legal February 2011

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

16 participants
12 discussions

Re: [Fedora-legal-list] CAcert.org license
by Tom Callaway 12 Feb '16

12 Feb '16

On Tue, 2008-12-09 at 23:03 +0100, Matthias Saou wrote: > > >>>>> "TC" == Tom \"spot\" Callaway <Tom> writes: > > > > TC> Given that it does not give permission for us to redistribute (the > > TC> cornerstone requirement for Content licenses), this license is not > > TC> acceptable for Fedora. > > > > I guess I'm glad I looked before approving the package, but I have to > > wonder: Do the cacert folks actually want anyone to use their > > certificates? I mean, this prevents basically everyone from using > > them, because they can't come with the OS or the browser. > > Personally, the more I read the document, the more I'm confused. > > "You may NOT distribute certificates or root keys under this > licence"... does this mean we can distribute under a different license? Well, sortof. The wording here is strange because you can get a different license from the CA issuer. We can't just pick a license, but the CA issuer might be willing to give us a different one. > Would it be worth getting in contact with CAcert.org in order to try > and have them allow us to redistribute the root certs under conditions > which are acceptable to the Fedora Project? Probably, yes. :) ~spot

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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Trademark approval for publishing books about Fedora
by Paul W. Frields 28 Feb '11

28 Feb '11

On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 05:40:39PM -0300, Igor Pires Soares wrote: > Hello! > > A Fedora user from Brazil wants to know if it is necessary to get a > trademark approval for publishing a book about Fedora. > > I have seen a lot of books about Fedora and RHEL on book stores but > never got such a question. Is there any guidelines for that? http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal/TrademarkGuidelines#Publications AIUI, it's OK to use the name Fedora in a title such as "How to Use Fedora <N>", as long as the book doesn't imply it's sponsored or endorsed by the Fedora Project or Red Hat. The book must include the proper trademark attribution statement (there's a helpful link at that URL above). Screenshots in the book are also OK, including, for example, one that shows the Fedora trademarks from the main menu. Questions like this should generally go to either legal(a)fp.o or the legal list: http://lists.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/legal I'll cc the legal list and set followups to go there, in case anyone wants to clarify the above guidelines. -- 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/ Where open source multiplies: http://opensource.com

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fluxbox has CC-BY-NC-SA files
by Josh Boyer 25 Feb '11

25 Feb '11

Looking at fluxbox I noticed that almost all of it's theme.cfg files are licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA according to the headers: ############################################################ # This work is licensed under the Creative Commons # # Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. # # To view a copy of this license, visit # # http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ # # or send a letter to Creative Commons, # # 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA. # ############################################################ Interestingly enough they point to the URL for the CC license that doesn't have the Non-Commercial clause. You can find these files under usr/share/fluxbox/styles/{arch,bloe,bora_black,bora_blue,bora_green,carp,green_tea,ostrich,zimek_*}/theme.cfg As and example, you can find them in this build: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=209141 I thought I would raise the issue here and see whether those files need to be removed from the Fedora package or not. The Non Commercial clause seems to make them non-free according to the Fedora guidelines. josh

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[Fwd: Re: [publican-list] [Fwd: Re: r1722 - in trunk/publican-fedora: . .tx]]
by Nick Bebout 23 Feb '11

