It's an invitation from the Adobe guys to the OpenICC mailing list asking people to package their stuff. Some of the legal questions are answered there too. Richard.

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Abobe RGB ICC profiles in Fedora
by Richard Hughes 04 Dec '09

04 Dec '09

I have a legal question regarding distributing Abobe RGB ICC profiles in Fedora. I am soon to package gnome-color-manager for Fedora (GPLv2+), but it requires additional data to be really useful. To actually use a colour managed workflow, you need a set of standard profiles. Profiles are just data files that define a "working set" of color. Quite a few people will already be using (or want to use) Adobe RGB. Here's the link http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=3682 to the Adobe distributor package with details. Ideally I want to include them in a separate package, maybe called shared-color-profiles (or shared-color-profiles-adobe if you think one package [subpackage?] per different licence is better). If you download the archive, there's also another licence agreement inside, which may be easier to read. Adobe really want people to ship the files (hence the permissive licensing terms) and it would be a shame to have to punt this to other repos like rpmfusion. Can anyone give me any advice on whether the Adobe licence agreement would be valid for profiles shipped in Fedora? If not, would I be allowed to link to the adobe webpage in the GNOME Color Manager help documentation? Thanks. Richard Hughes.

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12 dynamic GPL link problems
by Julius Davies 03 Dec '09

03 Dec '09

Hi, I think I might have found 12 problems with code that dynamically links into GPL code. These ones I'm pretty sure are a problem since AutoReqProv caused them: ---------------------------------- pilot-link -> readline pilot-link-devel -> readline device-mapper -> readline device-mapper-event -> readline lvm2 -> readline kdebase-workspace -> qedje kdebase-workspace -> qzion kdebase3 -> libsmbclient libtirpc -> libgssglue These ones I'm not so sure about, since they are Maintainer specified (not AutoReqProv): ---------------------------------- eclipse-callgraph -> systemtap ghostscript -> urw-fonts This one is AutoReqProv, but maybe gvfs's LGPL just switches into GPL, since LGPL allows that? (But wouldn't this cause a transitivity problem for others that expect gvfs to be LGPL?) ------------------------------------- gvfs -> libgudev1 More details are here (e.g. licenses, and what AutoReqProv picked): ------------------------------------- http://juliusdavies.ca/uvic/csc490-2009-fall-dmg/fedora12_lic_probs.html Two questions: 1. Am I actually identifying some real problems? 2. What does Fedora normally do to detect and avoid similar problems? -- yours, Julius Davies 250-592-2284 (Home) 250-893-4579 (Mobile) http://juliusdavies.ca/logging.html

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JPEG 2000
by Adam Goode 03 Dec '09

03 Dec '09

Hi, A year ago, the question of JPEG 2000 came up: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-legal-list/2008-December/msg00007.ht… Was there ever any resolution to the question of JPEG 2000 in Fedora? Thanks, Adam

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di license
by Nikola Pajkovsky 02 Dec '09

02 Dec '09

Hello, is it compatible with ours licenses? Taken from http://www.gentoo.com/di/ di License Copyright 1994-2009 Brad Lanam, Walnut Creek, CA, USA This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software. Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions: 1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required. 2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software. 3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution. -- Nikola Pajkovsky <npajkovs(a)redhat.com> .~. Base Operating Systems Brno /V\ // \\ Jabber: nikis(a)isgeek.info /( )\ Mobile: +420 777 895 064 ^`~'^

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legal December 2009