Re: Is mpage DFSG compatible?

[Eriberto]

After some time, I came back.

Thanks a lot for all replies. I will file a bug now.

Regards,

Eriberto

Re: Is mpage DFSG compatible?

[Dmitry Alexandrov]

On 19/10/15 17:26, Ian Jackson wrote:

A copyright licence does not need to be in writing.  (In the UK, at
least[1], and I would be surprised it if were different elsewhere.)

Of course in practice it is a good idea to have a clear and explicit
statement, in writing, but that doesn't mean that a license can't be
implied (or oral, for that matter).


Let me surprise you then. At least in Russia and in the Ukraine a 
copyright license should be in writing (with certain exceptions, but 
there is no software licenses among them).


This is clearly stated in the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, 
article 1286, paragraph 2 [1] and in the Civil Code of the Ukraine, 
article 1107, paragraph 2 [2] respectively.


[1]: 
https://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_64629/5023e7ec1885fe99c14e29a9e328c664a001f599/

[2]: http://www.intellect.ua/patent/law/code/civilcode/75/1107

Re: Is mpage DFSG compatible?

[Ian Jackson]

Ben Finney writes ("Re: Is mpage DFSG compatible?"):
> Eriberto Mota <eribe...@debian.org> writes:
> > Well, I need your opinions about what to do. Should be this package
> > moved to non-free? Must it be removed? Am I wrong?
> 
> The ‘CHANGES’ file contains an entry under “October  2002”:
> 
> October  2002
> - Released version 2.5.3
> - Start moving mapge into the GPL...

Can we tell who wrote that ?  If the author of the questionable file
is also the author of the changelog entry, and also added a copy of
the relevant GPL, then that seems to me to be a clear statement of
intent, which is what is necessary.

> This at least suggests the upstream developer at the time of that entry
> intended to explicitly change the license of the whole work to GNU
> General Public License.
> 
> You could contact the upstream copyright holder, cite that changelog
> entry, and request they follow the instructions in GNU GPL v3 to
> effectively grant license for every part of the work to all recipients.

It would be fine to contact the relevant copyright holder.

> There needs to be an explicit written grant of license to the recipient,
> preferably in the work itself and not conflicting with any other
> notices (so those conflicting notices should be removed by the copyright
> holder who wrote them).

A copyright licence does not need to be in writing.  (In the UK, at
least[1], and I would be surprised it if were different elsewhere.)

Of course in practice it is a good idea to have a clear and explicit
statement, in writing, but that doesn't mean that a license can't be
implied (or oral, for that matter).

Ian.

[1] I don't have a concrete reference for this, but it is clear at
least from the way that parts of the CDPA 1988 (for example
101A(1)(b)(i)) makes an explicit condition that the licence is in
writing.

Re: Is mpage DFSG compatible?

[Ben Finney]

Ian Jackson <ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> writes:

> Ben Finney writes ("Re: Is mpage DFSG compatible?"):
> > The ‘CHANGES’ file contains an entry under “October  2002”:
> > 
> > October  2002
> > - Released version 2.5.3
> > - Start moving mapge into the GPL...
>
> Can we tell who wrote that ? If the author of the questionable file is
> also the author of the changelog entry, and also added a copy of the
> relevant GPL, then that seems to me to be a clear statement of intent,
> which is what is necessary.

It's not a clear statement of intent, IMO; at best it is a “note to
self” for some *future* action, not yet achieved.

Even if that could be taken as a statement of intent, there are
conflicting statements of rather clearer intent: the existing, explicit
grants of more restrictive license conditions in the rest of the code
base.

Those intents are incompatible, and so there is no consistent license
that the Debian Project can assume. The conflict would need to be
resolved, preferably by the copyright holders removing the more
restrictive license statements, and making unambiguous license grants as
described in the GNU GPL's instructions.

> Of course in practice it is a good idea to have a clear and explicit
> statement, in writing, but that doesn't mean that a license can't be
> implied (or oral, for that matter).

Right, I meant that the Debian Project will need it in writing. Unless
you know better, I think the FTP masters are not willing to take an oral
statement as sufficient for distributing a work in the Debian system
world-wide under implied license that can't be verified later.

-- 
 \ “Teach a man to make fire, and he will be warm for a day. Set a |
  `\   man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.” |
_o__) —John A. Hrastar |
Ben Finney

Is mpage DFSG compatible?

[Eriberto Mota]

Hi guys,

I am doing a revision over the orphaned package 'mpage' (in main tree).

When migrating the debian/copyright file to 1.0 format, I did a full
revision in source code and I found two doubtful situations for me.

