legal June 2020

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

13 participants
9 discussions

Lua Logo license text (restricted modifications)
by Miro Hrončok 08 Sep '20

08 Sep '20

Hello. I try to package a software that shows the Lua logo in it. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1834280 The logo's license is: Copyright © 1998 Lua.org. Graphic design by Alexandre Nakonechnyj. Permission is hereby granted, without written agreement and without license or royalty fees, to use, copy, and distribute this logo for any purpose, including commercial applications, subject to the following conditions: - The origin of this logo must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you drew the original logo. - The only modification you can make is to adapt the orbiting text to your product name. - The logo can be used in any scale as long as the relative proportions of its elements are maintained. ---end--- Clearly, this does not allow modifications, but do we have some exceptions for branding? Or do I need to strip the logo out of the package? -- Miro Hrončok -- Phone: +420777974800 IRC: mhroncok

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EUPL v1.2
by Björn 'besser82' Esser 24 Aug '20

24 Aug '20

Hello, I wanted to ask in general whether the EUPL v1.2 [1,2] is an acceptable license for Fedora. If it is acceptable, can we please list it in the wiki as a "good license", please? Thanks Björn [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32017D0863 [2] https://opensource.org/licenses/EUPL-1.2

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Question about license of Geant4 and its datasets
by Qiyu Yan 30 Jun '20

30 Jun '20

I am planning to package Geant 4 for Fedora, but I noticed Geant4's license is different from an usual one, which can be found here [1], I don't know if this is acceptable, if so, can you please add this to the 'Good License' list? And this toolkit can be funicational only with a number of datasets, mostly released by National Nuclear Data Center, I can't find any license attached to those data files. National Nuclear Data Center gives a term of use here [2] saying > Users should feel free to use the information from NuDat 2 (tables and plots) in their work, reports, presentations, articles and books. A general citations list of those datasets can be found here [3]. Seems that all of that data is royalty-free but instead of being released as a part of a software, it is more likely to be released as scientific papers. I think the term here [4] can apply here, but unsure. So I need help from the legal team to determine if this is acceptable. [1]: https://github.com/Geant4/geant4/blob/master/LICENSE [2]: https://www.nndc.bnl.gov/nudat2/help/index.jsp [3]: https://geant4.web.cern.ch/support/data_files_citations [4]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:LicensingGuidelines?rd=Packaging/L…

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Licensing Violation by iControlOne and ADT
by Rob Stitt 28 Jun '20

28 Jun '20

have the ADT Pulse security system (www.adt.com), which uses an iControlOne hub that is managed with software that is written and copyrighted by "iControlOne". The software itself says to go to "[http://www.icontrolone.com/]" to see open source license information. When I go there and then click the link for the "Open Source Attributions" page, that brings up a list of software, licences, and whether or not they have modified the code. One of the entries in the list is: ./external/elfutils http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:OSL1.1 Furthermore, the site says "Modified versions of open source software available upon request.", but they have ABSOLUTELY NO contact information nor any method listed to contact them. With no way to actually make the request, their statement about "being available upon request" is nothing short of a fraudulent misstatement. As such, this company is clearly violating the terms of the fedora license, as they provide no method for actually requesting such a copy of the software--and there is no visible way to even find any contact for the actual company itself. Sincerely, ...Rob Stitt rob(a)robstitt.com

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Packaging firmwares
by Robert-André Mauchin 28 Jun '20

28 Jun '20

Hello, I have a review request for a firmware: Boot firmware (ATF, UEFI...) for Mellanox BlueField: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1846139 I would like some opinions on whether this is acceptable firmware. The binary contains open source code for which the license are documented, but no code source is provided, only the resulting binary firmware. Thanks for any help, Robert-André

