legal May 2012

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

6 participants
7 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

4 6

php-channel-* licence
by Remi Collet 21 May '12

21 May '12

Hi, php-channel-* packages only provides 1 repository configuration file which is available from web, ex: http://pear.phpqatools.org/channel.xml For now License is often taken from the packages provided. Ex php-channel-phpunit is "BSD" because all packages provided in the phpunit channel are BSD. Some are "Public Domain" Ex : php-channel-horde, because provided packages are released under various licenses (BSD, MIT, GPL, ...). Shouldn't all the php-channel-* set as "Public Domain" ? In this case, I will add a small note in the PHP Guildelines. Thanks, Remi.

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Mixing BSD and Apache licenses for specific arch in jemalloc on EPEL5/ppc
by Ingvar Hagelund 18 May '12

18 May '12

Hello, legal. I'd like some advice, please. I maintain the jemalloc package for Fedora and EPEL. To make it compile on EPEL5/POWER, I need a patch for 32bit atomic operations on ppc. I found one in the Boost library (Boost license), but some googling discovers it actually originates from apr (Apache license). jemalloc is distributed under the BSD license I'm unsure on how compatible the BSD and Apache licenses are. Could I just add the patch and a few extra lines to COPYING with %ifarch ppc ppc64, %if 0{?rhel} == 5, mentioning the Apache license and the patch for that platform? Note that the patch is no longer needed in epel6 and fedora. I guess modern versions of gcc provides the missing atomic stuff. I have contacted jemalloc upstream. Their comments suggest that this is a non-issue, that is, that the code in question is too specific to be copyrighted with a license, since the number of ways to implement atomic operations for a specified cpu are very limited, and all the sketched implementation examples floating around use more or less the same algorithm. Patch and short discussion starts here: http://www.canonware.com/pipermail/jemalloc-discuss/2012-March/000136.html I also contacted apr upstream. The initial commit of the code was done by Greg Ames, http://marc.info/?t=101356337500001&r=1&w=2 . He pointed me to the latest version, and told me to use it while adding the Apache License, and added "I think you'll find that the Apache license is very compatible with the BSD license." PS: Note that Greg's initial commit preceeds the one copy-pasted into the Boost library, so if this actually is an issue, Boost (or the Boost maintainer in Fedora?) should check out this as well. Ingvar

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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Android License for Gluster and Fedora Projec t (was Fwd: Change in glusterfs[master]: Provide missing basename_r and dirname_r)
by Richard Fontana 15 May '12

15 May '12

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 08:30:56AM -0400, Kaleb Keithley wrote: > > I presume that because this looks like a BSD (no advertising clause) license that it would be okay to include as "contrib" code with Gluster. Yes, as noted by Emmanuel Dreyfus this is the GPL-compatible 2-clause BSD license. > It's not in the Fedora Project list of {good|bad} licenses yet, hence the reason I'm also forwarding to legal(a)fp.o. The FreeBSD variant is listed https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/BSD#2ClauseBSD It includes a sort of disclaimer of opinion at the end. Perhaps Fedora should list a more generic version of the 2-clause BSD license as the example, or should list one separately. - RF > > > ----- Forwarded Message ----- > From: "Emmanuel Dreyfus" <manu(a)netbsd.org> > To: kkeithle(a)redhat.com > Cc: "Gluster Build System" <jenkins(a)build.gluster.com> > Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 7:51:38 AM > Subject: Re: Change in glusterfs[master]: Provide missing basename_r and dirname_r > > Kaleb KEITHLEY (Code Review) <root(a)dev.gluster.com> wrote: > > > It's misleading to say these are FreeBSD's thread-safe functions. > > FreeBSD's implementations aren't thread-safe. A more accurate > > description is that these are thread-safe implementations derived from > > FreeBSD's implementations. > > What about adopting Android flavor? It is 2 clause BSD and does not use > pthread stuff. I suspect it will be better performance-wise. > > http://www.netmite.com/android/mydroid/bionic/libc/bionic/basename_r.c > http://www.netmite.com/android/mydroid/bionic/libc/bionic/dirname_r.c > > -- > Emmanuel Dreyfus > http://hcpnet.free.fr/pubz > manu(a)netbsd.org >

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Redistributing license text with binary RPMs
by Mikolaj Izdebski 11 May '12

11 May '12

Hello, Many Fedora-approved software licences require binary distributions to include the license text along with the software. For example the family of BSD licenses says that "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" and ASL 2.0 says that "You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a copy of this License". My understanding is that in case of Fedora redistributing a copy of the license along with RPM package is a prerequisite for redistributing it al all. In some cases the upstream itself doesn't redistribute the copy of the license. From technical point of view it's fine because they are copyright holders and therefore they can do whatever they want with the software they have rights to. In some other cases the upstream is providing source code only and source distribution doesn't require including the text of the license. Fedora Licensing Guidelines says: "if (and only if) the source package includes the text of the license(s) in its own file, then that file, containing the text of the license(s) for the package must be included in %doc". This can cause problems in some cases. My questions are: 1. According to Fedora Licensing Guidelines, is it prohibited to include the text of the license within the binary RPM package if the source package does not include the text of the license? 2. Isn't redistributing binary RPMs without the license text included (in case the license requires that) considered as violation of the license? 3. What is the proper way of handling the case when upstream is rejecting requests to include the license text in their distribution, while they are requiring Fedora to include it? (An example of an affected package is annox, which is currently in its review process: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=808768) Thank you, Mikolaj Izdebski Red Hat

2 1

Trademarked items in a fedora package
by Johannes Lips 07 May '12

07 May '12

Hello, I am in the process of packaging up a JMapViewer [1], the JMapViewer_src.jar inside of the release zip [2] file includes a little bing.png which is used by some functions. I already contacted upstream and there is no problem removing those functions altogether, since it is fairly modular. I also already removed the png and all relevant pieces of code in accordance to this guide [3], since I thought it is appropriate in this case. I just wanted to know if this is unnecessary and there is no problem in shipping this picture or if the removal is right. I hope I didn't forget anything, Johannes [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JMapViewer [2] http://svn.openstreetmap.org/applications/viewer/jmapviewer/releases/2011-0… [3] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:SourceURL#When_Upstream_uses_Prohib…

2 1

MP3
by Orcan Ogetbil 02 May '12

02 May '12

What is the current situation with MP3 allowance in Fedora? I thought 2012 was the year when we could -at least- have not-patent-encumbered, free MP3 _decoding_. Can you please update us on the latest status? Thanks, Orcan

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legal May 2012