Hi,
the code contains the following text: * db@FreeBSD.ORG wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you * can do whatever you want with this code, except you may not * license it under any form of the GPL. * A postcard or QSL card showing me you appreciate * this code would be nice. Diane Bruce va3db
How to name such license in the spec?
thanks & regards
Jaroslav
Am Montag, den 24.08.2020, 03:18 -0400 schrieb Jaroslav Skarvada:
Hi,
the code contains the following text:
- db@FreeBSD.ORG wrote this file. As long as you retain this
notice you
- can do whatever you want with this code, except you may not
- license it under any form of the GPL.
- A postcard or QSL card showing me you appreciate
- this code would be nice. Diane Bruce va3db
How to name such license in the spec?
Hi,
from my POV (not a lawyer) this license does NOT look to be suitable for Fedora. Although the license seems to be compliant with many or most of the statues of opensoure-software, it impairs the user's freedom, and thus is to be considered as a NON-FREE license.
Just my thoughts about it…
Cheers Björn
----- Original Message -----
Am Montag, den 24.08.2020, 03:18 -0400 schrieb Jaroslav Skarvada:
Hi,
the code contains the following text:
- db@FreeBSD.ORG wrote this file. As long as you retain this
notice you
- can do whatever you want with this code, except you may not
- license it under any form of the GPL.
- A postcard or QSL card showing me you appreciate
- this code would be nice. Diane Bruce va3db
How to name such license in the spec?
Hi,
from my POV (not a lawyer) this license does NOT look to be suitable for Fedora. Although the license seems to be compliant with many or most of the statues of opensoure-software, it impairs the user's freedom, and thus is to be considered as a NON-FREE license.
Just my thoughts about it…
Cheers Björn
Sorry, I don't understand why it can "impairs the user's freedom" if it disallows re-licensing under GPL
thanks & regards
Jaroslav
On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 6:30 AM Jaroslav Skarvada jskarvad@redhat.com wrote:
----- Original Message -----
Am Montag, den 24.08.2020, 03:18 -0400 schrieb Jaroslav Skarvada:
Hi,
the code contains the following text:
- db@FreeBSD.ORG wrote this file. As long as you retain this
notice you
- can do whatever you want with this code, except you may not
- license it under any form of the GPL.
- A postcard or QSL card showing me you appreciate
- this code would be nice. Diane Bruce va3db
How to name such license in the spec?
Hi,
from my POV (not a lawyer) this license does NOT look to be suitable for Fedora. Although the license seems to be compliant with many or most of the statues of opensoure-software, it impairs the user's freedom, and thus is to be considered as a NON-FREE license.
Just my thoughts about it…
Cheers Björn
Sorry, I don't understand why it can "impairs the user's freedom" if it disallows re-licensing under GPL
Because it effectively states that you cannot combine it with another work that would collectively be GPL. You cannot satisfy the terms of this license and the GPL at the same time in that situation.
This is nonfree software unless the author can be contacted to remove that clause. If they remove the clause, it's Free Software and can be included in Fedora.
Ironically, I'm pretty sure such a clause is against the FreeBSD licensing principles too.
On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 7:18 AM Neal Gompa ngompa13@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 6:30 AM Jaroslav Skarvada jskarvad@redhat.com wrote:
----- Original Message -----
Am Montag, den 24.08.2020, 03:18 -0400 schrieb Jaroslav Skarvada:
Hi,
the code contains the following text:
- db@FreeBSD.ORG wrote this file. As long as you retain this
notice you
- can do whatever you want with this code, except you may not
- license it under any form of the GPL.
- A postcard or QSL card showing me you appreciate
- this code would be nice. Diane Bruce va3db
How to name such license in the spec?
Hi,
from my POV (not a lawyer) this license does NOT look to be suitable for Fedora. Although the license seems to be compliant with many or most of the statues of opensoure-software, it impairs the user's freedom, and thus is to be considered as a NON-FREE license.