The first issue is the license used by mpage:

 * Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
 * copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided
 * that this copyright notice is preserved, and that the
 * distributor grants the recipient permission for further
 * redistribution as permitted by this notice.

IMO, this license doesn't allow modify the source code. So, this
license is inadequate.

The second issue is the license of the Contrib/mfix/test.ps file:

%  Copyright (c) 1986-89, ArborText, Inc.
%  Permission to copy is granted so long as the PostScript code
%  is not resold or used in a commercial product.

In this license the rigths to resold or use in a commercial product is
denied. In this case, the solution is remove the file (not essential,
a contrib only).

Well, I need your opinions about what to do. Should be this package
moved to non-free? Must it be removed? Am I wrong?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Eriberto

Re: Is mpage DFSG compatible?

[Ángel González]

I have to agree with the interpretations of the given text.

However, in addition to the license in the README file, it also comes 
with COPYING
and COPYING.LESSER files with the text of GPL and LGPL, which seems to 
imply they

wanted to allow distributing the program under (L)GPL.
Seems worth a clarification by the copyright owner, those may be old 
copyright notices,

and they are probably willing to relicense.

That may not be possible for Contrib/mfix/test.ps, but that file could 
be stripped.

Re: Is mpage DFSG compatible?

[Eriberto]

Thanks Riley and Ángel!

Ángel,

The copyright notices in headers should be considered as priority over
licenses inside generical files. So, the upstream intents provided by
generical copyright files shouldn't be considered when packaging and
if the files have headers. I understood your words, but the main
license is non-DFSG (IMHO).

Thanks a lot for your help!

Regards,

Eriberto


2015-10-18 19:06 GMT-02:00 Ángel González :
> I have to agree with the interpretations of the given text.
>
> However, in addition to the license in the README file, it also comes with
> COPYING
> and COPYING.LESSER files with the text of GPL and LGPL, which seems to imply
> they
> wanted to allow distributing the program under (L)GPL.
> Seems worth a clarification by the copyright owner, those may be old
> copyright notices,
> and they are probably willing to relicense.
>
> That may not be possible for Contrib/mfix/test.ps, but that file could be
> stripped.

Re: Is mpage DFSG compatible?

[Riley Baird]

On Sun, 18 Oct 2015 18:23:50 -0200
Eriberto Mota  wrote:

> Hi guys,
> 
> I am doing a revision over the orphaned package 'mpage' (in main tree).
> 
> When migrating the debian/copyright file to 1.0 format, I did a full
> revision in source code and I found two doubtful situations for me.
> 
> The first issue is the license used by mpage:
> 
>  * Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
>  * copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided
>  * that this copyright notice is preserved, and that the
>  * distributor grants the recipient permission for further
>  * redistribution as permitted by this notice.
> 
> IMO, this license doesn't allow modify the source code. So, this
> license is inadequate.
> 
> The second issue is the license of the Contrib/mfix/test.ps file:
> 
> %  Copyright (c) 1986-89, ArborText, Inc.
> %  Permission to copy is granted so long as the PostScript code
> %  is not resold or used in a commercial product.
> 
> In this license the rigths to resold or use in a commercial product is
> denied. In this case, the solution is remove the file (not essential,
> a contrib only).
> 
> Well, I need your opinions about what to do. Should be this package
> moved to non-free? Must it be removed? Am I wrong?

I agree with both of your interpretations.


pgpLMpNFbNvf8.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Is mpage DFSG compatible?

[Eriberto]

2015-10-18 20:11 GMT-02:00 Ángel González :
>
> Kudos to Ben for noticing that old Changelog entry.
>

Yes, yes. Ben was really well.

I will wait new opinions and I will open a serious bug. After this I
will contact the upstream. I was afraid to open the bug without ask
for opinions in debian-legal because the package is in Debian several
years without problems.

Thanks a lot to Riley, Ángel and Ben.

Cheers,

Eriberto

Re: Is mpage DFSG compatible?

[Ángel González]

On 18/10/15 23:27, Eriberto wrote:

Thanks Riley and Ángel!

Ángel,

The copyright notices in headers should be considered as priority over
licenses inside generical files. So, the upstream intents provided by
generical copyright files shouldn't be considered when packaging and
if the files have headers. I understood your words, but the main
license is non-DFSG (IMHO).

Thanks a lot for your help!

Regards,

Eriberto
Sure. I was considering that they probably *intended* it to be available 
under

(L)GPL, and would thus be sympatetic to (properly) license under them.
Not that Debian should solely rely on those files when there is more 
specific

copyright information.

Kudos to Ben for noticing that old Changelog entry.