4 6

License of Go/Rust or any statically linked packages
by Vít Ondruch 26 Jun '20

26 Jun '20

Looking for example at git-lfs: https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/git-lfs/blob/master/f/git-lfs.spec I am afraid that the license field is wrong. Since the Go packages are statically linked, that means also content of all the BR is part of the binary packages and therefore should include their licenses. This also applies to Rust and all other statically linked packages. I believe the guidelines should be amended to handle this scenario and all the packages fixed appropriately. Thoughts? Vít

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A non-vanilla GPLv3+ license question
by Qiyu Yan 13 Jun '20

13 Jun '20

In this https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1846175 review request, the upstream license is https://github.com/trojan-gfw/trojan/blob/master/LICENSE That is a GPLv3 with the exception: In addition, as a special exception, the copyright holders give permission to link the code of portions of this program with the OpenSSL library under certain conditions as described in each individual source file, and distribute linked combinations including the two. It looks like a GNU General Public License v3.0 only, with Classpath exception, but I can't tell. Anyone can help me? Thanks in advance!

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Packaging exfatprogs for Fedora
by Vojtěch Trefný 03 Jun '20

03 Jun '20

Hi, I have a question about exFAT in Fedora. I would like to package exfatprogs[1] (new userspace exFAT utilities from Samsung) for Fedora but exFAT is still listed in the forbidden items[2]. I assume this was not updated when Microsoft allowed including the exFAT driver in kernel and exFAT should be allowed now. But I'm not a legal expert so it's possible I'm missing something here. So my question is simple: can we package exfatprogs for Fedora now or not? Thanks. [1] https://github.com/exfatprogs/exfatprogs [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Forbidden_items -- Vojtech Trefny

1 1

Legal blockers regarding WSL release?
by CJ Harries 02 Jun '20

02 Jun '20

In May 2017, Rich Turner from Microsoft mentioned that a Fedora release would be coming to WSL (https://web.archive.org/web/https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/new-…). In June 2019, Matthew Miller from Fedora said there was a "blocker [in] the legal agreement for [the Fedora Project] to put the installer in the [Microsoft] store" (https://web.archive.org/web/https://twitter.com/mattdm/status/1140957608653…). I'm unable to find anything on the wiki (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Legal) or here in the legal mailing list that explains either the cancellation or the blockers. Normally I'm able to find great explanations regarding legal issues, so this must have slipped through the cracks. 1. What are the legal blockers in the MS App Developer Agreement (https://web.archive.org/web/https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/windows/… I noticed some language regarding FOSS that might not be GPL compatible. If that's not the right agreement, which one is and what are its issues? 2. WSL 2 introduced a boilerplate project to connect new distros (http://web.archive.org/web/https://github.com/microsoft/WSL-DistroLauncher). I believe (haven't tested; please correct me if wrong) it can be run only using newer Microsoft FOSS tools under an MIT license. Could this tool be used in an official capacity? If not, what are the blockers? 3. WSL 1 was explicitly not FOSS (http://web.archive.org/web/https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/1). As far as I know, WSL 2 still relies on Hyper-V, so, even hypothetically supposing everything else about WSL 2 is open source, could WSL 2 fall under acceptable licensing criteria? Microsoft discussed some of the tweaks they made if the hypothetical is unrealistic (http://web.archive.org/web/https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/shipp…). 4. Tom Callaway (a Fedora legal liaison w/o notable mutant powers http://web.archive.org/web/https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Spot) provided some excellent suggestions for Microsoft two years ago regarding Microsoft packages being accepted by the Fedora Project (http://web.archive.org/web/https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/le…). Are there similar suggestions users can send to Microsoft to champion acceptance? In doing research to present these questions, I think I have a general idea regarding WSL. However, earlier in the legal thread I linked (http://web.archive.org/web/https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/le…), Tom explicitly asks for no idle speculation, so I'd prefer an experienced opinion. I really appreciate all the hard work that goes into this. As a developer, not a lawyer, this topic can be very esoteric at times. Microsoft has been making an effort to move away from EEE in recent years, so getting some perspective from the Fedora team regarding their efforts would be very useful to FOSS stewards. Thanks for your time! Have a rad day.

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legal June 2020