legal March 2009

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

26 participants
29 discussions

Concerns over SIF OFL
by Rahul Sundaram 06 Mar '09

06 Mar '09

Hi Bruce Perens comments on some loopholes with OFL that allows anyone to use fonts licensed under them as public domain equivalent. Since Fedora has been recommending it over all other font licenses, maybe Red Hat legal should look into it http://lwn.net/Articles/319537/ Rahul

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"content" in source tarball
by Christian Krause 06 Mar '09

06 Mar '09

Hi, I'm currently maintaining the package "anki" which is basically a learning program. The original tarball includes a couple of sample files with different licenses (some are not acceptable for Fedora). That's why the tarball gets re-generated without the samples before it gets packaged. In this case sample files mean that they contain larger amount of "learning content". Given the upstream package would be changed to contain only GPL-licensed sample files - would the following be ok: 1. The new upstream package is used without modifications for packaging and so the src.rpm would contain the (GPL-licensed) examples. 2. The binary package would not have these examples installed due to the "no-content" policy. Best regards, Christian

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enabling CUDA support
by Milos Jakubicek 06 Mar '09

06 Mar '09

Hi all, I've following bugreport from a BOINC user: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=487981 Basically, CUDA is a Nvidia technology which enables the GPU to be used for various complex scientific computations (which are then even faster than on CPU). I was about to close the bug as WONTFIX as the whole CUDA is not open source, but then I found out that BOINC (which recently added support for CUDA applications) needs only the single libcudart.so library and that this prebuilt library coming from Nvidia has been already included in the source tarball (but not packaged as far). Now I have a question: as it principally enables the hardware to be controlled by some end-user applications, would it be possible to ship the libcudart.so library in a subpackage as "Redistributable, no modification permitted" like a firmware? Actually this is what the Nvidia's EULA is saying about the Linux part of CUDA: http://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/2_1/toolkit/CUDA_Toolkit_… (see section 2.1.3) Although I guess we can't do it in this way (I'm afraid that same arguments could then be used for e.g. all closed-source modules), I rather ask before definitely closing the bugreport. Regards, Milos

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regarding ntop binary data file formats
by Rakesh Pandit 06 Mar '09

06 Mar '09

Recently my co-maintainer made a update in rawhide for ntop package from 3.3.8 to 3.3.9. It was without discussion with me. The update had a dependency with GeoIP package which needs GeoLiteCity.dat and GeoIPASNum.dat binary format files (they are compressed and optimized form of big CSV files). GeoIP package can read this .dat files and provide info. My questions is whether these .dat files can be included into fedora ? License for .dat files is at: http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/LICENSE.txt Bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=488717 Build id: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=92821 Snippet from http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecity """ GeoLite City is offered in binary format, a highly optimized database that supports fast lookups using our Open Source API code. We recommend using the binary files with APIs instead of importing the CSV files into SQL because the binary format is more efficient and is easy to set up and use. * Binary Format Installation Instructions * Download the latest GeoLite City Binary Format (28 MB when uncompressed, last updated February 1st, 2009, next update March 9th, 2009) CSV Format Our CSV format enables you to load the database into a SQL database. The GeoIP City and GeoLite City use the same locationIDs, so the GeoIP City CSV files can be used as a drop in replacement for GeoLite City CSV files without having to change the locationIDs. Note that queries made against the CSV data imported into a SQL database can take up to a few seconds. If performance is an issue, the binary format is much faster, and can handle thousands of lookups per second. * Instructions on how to use our CSV databases with a SQL database. * Download the latest GeoLite City CSV Format (100 MB when uncompressed) """ -- Regards, Rakesh Pandit

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Do we need to remove proprietary code from previous releases?
by Orcan Ogetbil 05 Mar '09

05 Mar '09

Recently I took over the orphaned package libzzub in F-10 and devel. I found that the upstream renamed the package to armstrong, so I opened a review request for armstrong and it just got approved. But whenever I was packaging armstrong, I found that the source tarball contains some MS propriatary code. This code does not get compiled into the final binary RPM but I removed it from the tarball when I created the SRPM. libzzub is now going through the PackageEndOfLife process and will be removed from F-10 and devel soon. The thing is, the old package libzzub that is in F-7, F-8 and F-9 still has this code in the SRPM. How shall we proceed in this case? Orcan PS: Specifically, the directory src/rtaudio/include needs to be removed from the libzzub tarball.

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Legality of staple / unstaple
by Michel Salim 05 Mar '09

05 Mar '09

staple / unstaple is an all-or-nothing data "binder" / unbinder, licensed under the BSD license. http://sysnet.ucsd.edu/projects/staple/ The author raises a concern that unstaple might be considered illegal due to its ability to brute-force the stapled file, and the FAQ listed some use cases involving misappropriation of intellectual property (the pirated file is combined with the author's own files, stapled together, and attempts to unstaple this collection arguably violates the DMCA). In view of this, staple is shipped separately from unstaple. Would either, or both, be acceptable in Fedora? Could we get staple in Fedora and unstaple in some non-US repositories? This software has been discussed on Bruce Schneier's blog: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/03/all-or-nothing.html#comments Thanks, -- miʃel salim • http://hircus.jaiku.com/ IUCS • msalim(a)cs.indiana.edu Fedora • salimma(a)fedoraproject.org MacPorts • hircus(a)macports.org

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OpenCascade Public License again
by Dan Horák 02 Mar '09

02 Mar '09

Hi Spot, you will probably remember that you were checking the OpenCascade Public License few moth ago. Now the question about its free/nonfree status was opened on the upstream forum and it would be a good chance to express our (or better RH Legal's) reasons that led to the decision that it is non-free and possibly make upstream to resolve them. I am including the mail I got from Debian packagers. URL of the discussion is http://www.opencascade.org/org/forum/thread_15859/ related Review Request is https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=458974 Dan

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CeCILL licenses
by Michel Salim 02 Mar '09

02 Mar '09

Hello, Upstream for a package I just submitted for review, Scheme2Js (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=487938) has indicated that the license is switching from GPL+ to CeCILL-C (v2): http://www.cecill.info/licences.en.html CeCILL itself is free and GPL-compatible, and is FSF-approved, though there's no clarification about whether this is GPLv2 or GPLv3: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses CeCILL-C (component) is claimed to be LGPL-compatible, though I'm not sure if FSF approves it as well, or just the main CeCILL license (and again, version 2, 3 or both). CeCILL-B (BSD) is like the BSD license with advertising, which I guess rules it out from Fedora. Could the legal team look into this? The license is INRIA-originated, so it's possible that in the future, more INRIA software (such as Bigloo, already in Fedora) might switch over. Thanks, -- miʃel salim • http://hircus.jaiku.com/ IUCS • msalim(a)cs.indiana.edu Fedora • salimma(a)fedoraproject.org MacPorts • hircus(a)macports.org

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BSD3 without binary clause
by Jens-Ulrik Petersen 02 Mar '09

02 Mar '09

Hi I am reviewing a package (ghc-X11) which is basically BSD 3 clause without the 2nd binary clause. http://darcs.haskell.org/packages/X11/LICENSE Would this just be BSD license? Jens

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legal March 2009