Re: flowc license

2005-02-07 Thread Florian Weimer
* Radu Spineanu: I was looking over flowc[1], and wondering if i could package it. However i am not sure about the license[2]. It contains some restrictions about distribution: '3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following

Re: flowc license

2005-02-12 Thread Florian Weimer
* Francesco Poli: On Wed, 9 Feb 2005 18:17:24 -0700 Joel Aelwyn wrote: But in my experience, when contacting authors, a great many of them simply copied boilerplate from an old BSD license, and if you discuss with them the rationale given by the University of California when they

Re: flowc license

2005-02-12 Thread Florian Weimer
* Joel Aelwyn: 4) The DFSG tradition is muddy (at best) on whether it refers to the 4-clause or 3-clause variant of the license - It's pretty clear: The DFSG are older than the wide-spread adoption of the 3-clause BSD license. Until UC Berkeley relicensed the Berkeley Software Distribution

Re: Let's stop feeding the NVidia cuckoo

2005-02-25 Thread Florian Weimer
* Ben Johnson: Mike A. Harrison still does not sound satisfied by the explanation of nv's maintainer: While it is true this is an open source driver in a sense, in practice, it really isn't very open source, because the driver source is heavily obfuscated. It uses hexadecimal I/O

Re: Let's stop feeding the NVidia cuckoo

2005-02-28 Thread Florian Weimer
* Daniel Stone: On Sun, Feb 27, 2005 at 10:50:13AM +0100, Andreas Barth wrote: Is there some proof that the files are created that way, or is this just your assumptation? While you cannot prove it, it is incredibly unlikely that anyone would ever choose to write anything that way. After a

Re: Concerns about works created by the US government

2005-04-06 Thread Florian Weimer
* Sami Liedes: This certainly seems to make the works effectively PD in the US; however it almost seems as if that was carefully worded to _not_ place works in the PD, only to make the US government unable to enforce their copyright under the US law. AFAIK, this is indeed the standard

Re: quake2 and german youth protection law

2005-06-14 Thread Florian Weimer
* Måns Rullgård: I was of the impression that Quake 2 had been placed on an official list of restricted publications, and that this was the primary cause of concern. Does Debian distribute the data files? The engine itself is not on the German Index Librorum Prohibitorum. But this doesn't

Re: MPlayer revisited

2005-06-14 Thread Florian Weimer
* MJ Ray: Diego Biurrun [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I was told that it is now up to the FTP masters to review the package and admit it into the distribution. I was also told that these people are worried that MPlayer might infringe upon software patents. [...] ..might infringe upon patents

Re: quake2 and german youth protection law

2005-06-14 Thread Florian Weimer
* Humberto Massa Guimarães: But this doesn't matter at all. Our guardians became frustrated with the necessity to index both the German translation and the original, so they installed a mandatory rating system for computer games (similar to movies in Germany and other countries). The main

Re: Linux mark extortion

2005-06-17 Thread Florian Weimer
* Stephen Frost: I'm not entirely sure that what Debian does wouldn't fall under the descriptive use concept. Debian GNU/Linux is more like Debian for GNU/Linux than DebianLinux. I don't think anybody knows how trademark law applies in the context of goods which are expected to be shared

Re: Statement that all of Debian needs to be Free?

2005-06-17 Thread Florian Weimer
* Dylan Thurston: I'm surprised that someone thinks that there's any controversy on this point. As I understand it, the current situation is that, with the release of sarge, everything in Debian should be DFSG free, including programs, documentation, and miscellaneous files (as in this

Re: Bug#153467: [Weimer@cert.uni-stuttgart.de: Bug#153467: libjpeg62: JPEG is patent-encumbered]

2002-07-21 Thread Florian Weimer
/patente/wirkungen/jpeg/index.en.html -- Florian Weimer[EMAIL PROTECTED] University of Stuttgart http://CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE/people/fw/ RUS-CERT fax +49-711-685-5898 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject

Re: Bug#153467: libjpeg62: JPEG is patent-encumbered]

2002-07-21 Thread Florian Weimer
to tick off in 1986 (I'm not sure about this; you know probably much more about these details), the patent does not expire anytime soon, I fear. -- Florian Weimer[EMAIL PROTECTED] University of Stuttgart http://CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE/people/fw/ RUS-CERT

Re: ACL - The Ada Community License

2002-07-30 Thread Florian Weimer
Brian May [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 2 You may apply bug fixes, portability fixes and other modifications derived from the Public Domain or from the Copyright Holder. A library modified in such a way shall still be considered the Standard Version.

Re: ACL - The Ada Community License

2002-07-30 Thread Florian Weimer
Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Selling the library is not forbidden. Really? You may not charge a fee for this Ada library itself.

Re: Aspell-en license Once again.

2002-11-11 Thread Florian Weimer
Joe Moore [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: No, this would be a derivative work of the Usenet postings, which are copyright their authors. And what if you do this someplace where this is not the case, according to local law?

Re: question about leaving lzw and unknown-license code in source

2002-11-13 Thread Florian Weimer
Anthony DeRobertis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Fortunately, the lzw patent expires this coming June. There is more than one LZW patent on the world. :-(

Re: Linux kernel complete licence check, Q.11

2002-11-17 Thread Florian Weimer
Giacomo Catenazzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: As a special exception. I don't understand the paragraph! Are the files in the dir still GPL? Is it a kind of dual license, GPL and at your option the extra modification/linking right? Yes, such exception clauses are used in many places (C++

Re: location of UnicodeData.txt

2002-12-01 Thread Florian Weimer
Richard Braakman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: According to http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UnicodeData.html there's a version 3.2. Hmm, is this file Free? There's a license on that same page: Limitations on Rights to Redistribute This Data [...] Information can be extracted

Re: Is this a free license?

2002-12-15 Thread Florian Weimer
Russ Allbery [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: http://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html Why should I believe you instead of Dan? Do you have a counter to the cite of Galoob v. Nintendo? Debian wants to distribute more than just source code patches (which can form derivative works under copyright, but we

Re: Is this a free license?

2002-12-15 Thread Florian Weimer
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes: If that's true, then we might as well go home, the GPL is then unenforceable. What? How? Because ftp.gnu.org doesn't require you to read the license either, but does hold you to its restrictions. The GPL doesn't contain any restrictions.

Re: proposed licence change for moodle

2003-01-22 Thread Florian Weimer
Nick Phillips [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But trying to insist on a logo is looking perilously non-free in any case. Logo requirements can make moot all copyright licenses, for that matter.

Re: PHPNuke license

2003-02-28 Thread Florian Weimer
Branden Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: What this restriction is much *more* like is the Zope web bug Are you sure that there are any countries which do not forbid removing copyright notices?

Re: The Affero license

2003-03-07 Thread Florian Weimer
Rob Lanphier [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So, does this group think the ASP loophole is worth closing, and if so, what is the right way to close it? If not, why not? In my daily work, I adapt a lot of free software and use it in an ASP-like environment. If the licenses closed the ASP loophole

Re: The Affero license

2003-03-09 Thread Florian Weimer
John Goerzen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm not in favor of the obligatory publishing clause. Indeed, isn't that sort of clause the very reason we've refused to allow other software into Debian? Hmm, QPLed software (which contains a obnoxious clause in this direction) has made its way into

Re: The ASP nightmare: a description

2003-04-13 Thread Florian Weimer
Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Maybe they provide a sort of stripped down client computer with a browser (possibly all proprietary) that is set up to use their server for all your computing needs. In this case, you lose becaus you haven't got a general-purpose computer to run free

Re: Is this license DFSG-free, part 2 - Word from upstream

2003-05-26 Thread Florian Weimer
Nicolas Kratz [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: *groan* I have sent upstream a mail, explaining the nonfreeness of the software and suggesting to use GPL, BSD or Artistic License. The original answer is below. It translates to: Professor phoned author, and they say: It's OK to build on top of our

Re: Defining 'preferred form for making modifications'

2003-06-20 Thread Florian Weimer
Sam Hartman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Why? What real-world problem does this solve? Have we actually run into situations where it was not obvious in a particular instance what the preferred form for modifications was? I know of one Debian package whose source code is the output of a CASE

Re: GFDL - status?