Re: Is mpage DFSG compatible?

[Ben Finney]

Eriberto Mota  writes:

> I am doing a revision over the orphaned package 'mpage' (in main tree).
>
> When migrating the debian/copyright file to 1.0 format, I did a full
> revision in source code

Thank you! This is important work to be done by the maintainer of any
package in Debian.

> The first issue is the license used by mpage:
>
>  * Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
>  * copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided
>  * that this copyright notice is preserved, and that the
>  * distributor grants the recipient permission for further
>  * redistribution as permitted by this notice.
>
> IMO, this license doesn't allow modify the source code. So, this
> license is inadequate.

Yes, the permission is restricted to only “verbatim copies”, which
explicitly disallows modification. Lacking that permission means the
work fails DFSG §3 and is non-free.

> The second issue is the license of the Contrib/mfix/test.ps file:
>
> %  Copyright (c) 1986-89, ArborText, Inc.
> %  Permission to copy is granted so long as the PostScript code
> %  is not resold or used in a commercial product.

Yes, there is no clear permission to redistribute (“copy” does not mean
“redistribute copies”), no permission to redistribute modified or
derived works, and explicit denial of permission to use the work for
commercial purposes. Those fail DFSG §1, §2, §3, and §6, making the work
non-free.

> In this case, the solution is remove the file (not essential, a
> contrib only).

That's a valid solution for this file.

If the copyright holder could be contacted, it would be better to obtain
an explicit written free license; but if in your assessment the file is
not needed anyway, it is simpler to remove the file from the source
package.

> Well, I need your opinions about what to do. Should be this package
> moved to non-free? Must it be removed? Am I wrong?

The ‘CHANGES’ file contains an entry under “October  2002”:

October  2002
- Released version 2.5.3
- Start moving mapge into the GPL...

This at least suggests the upstream developer at the time of that entry
intended to explicitly change the license of the whole work to GNU
General Public License.

You could contact the upstream copyright holder, cite that changelog
entry, and request they follow the instructions in GNU GPL v3 to
effectively grant license for every part of the work to all recipients.

There needs to be an explicit written grant of license to the recipient,
preferably in the work itself and not conflicting with any other
notices (so those conflicting notices should be removed by the copyright
holder who wrote them).

-- 
 \   “It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do |
  `\   is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument |
_o__)will play itself.” —Johann Sebastian Bach |
Ben Finney

Re: Is mpage DFSG compatible?

[Eriberto]

Thanks Riley and Ángel!

Ángel,

The copyright notices in headers should be considered as priority over
licenses inside generical files. So, the upstream intents provided by
generical copyright files shouldn't be considered when packaging and
if the files have headers. I understood your words, but the main
license is non-DFSG (IMHO).

Thanks a lot for your help!

Regards,

Eriberto


2015-10-18 19:06 GMT-02:00 Ángel González :
> I have to agree with the interpretations of the given text.
>
> However, in addition to the license in the README file, it also comes with
> COPYING
> and COPYING.LESSER files with the text of GPL and LGPL, which seems to imply
> they
> wanted to allow distributing the program under (L)GPL.
> Seems worth a clarification by the copyright owner, those may be old
> copyright notices,
> and they are probably willing to relicense.
>
> That may not be possible for Contrib/mfix/test.ps, but that file could be
> stripped.
>
>
>

Re: Is mpage DFSG compatible?

[Charles Plessy]

Le Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 06:23:50PM -0200, Eriberto Mota a écrit :
> 
> When migrating the debian/copyright file to 1.0 format, I did a full
> revision in source code and I found two doubtful situations for me.
> 
> The first issue is the license used by mpage:
> 
>  * Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim
>  * copies of this document as received, in any medium, provided
>  * that this copyright notice is preserved, and that the
>  * distributor grants the recipient permission for further
>  * redistribution as permitted by this notice.
> 
> IMO, this license doesn't allow modify the source code. So, this
> license is inadequate.
> 
> The second issue is the license of the Contrib/mfix/test.ps file:
> 
> %  Copyright (c) 1986-89, ArborText, Inc.
> %  Permission to copy is granted so long as the PostScript code
> %  is not resold or used in a commercial product.

Hi Eriberto,

just a side comment since you already had a lot of good answers.

When encountering strange license terms, I always look for them in
codesearch.debian.net.  It can either suggest that the license is not
problematic (for instance if it is found in a large number of high-profile
packages), or it gives the opportunity to correct the error archive-wide.

In the case of mpage, the lines "distributor grants the recipient permission
for further" and "Permission to copy is granted so long as the PostScript code"
are not found in any other package; good !

Cheers,

Charles

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan