legal December 2021

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

10 participants
7 discussions

FIGlet fonts
by Lyes Saadi 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

Hello Legal, I'm bringing back a discussion from 2012[1]: Figlet fonts! Indeed, I am trying to package python-pyfiglet[2] as a dependency for other packages. But, after the review, it came up that a lot of weird fonts were included. At the time, I didn't know anything about the discussion, and decided to abort everything. Recently though, a developer contacted me through the bug report, and proposed to help on the issue. He triaged the fonts and separated them depending on whether they were Open-Source or not, and we were thus able to create a clean package with none of the problematic fonts in it. In that discussion[3], emerged the fact that a discussion over this already happened ([1]), but it seems that either no consensus was reached, or that such consensus was lost to time as I wasn't able to find any conversation on figlet either on legal or devel mailing lists archives. And, it seems that the issue was just simply avoided since figlet ended up removing the problematic fonts anyway. But, upstream would like to keep the problematic fonts if possible in Fedora. And so, I would like to ask Legal to either give me the answer, if it actually was a settled matter, or to reach a consensus on Figlet fonts. To resume the situation (as I understand it, I am not a lawyer, obviously): In the US, fonts glyphs are not copyright-able as it is considered insufficiently creative. For the same reason, Bitmap fonts (fonts defined pixel by pixel) are also not copyright-able, as they are only considered as data which represents glyphs. But, Vector fonts (fonts defined using drawing instructions and code), is, on the other hand, copyright-able because it is defined through a software code. Then, we come to Figlet fonts. For those not aware of what Figlet fonts, they are also known as ASCII fonts: __ __ ____ __ ____ / / / /__ / / /___ / / ___ ____ _____ _/ / / / /_/ / _ \/ / / __ \ / / / _ \/ __ `/ __ `/ / / / __ / __/ / / /_/ / / /___/ __/ /_/ / /_/ / /_/ /_/ /_/\___/_/_/\____( ) /_____/\___/\__, /\__,_/_(_) |/ /____/ The issue with those is that no ruling (as far as I know) ever concerned that type of font in US Court. Though, one argument would be that Figlet fonts are similar to Bitmap fonts, as they only contain data about glyphs, and do not, in the same way as Vector fonts do, contain code giving to the computer drawing instructions for the fonts. As such Figlet fonts are not modular, or extensible, they just contain raw data about a font. But still, all this is speculation, and, as I said, I am not a lawyer, so I don't have any slight idea if such a defense would hold in court. I hope to have resumed the situation clearly enough and that I didn't make any mistake. Greetings, Lyes Saadi [1]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=820642 [2]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1876108 [3]: https://github.com/pwaller/pyfiglet/issues/89 PS: Can we remove the FE-legal blocker from the review request now that all the fonts have been sorted out?

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Brainpool Curves in Fedora (openssl, libgcrypt, gnupg)
by Timothée Ravier 06 Apr '22

06 Apr '22

Hi everyone, The ECC Brainpool Curves [1][2] are currently not available in Fedora as according to this BZ [3], this needs Fedora Legal approval. Could someone from the legal team take a look to see if there are any blockers regarding Brainpool Curves inclusion in Fedora? Thanks! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic-curve_cryptography#Implementation [2] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5639 [3] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1413618

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Boolean logic in license
by Miroslav Suchý 19 Jan '22

19 Jan '22

I want to clarify one thing I am working on. When I have this string in License tag in spec: Good License or Bad license Then the result is Good license and the package is allowed to be in Fedora, right? Miroslav

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Fedora license categories
by Richard Fontana 05 Jan '22

