It seems one of the filter lists (Peter Lowe's adservers list) in uBlock Origin is licensed under this[1] and the author considers it a "joke license"[2]. Nonetheless, it explicitly forbids commercial use, telling the licensee to "stick it..." if they don't agree.
uBlock Origin upstream doesn't think this is an issue[3], but I'm not so sure.
My plan is to scrub the affected files from the tarball until the author can be convinced to change the license. uBlock Origin can download it on its own, anyway. It's there for convenience only, by default.
Am I overly cautious? Is this kind of "filter list" copyrightable at all?
Thoughts?
[1] https://pgl.yoyo.org/license/ [2] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/7657#issuecomment-657230694 [3] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/7657#issuecomment-657218646
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 6:09 PM Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski dominik@greysector.net wrote:
It seems one of the filter lists (Peter Lowe's adservers list) in uBlock Origin is licensed under this[1] and the author considers it a "joke license"[2]. Nonetheless, it explicitly forbids commercial use, telling the licensee to "stick it..." if they don't agree.
I am not a lawyer (nor am I spot), but the prohibition against commercial use seems to be a pretty clear case of "not acceptable for Fedora".
On Monday, 13 July 2020 at 14:35, Ben Cotton wrote:
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 6:09 PM Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski dominik@greysector.net wrote:
It seems one of the filter lists (Peter Lowe's adservers list) in uBlock Origin is licensed under this[1] and the author considers it a "joke license"[2]. Nonetheless, it explicitly forbids commercial use, telling the licensee to "stick it..." if they don't agree.
I am not a lawyer (nor am I spot), but the prohibition against commercial use seems to be a pretty clear case of "not acceptable for Fedora".
Any other opinions? Any advice how to convince upstream that this is a real issue?
Regards, Dominik
On Tue, Aug 4, 2020 at 6:16 AM Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski dominik@greysector.net wrote:
On Monday, 13 July 2020 at 14:35, Ben Cotton wrote:
On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 6:09 PM Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski dominik@greysector.net wrote:
It seems one of the filter lists (Peter Lowe's adservers list) in uBlock Origin is licensed under this[1] and the author considers it a "joke license"[2]. Nonetheless, it explicitly forbids commercial use, telling the licensee to "stick it..." if they don't agree.
I am not a lawyer (nor am I spot), but the prohibition against commercial use seems to be a pretty clear case of "not acceptable for Fedora".
Any other opinions? Any advice how to convince upstream that this is a real issue?
I agree with Ben that this is not acceptable for Fedora. For the most part in applying its license policy Fedora has to assume that any license is potentially enforceable. I.e., there really is no such thing as a "joke" license.
As for how to convince upstream, I can't help with that. At one time Linux distribution licensing policy would have had a lot of influence on upstream behavior, but I think that is much less true today.
Richard
On 8/4/20 9:42 AM, Richard Fontana wrote:
As for how to convince upstream, I can't help with that. At one time Linux distribution licensing policy would have had a lot of influence on upstream behavior, but I think that is much less true today.
Usually what works well for me is if you can collaborate/work with the upstream to build understanding of how a license can negatively impact the wider distribution of their work to a technical audience (Fedora/EL).
JSHint is a very contemporary example (like, shared yesterday after 7+ years of blind-rewriting) you can use as a reference:
https://twitter.com/JugglinMike/status/1290317065295929345
http://mikepennisi.com/blog/2020/you-may-finally-use-jshint-for-evil/
Hello, Justin.
On Tuesday, 04 August 2020 at 19:15, Justin W. Flory (he/him) wrote:
On 8/4/20 9:42 AM, Richard Fontana wrote:
As for how to convince upstream, I can't help with that. At one time Linux distribution licensing policy would have had a lot of influence on upstream behavior, but I think that is much less true today.
Coincidentally, I found that Debian is also distributing uBlock Origin and doing even more source clean-up as they're packaging an old version. Maybe that'll help convince upstream. Thanks for your reply, Richard.
Usually what works well for me is if you can collaborate/work with the upstream to build understanding of how a license can negatively impact the wider distribution of their work to a technical audience (Fedora/EL).
JSHint is a very contemporary example (like, shared yesterday after 7+ years of blind-rewriting) you can use as a reference:
https://twitter.com/JugglinMike/status/1290317065295929345 http://mikepennisi.com/blog/2020/you-may-finally-use-jshint-for-evil/
Thanks for the story, it was an enlightening read. I will make one last attempt and hope it's enlightening to this upstream, too.
Regards, Dominik
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Ben Cotton -
Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski -
Justin W. Flory (he/him) -
Richard Fontana