Re: Legality of analysing DSDT table
Mateusz Jończyk writes (Legality of analysing DSDT table): I am working on some bug in Linux kernel that is probably somehow related to ACPI. Would it be legal if a bug reporter in India sent me his DSDT table and I would then decompile and analyse it? You seem to be in Poland. I think there is no problem with this in European Union law: AIUI reverse engineering for the purpose of compatibility is excluded from the copyright monopoly. Also it seems very unlikely that anyone would want to complain. NB I am not a lawyer. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/21471.30081.827262.646...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: Zend Engine License
Riley Baird writes (Re: Zend Engine License): On 02/08/14 16:30, MJ Ray wrote: I notice that Zend framework seems to be under a BSD style licence, without that sort of clause. It is in the php5 package. Here is the d/copyright file: http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs//main/p/php5/php5_5.6.0~rc3+dfsg-1_copyright You'll see that my draft questions to the SFLC deals with this in the case of PHP. Would the answer not be the same in both cases ? If so then I think we should see what the outcome of that process is and apply it to Zend too. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/21471.30165.963128.853...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: Translated License
Georg Pfeiffer writes (Translated License): We intend to give the whole project a default license wich is a german translation of the MIT license [2]. The english text is included. Our intention is, that the german text shall be more clear and more convenient to german project members (authors) as well as for german customers wich we estimate to be the majority as well on the author as on the customer side. There is nothing wrong with a copyright licence in German. I disagree with the other posters who have said that an English licence is to be preferred. In practice we (Debian) have plenty of German speakers who can review a German licence, and we should be prepared to do so. Thanks, Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/21471.30266.423510.360...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: [PHP-QA] Debian and the PHP license
Charles Plessy writes (Re: [PHP-QA] Debian and the PHP license): I think that it is important that a few of the ‘some members’ would identify themselves in support for that request, and explain what they would do if the worries expressed below turned out to be true. At the moment people are playing bug tag, and packages are being sometimes rejected or sometimes prevented from migrating to testing. If the worries turn out to be justified then we should apply that same policy to all of the affected packages - but in fact, I would hope that given an unequivocal statement from actual laywers it would be easy to persuade the PHP developers to change the licence. If the only support for contacting lawyers comes from Developers who have the least stakes in the question (GR only), then we should really consider if the work that we are about to ask to the lawyers will be wasted in the trash bin instead of being seriously considered. If the worries turn out to be unjustified then I hope that the people who have been complaining would stop doing so. Here are two other coments on the text itself. Q4. Does the fact that the PHP licence conditions about the use of the PHP name are contained in the actual copyright licence, rather than in a separate trademark licence, significantly increase the risks we would face if we had a disagreement with upstream about our modifications (or our failure to seek approval) ? Note that PHP does not hold a trademark on the PHP name and therefore can not grant a trademark license. I will mention this. It is important to note that clarifications on the PHP license have already been given by PHP developers. The question is then if they are free to revert their clarifications and use a new interpretation of their license to force Debian to stop distributing or modifying PHP and its modules. This clarification is not sufficient because in the general case the copyright to a PHP addons is not held by the PHP developers and so the actual copyrightholders of the addon haven't issued the clarification. And future joint copyrightholders of PHP itself may not have participated in the clarification. If you disagree, perhaps you'd like to suggest a workable process to distinguish addons for which we can rely on the clarification, from ones where we can't. Personally I think that is a daft way to carry on and we (the Free Software community as a whole including Debian and the PHP community) should either dismiss these concerns (if they are unfounded), or fix them properly (if they are well-founded). Thanks, Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/21471.30829.927457.749...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: [PHP-QA] Debian and the PHP license
Francesco Poli writes (Re: [PHP-QA] Debian and the PHP license): On Fri, 1 Aug 2014 16:59:11 +0100 Ian Jackson wrote: Paragraph 6 of the main licence text requires this notice: This product includes PHP software, freely available from http://www.php.net/software/. I would also add some mention of the final disclaimers (the text in capital letters and the text under the separation lines in the license), which also risk to become false or irrilevant for software not written by (or on behalf of) the PHP Group. I have added a new section and a new question about this. This is probably unproblematic for PHP itself. However, most PHP addons are also distributed under the PHP licence. The worry is that putting that statement in the copyright information for a PHP addon package is might be making a false statement, since (i) the package Probablys/is might/might/ Fixed. Thanks, Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/21471.31495.17328.105...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: [PHP-QA] Debian and the PHP license
(-project dropped from the CC) MJ Ray writes (Re: [PHP-QA] Debian and the PHP license): Secondly, unless it says otherwise, a naming restriction in a copyright licence doesn't permit honest source attribution and all the other nominative and fair uses that a trademark would. This is more of a problem for Debian. Can you please confirm that the question I put in my draft questions for SFLC, on this subject, addresses this point ? If I haven't fully captured your understanding of the problem then my draft needs to be updated. (I'm about to post a v3 but it's essentially identical on this point.) There are many ways this could be solved, but the ostrich approach of closing the bugs without fixing them and hiding this from users must be one of the worst. Please support another approach. I think you're being rather rude here. It's not the case that people are deliberately `hiding' these `bugs'. Rather, they disagree whether the problem is real or imaginary. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/21471.31715.967008.957...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
PHP licence SFLC questions draft v3
Draft question for SFLC: Some members of the Debian project have some concerns about the PHP licence. These worries are dismissed by other members and by relevant upstreams. We would like some advice. We are concerned here with the PHP 3.01 Licences, which can be found here: http://php.net/license/3_01.txt There are two concerns (I and II, below), which need to be read with some context (III, below): I. Requirement to perhaps-falsely acknowledge: Paragraph 6 of the main licence text requires this notice: This product includes PHP software, freely available from http://www.php.net/software/. This is probably unproblematic for PHP itself. However, most PHP addons are also distributed under the PHP licence. The worry is that putting that statement in the copyright information for a PHP addon package might be making a false statement, since (i) the package itself does not include PHP and (ii) the addon may not in fact be available via that URL. Counterarguments which may be relevant or have been put forward include: (a) A licensor who uses this licence obviously did not intend the licencees to make a false statement, and the requirement in the licence should be read down accordingly. (b) The word `product' does not refer to a specific package but the to the system as a whole, including PHP itself. (c) PHP addon packages (at least those whose upstream versions are available from www.php.net) should be regarded as `PHP software' for the purposes of this statement. (But what if the addon later ceases to be distributed from www.php.net, or was never so distributed?) We have the following questions: Q1. What is the best approach for Debian and its downstreams to take to comply with this licence ? Should we always include the statement as requested ? Q2. If the answer to Q1 is to always include the statement, does including this statement pose any ethical, legal or practical risk to anyone in the Free Software community ? Is it fair to say that the statement is or can be materially false or misleading ? Q3. Do the answers to these questions depend on whether the addon is currently, or was ever, distributed via http://www.php.net/software/ ? II. Inaccuracy of the disclaimer text: The warranty disclaimer text (in capitals after para 6 of the licence) says that `THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE PHP DEVELOPMENT TEAM' etc. The licence itself (para 1) requires this text to be included. When the PHP licence is used for software which is not provided by the PHP development team, the statement appears to be inaccurate. Q4. Does including this statement pose any ethical, legal or practical risk in the case where the software is _not_ in fact written or provided by the PHP Development Team ? Note that in Debian we do not normally worry whether warranty disclaimers are effective in protecting Debian contributors. So we are not interested in whether the warranty disclaimer does its job, only in whether it poses additional risks (beyond those which we would hypothetically face if it wasn't present at all) by virtue of it containing an apparently inaccurate statement. III. Restrictions on the name `PHP' Debian routinely modifies all the software that we distribute, and we expect our downstreams to further modify it. (Because we want the freedom to modify to be available not only to us, but also to all of those downstreams, we have a practice of refusing to submit our modifications for approval and declining to accept any Debian-specific permissions.) Paragraphs 3 and 4 can be read to mean that Debian should not be distributing its modified versions of PHP itself, and of PHP addons, under the name `PHP'. (Note that PHP is not a trademark - this restriction is applied through the copyright licence.) We have been informally assured by members of the PHP community that this is not the intent and that the PHP project does not want us to rename things. Similar situations often arise in relation to trademarks. Our usual approach in such cases has been to rely on the informal assurances, and not seek any kind of formal trademark licence amendment. However, we remain prepared to rename the software. If we receive a formal legal request or threat from a trademark holder, or we hear of our downstreams receiving such communications, we will rename the software to avoid any potential infringement of the trademark. For example, Mozilla insisted on prior written approval of patches, so our version of Firefox is called Iceweasel. Our reactive rather than proactive approach has served us and our downstreams very well. Q5. Does the fact that the PHP licence conditions about the use of the PHP name are contained in the actual copyright licence, rather than in a separate trademark licence, significantly increase the risks we would face if we had a disagreement with upstream about our modifications (or our failure to seek approval) ? IV. Context When
Re: PHP licence SFLC questions draft v3
Ian Jackson writes (PHP licence SFLC questions draft v3): Some members of the Debian project have some concerns about the PHP licence. These worries are dismissed by other members and by relevant upstreams. We would like some advice. We are concerned here with the PHP 3.01 Licences, which can be found here: http://php.net/license/3_01.txt There are two concerns (I and II, below), which need to be read with some context (III, below): This last paragraph is wrong because now there are I, II and III with the context in IV. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/21471.32634.547061.361...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: Translated License
Ian Jackson ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk writes: There is nothing wrong with a copyright licence in German. Thank you very much for this clear position, wich seemed to be mine only for discouraging long times :D My german combattants bothered, our german license would be estimated non-free because it is not OSI certified. So we selected Jonathans proposal already a long time ago, regrettably. But I won't mess that up again. Georg -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/8738dcs89e@ragp.ragp.de
Re: Translated License
Georg Pfeiffer writes (Re: Translated License): Ian Jackson ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk writes: There is nothing wrong with a copyright licence in German. Thank you very much for this clear position, wich seemed to be mine only for discouraging long times :D My german combattants bothered, our german license would be estimated non-free because it is not OSI certified. So we selected Jonathans proposal already a long time ago, regrettably. But I won't mess that up again. It's true that having your licence not be OSI-certified might be inconvenient in some situations, but: - Debian at least does not care whether anything is OSI-certified. We make our own decisions. - Getting your licence OSI-certified ought to be feasible I think. Wanting your licence to be in the native language of the vast majority of your contributors is a good reason for having a different licence. IMO. Regards, Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/21471.36211.411250.901...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
Re: Translated License
Ian Jackson ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk writes: We make our own decisions. Thats why I love it. :) Georg -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/8761i8jrha@ejus.ejus
Re: Standardization documents in xsd and wsdl format
On 11 July 2014 16:20:45 CEST, Mattias Ellert mattias.ell...@fysast.uu.se wrote: Standardization bodies tend to want to not have random people making random changes to their standardization documents that would create incompatible versions of the standards. The documentation licenses used by these organization therefore usually do not allow modification. The other answers seem correct to me. I just wish to note that standards organisations would be far better off providing public key signatures of the official standards documents to protactively demonstrate approval, instead of trying to use restrictive copyright licensing to reactively prosecute innovators who confuse, often in error. After all, the copyright licence doesn't prevent unauthorised modification or alert people to it. It just gives the licensor and others ways to punish people. -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/29302c69-7d20-4c73-a734-e879444e7...@email.android.com
Re: [PHP-QA] Debian and the PHP license
On 4 August 2014 13:26:11 GMT+01:00, Ian Jackson ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk wrote: (-project dropped from the CC) MJ Ray writes (Re: [PHP-QA] Debian and the PHP license): Secondly, unless it says otherwise, a naming restriction in a copyright licence doesn't permit honest source attribution and all the other nominative and fair uses that a trademark would. This is more of a problem for Debian. Can you please confirm that the question I put in my draft questions for SFLC, on this subject, addresses this point ? If I haven't fully captured your understanding of the problem then my draft needs to be updated. I'm not sure it does. The question to me should be more like does putting a name restriction in the copyright licence rather than using a trademark licence mean we lose any ability to package this software under its own name and if so, how? but worded more slickly like you do. At best, the earlier paragraph suggesting we rely on assurances from trademark holders rather than usual rights in law, just for packaging, seems beside the point. At worst, it could mislead about the question. I take your point about rudeness. I shouldn't fight fire with fire. Sorry. -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/159d5264-da1e-4384-b45f-c494eab4b...@email.android.com
