legal August 2009

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

14 participants
18 discussions

Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Fedora and MS-PL (Dynamic Language Runtime)
by Tom Callaway 16 Aug '09

16 Aug '09

On 08/15/2009 06:57 PM, Jimmy Schementi wrote: > For what it's worth, IronRuby, IronPython, and the DLR are licensed under the "Microsoft Public License", which is OSI approved: > http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ms-pl.html > > IronRuby is not associated with the "Microsoft Shared Source License". Yes, I do understand that part. :) I was simply correcting the point that the MS Shared Source License was in any way acceptable for Fedora (it is not). The MS Public License is acceptable for Fedora, Free but GPL incompatible. I'm adding it to the table now. ~tom

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Software patents page
by Paul W. Frields 15 Aug '09

15 Aug '09

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Software_Patents It would be a good idea for people on this list involved in legal matters to check the content of this page, to make sure it's accurate and current. -- Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug

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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Fedora and MS-PL (Dynamic Language Runtime)
by Tom Callaway 15 Aug '09

15 Aug '09

On 08/14/2009 11:28 PM, brett lentz wrote: > I simply stated that it is listed on > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#SoftwareLicenses as being > acceptable for Fedora. Look carefully. It is listed there as a "Bad License". ~spot

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Fedora and MS-PL (Dynamic Language Runtime)
by C.J. Adams-Collier KF7BMP 14 Aug '09

14 Aug '09

Hey all, We (the Debian CLI Libraries Team) are packaging IronRuby, IronPython and the Dynamic Language Runtime for Debian. Much of the source in this package is released under the Microsoft Public License: http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-cli-libs/packages/dlr-languages.git;a=blob;f=d… I asked my friend Brett if he would help us get it packaged up in RPM format for Fedora. He tells me that the MS-PL is not on the approved list for Redhat packages: 14:55 < wakko666> cj: my main concern about packaging ironruby is licensing. Fedora will accept packages under the MS-Shared-Source license, but the MS-PL isn't on their list of acceptable license. 14:58 < cj> wakko666: alrighty. jschementi is the guy to talk with about licensing issues. He'll be back some time soon, I'm sure 14:58 < wakko666> of course, i can always write the spec file and you guys can host your own rpms, but it would be nice to actually get it into Fedora proper. 14:59 < cj> also, MS-PL is dfsg compliant and [OSI]-approved. Is it a decision to deny MS-PL or that it just hasn't been reviewed yet? 14:59 < wakko666> not sure. we'd need to ask on the fedora-legal-list mailing list 14:59 < wakko666> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#SoftwareLicenses [ed: I mis-wrote OSL-approved] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ms-pl.html I do not see MS-PL on the DFSG wiki page: http://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses However, Mono contains code licensed under MS-PL and it is part of the main section, implying that it is compliant: http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-mono/packages/mono.git;a=blob;f=debian/copyrig… Are the MS-PL pieces of Mono stripped from the Fedora package of Mono? mcs/class/MicrosoftAjaxLibrary/* mcs/class/System.Web.Mvc/* Looking forward to your response, C.J.

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Legal CD/DVD/BD writing software for RedHat and Fedora
by Joerg Schilling 13 Aug '09