Just my thoughts about it…
Cheers Björn
Sorry, I don't understand why it can "impairs the user's freedom" if it disallows re-licensing under GPL
Because it effectively states that you cannot combine it with another work that would collectively be GPL. You cannot satisfy the terms of this license and the GPL at the same time in that situation.
This is nonfree software unless the author can be contacted to remove that clause. If they remove the clause, it's Free Software and can be included in Fedora.
Ironically, I'm pretty sure such a clause is against the FreeBSD licensing principles too.
I am going to disagree with my learned friends on this issue. Many licenses considered acceptable for Fedora are also considered GPLv2 and GPLv3-incompatible for various reasons. In particular there is the "Original SSLeay License", which was one of the conjuncts in what was generally known as the OpenSSL license, which tacks on this clause at the end:
* The licence and distribution terms for any publically [sic] available version or * derivative of this code cannot be changed. i.e. this code cannot simply be * copied and put under another distribution licence * [including the GNU Public Licence [sic].]
If that was considered okay, if somewhat unfriendly, then I think the language pointed out here ought to be okay too.
Richard
On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 03:51:27PM -0400, Richard Fontana wrote:
On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 7:18 AM Neal Gompa ngompa13@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 6:30 AM Jaroslav Skarvada jskarvad@redhat.com wrote:
----- Original Message -----
Am Montag, den 24.08.2020, 03:18 -0400 schrieb Jaroslav Skarvada:
Hi,
the code contains the following text:
- db@FreeBSD.ORG wrote this file. As long as you retain this
notice you
- can do whatever you want with this code, except you may not
- license it under any form of the GPL.
- A postcard or QSL card showing me you appreciate
- this code would be nice. Diane Bruce va3db
How to name such license in the spec?
Hi,
from my POV (not a lawyer) this license does NOT look to be suitable for Fedora. Although the license seems to be compliant with many or most of the statues of opensoure-software, it impairs the user's freedom, and thus is to be considered as a NON-FREE license.
Just my thoughts about it…
Cheers Björn
Sorry, I don't understand why it can "impairs the user's freedom" if it disallows re-licensing under GPL
Because it effectively states that you cannot combine it with another work that would collectively be GPL. You cannot satisfy the terms of this license and the GPL at the same time in that situation.
This is nonfree software unless the author can be contacted to remove that clause. If they remove the clause, it's Free Software and can be included in Fedora.
Ironically, I'm pretty sure such a clause is against the FreeBSD licensing principles too.
I am going to disagree with my learned friends on this issue. Many licenses considered acceptable for Fedora are also considered GPLv2 and GPLv3-incompatible for various reasons. In particular there is the "Original SSLeay License", which was one of the conjuncts in what was generally known as the OpenSSL license, which tacks on this clause at the end:
- The licence and distribution terms for any publically [sic]
available version or
- derivative of this code cannot be changed. i.e. this code cannot simply be
- copied and put under another distribution licence
- [including the GNU Public Licence [sic].]
If that was considered okay, if somewhat unfriendly, then I think the language pointed out here ought to be okay too.
Back to the original question... what short name do we give this license?
- It has an advertising clause - It forbids relicensing under any form of the GPL (curious what that means for potential derivative works) - And it has the postcard/QSL card request, sort of like vim's donation request
License: BSD with oddities
or
License: Difficult
?
On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 9:41 AM David Cantrell dcantrell@redhat.com wrote:
Back to the original question... what short name do we give this license?
- It has an advertising clause
- It forbids relicensing under any form of the GPL (curious what that means for potential derivative works)
- And it has the postcard/QSL card request, sort of like vim's donation request
License: BSD with oddities
or
License: Difficult
?
It actually has some text in common with the Beer-ware license. At least if this is the license of the entire package, or a substantial part of it, I would suggest an identifier specific to this license, perhaps "Diane Bruce [License]" (if I'm correct that the author/licensor here is the FreeBSD developer Diane Bruce).
Richard
----- Original Message -----
On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 9:41 AM David Cantrell dcantrell@redhat.com wrote:
Back to the original question... what short name do we give this license?