05 Jan '22

A bunch of us are looking into various possible changes in how the information on Fedora good/bad licenses is maintained, reviewed, classified and represented. One aspect of this is the likely effective replacement of such wiki pages as https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main with a repository (such as https://pagure.io/fedora-legal/license-data). Among other things this has prompted a review of how licenses are currently categorized by Fedora. In particular, Fedora has separate lists of good and bad licenses for content https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Good_Licenses_3 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Bad_Licenses_3 and for documentation https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Good_Licenses_2 https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Bad_Licenses_2 A question that has arisen is whether we actually need to treat documentation and content as separate categories. "Content" (and documentation, software, fonts, etc.) are not defined in that wiki page as far as I can tell. (FWIW the FPCA defines "Content" in a way that includes documentation: "any copyrightable material that is not Code, such as, without limitation, (i) non-functional data sets, (ii) documentation, (iii) wiki edits, (iv) music files, (v) graphic image files, (vi) help files, and (vii) other kinds of copyrightable material that the Fedora Council has classified as "content" rather than "code".") There is some overlap in the content and documentation license lists and the other lists as well -- for example, CC-BY is given as a good documentation license and a good content license. I think the answer is "yes", because of this policy: "Note that content must be freely distributable without restriction for inclusion in Fedora, and that a written statement from the content owner granting this is considered an approved license for Fedora. The one exception is that we permit content (but only content) which restricts modification as long as that is the only restriction." And indeed the content license lists includes a few non-libre licenses including at least one well known one that does not permit derivative works -- CC BY-ND. I'm assuming that Fedora would not allow documentation under a non-libre license, if only because there isn't a similar caveat in the documentation license section and all the good documentation licenses appear to be assumed to be libre. I think there may be some arguable counterexamples that might be explained away as covering things that are non-documentation content as opposed to documentation. I also am pretty sure that Fedora has not attempted to officially list all the approved non-libre licenses for "content" but I'm not sure if this is something intentional. (The categorical example that comes to mind is the inclusion of certain kinds of files from standards documents, such as schemas and the like.) Separately, I wonder if Fedora really needs separate categories for software and documentation, if the criteria for approval are basically the same -- essentially, whether the license is libre (by Fedora's own assessment) -- except that documentation licenses are seen as normally unsuitable for software. It is clear (to me at least) that any good Fedora software license should be good for documentation as well, if only because in practice documentation in packages is often covered by the software license -- indeed, this is probably much more common than cases where a special documentation license is used. Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone had any thoughts or comments on this. Richard

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Re: fedora-logos license
by J Lovejoy 30 Dec '21

30 Dec '21

Hi, Regarding the message about the Fedora-logo and the spec file license field containing "Licensed only for approved usage, see COPYING for details” Can you point me to the actual text of the license? Generally speaking, if you wish to submit a license to the SPDX License List, you can do so here - https://tools.spdx.org/app/submit_new_license/ or directly in the Github repo (with the same info, see https://github.com/spdx/license-list-XML/blob/master/DOCS/request-new-licen… ) - that way you get a direct and accurate answer :) The license inclusion guidelines for the SPDX License List can be found here: https://github.com/spdx/license-list-XML/blob/master/DOCS/license-inclusion… - but as Richard already pointed out, usage in a major distro combined with the license meeting something like Fedora’s free/open criteria makes for a very strong candidate. Thanks, Jilayne

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fedora-logos license
by Miroslav Suchý 30 Dec '21

30 Dec '21

Hi. Fedora-logos.spec contains License: Licensed only for approved usage, see COPYING for details. This is hard to handle in automatad manipulation/validation. Can we get actual name for this license. Short name listed on License:Main and likely SPDX name as well? Miroslav

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Approval of license exception for new Fedora packages: raft/dqlite
by Reto Gantenbein 02 Dec '21

02 Dec '21

Hi everyone I'm in the course of adding two new packages raft [1] (sources: [2]) and dqlite [3] (sources: [4]) to Fedora. According to the LICENSE files [5][6] I would choose the Fedora license short name "LGPLv3 with exception" for these packages. The exception goes as following: "As a special exception to the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 ("LGPL3"), the copyright holders of this Library give you permission to convey to a third party a Combined Work that links statically or dynamically to this Library without providing any Minimal Corresponding Source or Minimal Application Code as set out in 4d or providing the installation information set out in section 4e, provided that you comply with the other provisions of LGPL3 and provided that you meet, for the Application the terms and conditions of the license(s) which apply to the Application. Except as stated in this special exception, the provisions of LGPL3 will continue to comply in full to this Library. If you modify this Library, you may apply this exception to your version of this Library, but you are not obliged to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version. This exception does not (and cannot) modify any license terms which apply to the Application, with which you must still comply." According to the rules that I found in the documentation [7] I'm asking you for approval of this exception. Kind regards and cheers, Reto [1]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2017459 [2]: https://github.com/canonical/raft [3]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=2017476 [4]: https://github.com/canonical/dqlite [5]: https://github.com/canonical/raft/blob/v0.11.2/LICENSE [6]: https://github.com/canonical/dqlite/blob/v1.9.0/LICENSE [7]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main?rd=Licensing#Software_License…

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legal December 2021