13 Aug '09

Hi! In former times, there was an excellent cooperative relationship between the development of cdrtools and the various Linux distributions (in special with Debian). Unfortunately, this changed in Spring 2004, a few months after the Debian package maintainer for the cdrtools has been replaced with a new and non-cooperative "downstream". As a result, during the past few years, many Linux users have become upset from the results of a completely unneeded conflict initiated by the non-cooperative "downstream" package maintainer. Many Linux distributions (including RedHat and Fedora) have become victims of this conflict. The conflict started in May 2004 with some anti-OSS and anti-social actions against the OSS project bundle "cdrtools". The non-cooperative "downstream" package maintainer started his high profile attack against the cdrtools project in May 2004. His attacks have been based on his personal frustration that was solely caused by his missing programming skills and his personal concept of dealing with these deficits. He later extended his attacks and finally incorrectly claimed that there were license problems in the cdrtools project and created a fork. As _reaction_ on his claims and in order to defend the freedom of the cdrtools software against these claims that have been based on an incorrect GPL interpretation (it would turn the GPL into a non-free license if taken seriously), the license of the original software was changed to avoid the GPL as far as possible. This was done after many people from the OSS community and several lawyers have been asked about possible problems, caused by the planned license change. As nobody did see a problem, the license change was carried out. A lot of new code and functionality was introduced since then and many older bugs have been fixed in the original software. Nearly 50% of the current code is code that was introduced or rewritten after the license change did take place. Note that the people who claim that there is a "potential problem that might result in a lawsuit" did never verify a possible problem and as they do not even own any Copyright on the code, they themselves are not allowed to sue people based on the cdrtools code. At the same time, the fork introduced many new bugs and questionable changes that reduced it's portability and it's usability. While the code quality of the fork declined, some of the changes introduced Copyright law violations [1] and even GPL [2] violations, making the fork undistributable. In December 2006 the initiators of the unlawful changes have been contacted and informed in depth about the violations. They have been asked to make the fork legal again to no avail. Eight months after the fork was created, the development of the fork stopped on May 6th 2007 as it's initiator stopped "working" on it. For some time, I was in hope that the big number of bugs in the fork (there are approx. 150 different bugs in total if you sum up all entries from all bug tracking systems from various Linux distributors) and the fact that it is no longer actively been worked on, would cause the Linux distributions to return to the legal original software. This did unfortunately not happen. I did wait a long time in hope that the problem will go away initiated from judiciousness but after some time, I am no longer willing to tolerate the distribution of the questionable fork. About a year ago, I asked the Sun Microsystems legal department to do another full legal review for the original software to make sure that none of the claims from the people who attack cdrtools is valid. In October 2008, the Sun legal department confirmed that there is no legal problem with the original software. At CeBIT on March 6th 2009, there was a meeting with me (Jörg Schilling, the main developer and main Copyright holder), Simon Phipps (the Sun Microsystems OpenSource Evangelist), a neutral observer and a FTP-master from Debian. During this meeting, Debian agreed to start shipping the original software again as soon as possible. I am in hope that RedHat and Fedora will also start to distribute the original software again and stop distributing the fork "cdrkit" because it is in conflict with the Copyright law [3] because it is full of well known bugs and because it is missing most features, people today expect from such software. Missing features are a typical result from decoupling from the main stream development. The source in the fork is based on 4 year old sources from the original. Note that working on the code from the fork is not an option as the initiators rejected to remove the Copyright violations 30 months ago and as too many show stopper bugs are unfixed in the fork since more than 24 months. I am looking forward to see RedHat and Fedora start to ship again the legal original software from ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/alpha/ and rejoin the community of OSS and user friendly distributions. Don't let the OSS users suffer anymore from the conflict introduced by a single hostile person. RedHat and Fedora should deliver what people need in order to be able to write CDs/DVDs/BluRays and this is the original software. The original software is easy to compile (you just need to type "make" - or better "smake") and it is 100% complete, so it does not need any unusual software package besides a compiler. The original software is expected to be always bug-free as bug fixes typically take only a few hours. The original software strictly follows all written conditions from the GPL [4]. Under the assumption that the GPL is a free OSS license [5] (and in special is compatible with the text in section 9 of the OSS definition) and that typical Linux distributions are at least mostly legal, the license combinations used in cdrtools are of course legal too, according to the best GPL explanation [6] [7] I could find in the net and of course according to the Sun Microsystems legal department. Lawrence Rosen, the Author of [6] and [7] advised the Open Source Initiative (www.opensource.org). -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some statistics on the project activities: Cdrecord started as project in January 1996, but it was built on top of older Code (e.g. libschily from 1984, libscg from 1986 and the schily makefile system from 1992). Cdrtools include now also e.g. mkisofs that started as Project in September 1993 and that is maintained by the cdrtools project since spring 1997. The license change towards using CDDL for most code has been done on May 15th 2006. In the time between January 1985 and December 1995, there have been 638 file putbacks done in 385 groups (385 unique delta comments). In the time between January 1996 and May 14th 2006, there have been 8847 file putbacks done in 4280 groups (4280 unique delta comments). In the time between May 15th 2006 and today, there have been 4735 file putbacks done in 1695 groups (1695 unique delta comments). Approx 30% of all putbacks have been made after May 15th 2006, this is why the fork misses so many features people like to see today.... In the time past May 6th 2007, there have been 2441 file putbacks done in 882 groups (882 unique delta comments). During the same time, there have been 63 putbacks in the fork. This why people call the fork "dead". In other words: the original software has a sustained rate between 2.5 and 3 file changes per day since more than 13 years. This is why there are no know bugs and no known problems with the original software. While the original project did deliver ~ 50 new releases (that did not have any known bugs at the time of delivery) since May 15th 2006, the fork did not deliver a single release without plenty of well known bugs. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__13.html [2] Whether it not the GPL violations apply to Redhat and Fedora also, depends on the way a typical Redhat/Fedora installation looks like. [3] http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/index.html [4] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.php [5] http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php [6] http://www.rosenlaw.com/html/GPL.PDF [7] http://www.rosenlaw.com/Rosen_Ch06.pdf Please help to defend OpenSource Software against attacks! Best Regards Jörg -- EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin js(a)cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) joerg.schilling(a)fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily

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License for wallpapers in old Fedora releases
by Nicu Buculei 10 Aug '09

10 Aug '09

At the Design-Team we figured it would be handy to provide (perhaps in a gallery) wallpapers from the old releases, so the users who liked them can have a handy access at the images. It is also useful to have when documenting our history. However, we have a licensing issue with the images created before the team establishment, from Fedora Core 1 to Fedora 7, when they were created behing the closed doors, at the Red Hat Desktop Team. My understanding is, being created Red Hat employees as part of their normal job and included into Fedora, those should have some Free license. However, for compatibility with the artwork produced currently and for easy access by everybody, it would be useful to have access to those images under a CreativeCommons license (Attribution or Attribution - Share Alike). From seeing the recent license chance of the wiki, I expect the license change for old wallpapers to be also doable but legal advice is needed. -- nicu :: http://nicubunu.ro :: http://nicubunu.blogspot.com/

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Does input method table count as software?
by Ding Yi Chen 10 Aug '09

10 Aug '09

Hi, I am packing Dayi3, a Chinese input method for IBus. The license of the table (as shown in http://code.google.com/p/openvanilla/source/browse/trunk/Modules/SharedData… ) states: This table is authorized by Taiyi (http://www.dayi.com) for free download and use. Users may not distribute the modified character encoding rules, but can change the table format for other input method and platform. Input method tables are data tables that at least contain two fields: "input code" and corresponding character. These tables are not executable, and require input method engine such as ibus-table or scim-table to load them. I am not sure whether input method table is a software or a content. If it is a software, what's the license? If it is a content, is CC-BY-ND appropriate? Regards, -- Ding-Yi Chen Software Engineer Internationalization Group Red Hat, Inc. Looking to carve out IT costs? www.apac.redhat.com/promo/carveoutcosts/

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License for programs and data that can only be used in GPL/LGPL/BSD/PD applications?
by Ding Yi Chen 04 Aug '09

04 Aug '09

Hi, I am interested in importing voice data of gcin (Yet another Chinese input system) to Fedora. However, the README of the voice data states (translated to English): This data is recorded by sprec. This voice data can only be used in GPL, LGPL, BSD and Public Domain software. Data files converted/extended from this voice data should also follow this term. What license should we put for this kind of software/data? Regards, -- Ding-Yi Chen Software Engineer Internationalization Group Red Hat, Inc. Looking to carve out IT costs? www.apac.redhat.com/promo/carveoutcosts/

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legal August 2009