- It has an advertising clause
- It forbids relicensing under any form of the GPL (curious what that means for potential derivative works)
- And it has the postcard/QSL card request, sort of like vim's donation request
License: BSD with oddities
or
License: Difficult
?
It actually has some text in common with the Beer-ware license. At least if this is the license of the entire package, or a substantial part of it, I would suggest an identifier specific to this license, perhaps "Diane Bruce [License]" (if I'm correct that the author/licensor here is the FreeBSD developer Diane Bruce).
Richard
It seems Debian ships the code with the following license:
Copyright: (C) Diane Bruce db@FreeBSD.ORG License: Permissive
thanks & regards
Jaroslav
----- Original Message -----
----- Original Message -----
On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 9:41 AM David Cantrell dcantrell@redhat.com wrote:
Back to the original question... what short name do we give this license?
- It has an advertising clause
- It forbids relicensing under any form of the GPL (curious what that
means for potential derivative works)
- And it has the postcard/QSL card request, sort of like vim's donation request
License: BSD with oddities
or
License: Difficult
?
It actually has some text in common with the Beer-ware license. At least if this is the license of the entire package, or a substantial part of it, I would suggest an identifier specific to this license, perhaps "Diane Bruce [License]" (if I'm correct that the author/licensor here is the FreeBSD developer Diane Bruce).
Richard
It seems Debian ships the code with the following license:
Copyright: (C) Diane Bruce db@FreeBSD.ORG License: Permissive
thanks & regards
Jaroslav
So could anybody authoritatively reply the following questions?
1) Can the code be packaged to Fedora? 2) How to name the license?
ad 1) there are already other free licenses disallowing relicensing under GPL. I guess the purpose of the clause is for the code not to be "eaten" by GPL. I think you can even combine the code with the GPL code and release the result as "GPL and name of this license". Moreover the current code is standalone tool, not library.
ad 2) we need the name for the license even if reply to the 1) is "no". In such case I could package the tool to rpmfusion
thanks & regards
Jaroslav
On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 8:16 AM Jaroslav Skarvada jskarvad@redhat.com wrote:
----- Original Message -----
----- Original Message -----
On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 9:41 AM David Cantrell dcantrell@redhat.com wrote:
Back to the original question... what short name do we give this license?
- It has an advertising clause
- It forbids relicensing under any form of the GPL (curious what that
means for potential derivative works)
- And it has the postcard/QSL card request, sort of like vim's donation request
License: BSD with oddities
or
License: Difficult
?
It actually has some text in common with the Beer-ware license. At least if this is the license of the entire package, or a substantial part of it, I would suggest an identifier specific to this license, perhaps "Diane Bruce [License]" (if I'm correct that the author/licensor here is the FreeBSD developer Diane Bruce).
Richard
It seems Debian ships the code with the following license:
Copyright: (C) Diane Bruce db@FreeBSD.ORG License: Permissive
thanks & regards
Jaroslav
So could anybody authoritatively reply the following questions?
- Can the code be packaged to Fedora?
Yes, it's a free software, GPL-incompatible license by Fedora's standards.
- How to name the license?
I don't have a good suggestion here (other than my suggestion of "Diane Bruce" above). It's unlikely this license would be found anywhere else. I found it intriguing that Debian apparently uses the label "Permissive", I assume as a catchall for various one-off nonstandard noncopyleft FOSS licenses? I don't think that's an approach Fedora has attempted to take but it might be worth considering.
Richard
On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 5:59 PM Richard Fontana rfontana@redhat.com wrote:
On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 8:16 AM Jaroslav Skarvada jskarvad@redhat.com wrote:
----- Original Message -----
----- Original Message -----
On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 9:41 AM David Cantrell dcantrell@redhat.com wrote:
Back to the original question... what short name do we give this license?
- It has an advertising clause
- It forbids relicensing under any form of the GPL (curious what that
means for potential derivative works)
- And it has the postcard/QSL card request, sort of like vim's donation request
License: BSD with oddities
or
License: Difficult
?