23 Feb '11

Rudi suggested I forward this to the legal list instead of just to spot. ---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: [Fwd: Re: [publican-list] [Fwd: Re: r1722 - in trunk/publican-fedora: . .tx]] From: "Nick Bebout" <nb(a)fedoraproject.org> Date: Tue, February 22, 2011 5:37 pm To: spot(a)fedoraproject.org Cc: rlandmann(a)fedoraproject.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tom, Your thoughts on creating our own publican and publican-fedora repos? Feel free to respond either to me or to publican-list(a)redhat.com (although that list does require subscribing first). Nick ---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: Re: [publican-list] [Fwd: Re: r1722 - in trunk/publican-fedora: . .tx] From: "Nick Bebout" <nb(a)fedoraproject.org> Date: Tue, February 22, 2011 5:29 pm To: jfearn(a)redhat.com "Publican discussions" <publican-list(a)redhat.com> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please inform me what part of http://www.transifex.net/about/terms/ grants them any more rights than the normal publican license at http://svn.fedorahosted.org/svn/publican/trunk/publican/LICENSE does. "By submitting public (non-private) Content to Indifex for inclusion on your Website, you grant Indifex a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying and promoting your account or project." I believe that per the publican license those rights are granted to everyone by the GPLv2+ which publican is licensed under. Also, what prevents someone from creating a separate repo to use for keeping the fedora.transifex.net translations in? Nick > On Tue, 2011-02-22 at 16:11 -0700, Stephen John Smoogen wrote: >> On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 16:00, Jeff Fearn <jfearn(a)redhat.com> wrote: >> >> >> If there are legal concerns about this please bring them up with >> Fedora Legal. >> > >> > Publican is not a Fedora project and Fedora Legal does not represents >> > Publican or advocate for it. It most certainly has no stake in any >> > commercial relationships Publican enters in to. >> >> I guess we will go to the next level. >> >> If you have a problem, then please have Red Hat legal contact Fedora >> legal. I hear they work really near each other. > > Regardless of what legal advice we get or who we get it from, it is > completely inappropriate for Fedora to make those decisions or create > those commercial relationships. > > Cheers, Jeff. > > _______________________________________________ > publican-list mailing list > publican-list(a)redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/publican-list > Wiki: https://fedorahosted.org/publican > _______________________________________________ publican-list mailing list publican-list(a)redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/publican-list Wiki: https://fedorahosted.org/publican

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openNURBS toolkit license
by Jiri Kastner 18 Feb '11

18 Feb '11

hi all, i want package openNURBS toolkit and get it to fedora, but i'm not sure about license, which is here: http://www.opennurbs.org/docs.htm can you, please, review this license? thanks best regards jiri kastner

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Forced copyright assignment
by Jason L Tibbitts III 16 Feb '11

16 Feb '11

A package I'm reviewing includes the following in a "docs/license" file (I have wrapped the text which was originally on two lines): ========= The !IguanaWorks USB Infrared Transceiver firmware and drivers are provided under the [http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/info/GPLv2.html Gnu Public License (GPL), version 2]. You are free to use the firmware and driver software freely within the constraints of the license. Any changes submitted back to !IguanaWorks become the property of !IguanaWorks and are then licensed to others under the GPL version 2. '''If you submit changes to us, you are giving !IguanaWorks the copyright on those changes.''' If you are interested in commerical use of our hardware or software, please contact us for alternative licensing. ========= I have a few questions regarding this: Is it remotely valid for them to claim copyright without any formal copyright assignment documents being exchanged? I suppose this depends on what "submit" means, but it sure sounds as if they claim that you hand over your copyright just by being friendly and sending a bugfix to them. Does this in any way impact the suitability of this package for Fedora? The firmware mentioned is given in the form of hex code, which doesn't seem to be "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it." I know the issue of GPL'd binary-only stuff must have come up before; is there a summary of the issue anywhere I can look at? Thanks, - J<

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License header of some KDE applications
by Julian Aloofi 13 Feb '11

13 Feb '11

Hello, in some KDE applications (for example yakuake) there is a quite uncommon GPL header in the source files, which reads like this: This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License or (at your option) version 3 or any later version accepted by the membership of KDE e.V. (or its successor appro- ved by the membership of KDE e.V.), which shall act as a proxy defined in Section 14 of version 3 of the license. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/. In the review for knights ( https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=674180 ) the question how to handle this came up. What would be the appropriate License tag in the spec file? Would be nice if legal could shed some light on this :) Regards, Julian

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Drupal module licensing
by Orion Poplawski 12 Feb '11

12 Feb '11

Most of the drupal modules that I've looked into packaging do not have any license preamble in the code. They contain a copy of the GPLv2 license in LICENSE.txt. As such, I've marked them as GPLv2. According to http://drupal.org/licensing/faq/#q4 modules on the drupal.org cvs site should be GPLv2+, and I've had requests to update the license tag: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=640830#c3 However, without explicit mention in the text of the module code I'm hesitant to change the license tag. Help? -- Orion Poplawski Technical Manager 303-415-9701 x222 NWRA/CoRA Division FAX: 303-415-9702 3380 Mitchell Lane orion(a)cora.nwra.com Boulder, CO 80301 http://www.cora.nwra.com

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possible ettercap license issue.
by Dave Jones 09 Feb '11

09 Feb '11

This is in the code of ettercap... (ec_main.c) 268 static void time_check(void) 269 { 270 /* 271 * a nice easter egg... 272 * just to waste some time of code reviewers... ;) 273 * 274 * and no, you can't simply remove this code, you'll break the license... 275 * 276 * trust me, it's not evil ;) only a boring afternoon, and nothing to do... 277 */ 278 time_t K9=time(NULL);char G5P[1<<6],*o=G5P,*O;uint U4M, _,__=0; char dMG[]= 279 "\n*\n^1U4Mm\x04wW#K\x2e\x0e+X\x7f\f,N'U!I-L5?";struct{char X5T[7];int dMG; 280 int U4M;} X5T[]={{"N!WwFr", 0x414c6f52,0},{"S6FfUe", 0x4e614741,0}};sprintf 281 (G5P,"%s",ctime(&K9));o+=4;O=strchr(o+4,' ');*O=0; for(U4M=(1<<5)-(1<<2)+1; 282 U4M>0;U4M--)dMG[U4M]=dMG[U4M]^dMG[U4M-1];for(U4M=0;U4M<sizeof(X5T)/sizeof(* 283 X5T);U4M++){for(_=(1<<2)+1; _>0;_--)X5T[U4M].X5T[_]=X5T[U4M].X5T[_]^X5T[U4M 284 ].X5T[_-1];if(!strcmp(X5T[U4M].X5T,o)){char T0Q[]="\n\0O!M4\x14r\x1doO;T0Q" 285 "(\bm\x19m\bz\x19x\b(A2\x12s\x1d=X5T=Q&G5Pp\x03l\n~\th\x1a\x7f_dMG\x06hH-@" 286 "!H$\x04s\x1av\x1a:X=\x1d|\f|\x0ek\ba\0t\x11u[u[{^-m\fb\x16\x7f\x19v\x04oA" 287 "\x2e\\;1;K9\\/\\|9w#f4\x1a\x34\x1a\x1a";for(_=(1<<7)-(1<<3)-(1<<2)+1;_>0;_ 288 --)T0Q[_]=T0Q[_]^T0Q[_-1];write(1,dMG,1);while(__++<1<<5)printf("%c",(1<<5) 289 +(1<<3)+(1<<1));X5T[U4M].dMG=ntohl(X5T[U4M].dMG);printf(dMG,&X5T[U4M].dMG); 290 while(--__) printf("%c",(1<<6)-(1<<4)-(1<<3)+(1<<1)); printf(T0Q,&X5T[U4M]. 291 dMG);getchar();break;}} 292 } The comment strikes me as a GPL incompatibility. (License is GPLv2+) Should anything be done about this ? (The obfuscated code seems to check a date, and print a message asking you to send birthday wishes to the author. Cute, but annoying to come across such things when auditting for security issues). Dave

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license for Life Lexicon included in golly
by Eric Smith 07 Feb '11

07 Feb '11

On 14-DEC-2010, I wrote asking about the license for the Life Lexicon that is included in golly. The license is: This lexicon is copyright © Stephen Silver, 1997-2005. It may be freely copied and/or modified as long as due credit is given. This includes not just credit to those who have contributed in some way to the present version (see above), but also credit to those who have made any modifications. It was pointed out that this license does not explicitly grant distribution rights. I have been unable to contact Mr. Silver. However, I posted to the golly-test mailing list, and got the reply below from Tom Rokicki, one of the golly authors. Is this satisfactory? I suspect that it is not, but I'd like to have a semi-official opinion on it before I ask Tom to pester Mr. Silver about a license change. Assuming that the email below isn't sufficient, and assuming that Mr. Silver is willing to change the license, would a chnage from "It may be freely copied and/or modified..." to "It may be freely copied, distributed, and/or modified..." result in the license being acceptable? I'd prefer not to go through this process more than once. Thanks! Eric ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2011 09:52:11 -0800 Message-ID: <AANLkTikA1MABN0Z7O9m4tvgM2J+12GSoeCnYi10LzoEG(a)mail.gmail.com> Subject: Fwd: Strange entry in the lexicon! From: Tom Rokicki <rokicki(a)gmail.com> To: eric(a)brouhaha.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Here's the original request and response. If this is insufficient, I can ask Stephen for something, but I'm not sure what exactly. Is there a standard form/request we use in such cases? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Stephen Silver <life(a)argentum.freeserve.co.uk> Date: Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 3:00 PM Subject: Re: Strange entry in the lexicon! To: Tom Rokicki <rokicki(a)gmail.com> > Now, Andrew T and I have got a new Life program coming out; > would it be okay if we included the Lexicon (subject to all the > conditions specified, such as giving appropriate credit etc.?) Yes, sure. -- Stephen Silver

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legal February 2011