It actually has some text in common with the Beer-ware license. At least if this is the license of the entire package, or a substantial part of it, I would suggest an identifier specific to this license, perhaps "Diane Bruce [License]" (if I'm correct that the author/licensor here is the FreeBSD developer Diane Bruce).
Richard
It seems Debian ships the code with the following license:
Copyright: (C) Diane Bruce db@FreeBSD.ORG License: Permissive
thanks & regards
Jaroslav
So could anybody authoritatively reply the following questions?
- Can the code be packaged to Fedora?
Yes, it's a free software, GPL-incompatible license by Fedora's standards.
- How to name the license?
I don't have a good suggestion here (other than my suggestion of "Diane Bruce" above). It's unlikely this license would be found anywhere else. I found it intriguing that Debian apparently uses the label "Permissive", I assume as a catchall for various one-off nonstandard noncopyleft FOSS licenses? I don't think that's an approach Fedora has attempted to take but it might be worth considering.
Debian can do that because the debian/copyright file has the license verbatim in there. And generally debian/copyright files are machine-parseable, but not guaranteed to be correct.
And more importantly, the license can be viewed before installing the package, since that data is extracted.
We could go with "Semi-Permissive" and indicate in the docs that packages with that title have terms in the license file.
-- 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!
On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 6:03 PM Neal Gompa ngompa13@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 5:59 PM Richard Fontana rfontana@redhat.com wrote:
On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 8:16 AM Jaroslav Skarvada jskarvad@redhat.com wrote:
----- Original Message -----
----- Original Message -----
On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 9:41 AM David Cantrell dcantrell@redhat.com wrote:
Back to the original question... what short name do we give this license?
- It has an advertising clause
- It forbids relicensing under any form of the GPL (curious what that
means for potential derivative works)
- And it has the postcard/QSL card request, sort of like vim's donation request
License: BSD with oddities
or
License: Difficult
?
It actually has some text in common with the Beer-ware license. At least if this is the license of the entire package, or a substantial part of it, I would suggest an identifier specific to this license, perhaps "Diane Bruce [License]" (if I'm correct that the author/licensor here is the FreeBSD developer Diane Bruce).
Richard
It seems Debian ships the code with the following license:
Copyright: (C) Diane Bruce db@FreeBSD.ORG License: Permissive
thanks & regards
Jaroslav
So could anybody authoritatively reply the following questions?
- Can the code be packaged to Fedora?
Yes, it's a free software, GPL-incompatible license by Fedora's standards.
- How to name the license?
I don't have a good suggestion here (other than my suggestion of "Diane Bruce" above). It's unlikely this license would be found anywhere else. I found it intriguing that Debian apparently uses the label "Permissive", I assume as a catchall for various one-off nonstandard noncopyleft FOSS licenses? I don't think that's an approach Fedora has attempted to take but it might be worth considering.
Debian can do that because the debian/copyright file has the license verbatim in there. And generally debian/copyright files are machine-parseable, but not guaranteed to be correct.
And more importantly, the license can be viewed before installing the package, since that data is extracted.
We could go with "Semi-Permissive" and indicate in the docs that packages with that title have terms in the license file.
Indeed, "Semi-Permissive" is probably better than "Permissive" in this case.
Richard
----- Original Message -----
On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 6:03 PM Neal Gompa ngompa13@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 5:59 PM Richard Fontana rfontana@redhat.com wrote:
On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 8:16 AM Jaroslav Skarvada jskarvad@redhat.com wrote:
----- Original Message -----
----- Original Message -----
On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 9:41 AM David Cantrell dcantrell@redhat.com wrote: > > Back to the original question... what short name do we give this > license? > > - It has an advertising clause > - It forbids relicensing under any form of the GPL (curious what > that > means > for potential derivative works) > - And it has the postcard/QSL card request, sort of like vim's > donation > request > > License: BSD with oddities > > or > > License: Difficult > > ?
It actually has some text in common with the Beer-ware license. At least if this is the license of the entire package, or a substantial part of it, I would suggest an identifier specific to this license, perhaps "Diane Bruce [License]" (if I'm correct that the author/licensor here is the FreeBSD developer Diane Bruce).
Richard
It seems Debian ships the code with the following license:
Copyright: (C) Diane Bruce db@FreeBSD.ORG License: Permissive
thanks & regards
Jaroslav
So could anybody authoritatively reply the following questions?
- Can the code be packaged to Fedora?
Yes, it's a free software, GPL-incompatible license by Fedora's standards.
- How to name the license?
I don't have a good suggestion here (other than my suggestion of "Diane Bruce" above). It's unlikely this license would be found anywhere else. I found it intriguing that Debian apparently uses the label "Permissive", I assume as a catchall for various one-off nonstandard noncopyleft FOSS licenses? I don't think that's an approach Fedora has attempted to take but it might be worth considering.
Debian can do that because the debian/copyright file has the license verbatim in there. And generally debian/copyright files are machine-parseable, but not guaranteed to be correct.
And more importantly, the license can be viewed before installing the package, since that data is extracted.
We could go with "Semi-Permissive" and indicate in the docs that packages with that title have terms in the license file.
Indeed, "Semi-Permissive" is probably better than "Permissive" in this case.
Richard
Thanks all,
so I will go with the 'Semi-Permissive' license short name for the initial packaging of the code
thanks & regards
Jaroslav
FWIW, one of the things I endeavoured to stop in Fedora was the use of "Permissive" as a valid license tag, since packagers at the time often opted to use it for anything they thought was "open source enough".
I would not recommend permitting the use of vague license descriptors. Just pick a name, add it to the list, and move on. :)
~spot
On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 4:45 PM Jaroslav Skarvada jskarvad@redhat.com wrote:
----- Original Message -----
On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 6:03 PM Neal Gompa ngompa13@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 5:59 PM Richard Fontana rfontana@redhat.com wrote:
On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 8:16 AM Jaroslav Skarvada <
jskarvad@redhat.com>
wrote:
----- Original Message -----
----- Original Message ----- > On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 9:41 AM David Cantrell > dcantrell@redhat.com > wrote: > > > > Back to the original question... what short name do we give
this
> > license? > > > > - It has an advertising clause > > - It forbids relicensing under any form of the GPL (curious
what
> > that > > means > > for potential derivative works) > > - And it has the postcard/QSL card request, sort of like
vim's
> > donation > > request > > > > License: BSD with oddities > > > > or > > > > License: Difficult > > > > ? > > It actually has some text in common with the Beer-ware
license. At
> least if this is the license of the entire package, or a > substantial > part of it, I would suggest an identifier specific to this
license,
> perhaps "Diane Bruce [License]" (if I'm correct that the > author/licensor here is the FreeBSD developer Diane Bruce). > > Richard
It seems Debian ships the code with the following license:
Copyright: (C) Diane Bruce db@FreeBSD.ORG License: Permissive
thanks & regards
Jaroslav
So could anybody authoritatively reply the following questions?
- Can the code be packaged to Fedora?
Yes, it's a free software, GPL-incompatible license by Fedora's standards.
- How to name the license?
I don't have a good suggestion here (other than my suggestion of "Diane Bruce" above). It's unlikely this license would be found anywhere else. I found it intriguing that Debian apparently uses the label "Permissive", I assume as a catchall for various one-off nonstandard noncopyleft FOSS licenses? I don't think that's an approach Fedora has attempted to take but it might be worth considering.
Debian can do that because the debian/copyright file has the license verbatim in there. And generally debian/copyright files are machine-parseable, but not guaranteed to be correct.
And more importantly, the license can be viewed before installing the package, since that data is extracted.
We could go with "Semi-Permissive" and indicate in the docs that packages with that title have terms in the license file.
Indeed, "Semi-Permissive" is probably better than "Permissive" in this
case.
Richard
Thanks all,
so I will go with the 'Semi-Permissive' license short name for the initial packaging of the code
thanks & regards
Jaroslav _______________________________________________ legal mailing list -- legal@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org
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Björn 'besser82' Esser -
David Cantrell -
Jaroslav Skarvada -
Neal Gompa -
Richard Fontana -
Tom Callaway