2003-07-07 Thread Florian Weimer
Josselin Mouette [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. Without clarification from the author of each document about how he interprets this statement, I don't

Unicode Character Database

2003-07-07 Thread Florian Weimer
First of all, let's suppose that the license is DFSG free. It's: | UCD Terms of Use | | Disclaimer | | The Unicode Character Database is provided as is by Unicode, | Inc. No claims are made as to fitness for any particular | purpose. No warranties of any kind are expressed or

Re: Unicode Character Database

2003-07-07 Thread Florian Weimer
Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This license is not actually DFSG-free; it grants the right to make copies, to use copies for creating products, and to distribute copies *internally*, but it does not grant the right to distribute copies publically or to modify the file. The

Re: Unicode Character Database

2003-07-09 Thread Florian Weimer
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes: The next release of GNU miscfiles will have a version that is really free. We're going to first transform the existing file into some other useful format, which will then be licensed entirely under GPL. Nice. If you use a format which marks

Re: GFDL and man pages

2003-07-15 Thread Florian Weimer
Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: You can make a manpage, but you must have to include inside the manpage Actually, it's sufficient to refer to this information in the SEE ALSO section of the manpage, so that elaborateness of the GFDL doesn't interfere with the intendend use of the

Re: Transfer of copyright on death

2003-07-15 Thread Florian Weimer
Andrew Stribblehill [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: FYI, the current licence is below: 9menu is free software, and is Copyright (c) 1994 by David Hogan and Arnold Robbins. Permission is granted to all sentient beings to use this software, to make copies of it, and to distribute those copies,

Re: GFDL and man pages

2003-07-15 Thread Florian Weimer
Joe Moore [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Unless the FSF is the sole copyright holder of the relevant GFDL document, their interpretation of the license is irrelevant. Yours is as well, and so is everyone's on this list. Then why do we discuss at all?

Re: DFSG FAQ (draft)

2003-07-15 Thread Florian Weimer
Barak Pearlmutter [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: free license, Debian in general does not consider material under the GFDL to be free. I think it's premature to include such a statement in an official Good point. Can you suggest a re-phrase for the GFDL question? I think it is fair to say

Re: DFSG FAQ (draft)

2003-07-15 Thread Florian Weimer
Barak Pearlmutter [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Okay, I rephrased the GFDL stuff a bit. Let me know if you're not comfortable with it. Debian in general does not consider material under the GFDL with any significant clauses activated to be free. Almost no one would seriously contend that the

Re: DFSG FAQ (draft)

2003-07-15 Thread Florian Weimer
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Three problems with that hypothesis:- 1. We don't have any way of distinguishing software and this documentation in a safe manner. My local research suggests that software is generally treated as a literary work and electronic documentation definitely is.

Re: DFSG FAQ (draft)

2003-07-15 Thread Florian Weimer
Henning Makholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: In my opinion we actually try our damnedest to make sure, to the best of our knowledge, that people *can* rely of having the DFSG freedoms when they use software from Debian. But this is not true. Almost never, the source code itself is examined,

Re: DFSG FAQ (draft)

2003-07-15 Thread Florian Weimer
Henning Makholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: For the record, I'm also happy with the version that is in Barak's faq presently (which starts with You should take this answer as a total disclaimer of everything. ...) It's fine with me, too.

Re: migrating away from the FDL

2003-07-19 Thread Florian Weimer
Wouter Verhelst [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: No, this is not a mail about large-scale bugs I intend to file about packages using the FDL. It's about 'how do I relicense stuff in non-FDL licenses'. The next logical step is 'how do I rename Debian GNU/Linux' to 'Debian Linux', I presume. To my

Re: migrating away from the FDL

2003-07-19 Thread Florian Weimer
Sorry, Wouter, I shouldn't have complained about your approach. Your request for help actually makes sense (it's just an ordinary relicensing question, after all). Fear of having to switch to FreeBSD provokes some rather clueless reactions on my part. I'm sorry.

Re: migrating away from the FDL

2003-07-21 Thread Florian Weimer
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And are the gcc developers authors of this manual. If so, it's only up to them. Don't you mean copyright holders instead of authors? Last I knew, GCC work required you to assign copyright to FSF, so I expect the manual

Re: mozilla export restrictions

2003-08-07 Thread Florian Weimer
Wolfgang Fischer [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Does this mean that we have to put mozilla to non-free? I don't think so. AFAIK, these restrictions are not imposed by the license, and apply to U.S. citizens only.

Re: SURVEY: Is the GNU FDL a DFSG-free license?

2003-08-21 Thread Florian Weimer
Branden Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Part 1. DFSG-freeness of the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2 Please mark with an X the item that most closely approximates your opinion. Mark only one. [ X ] The GNU Free Documentation License, version 1.2, as published by the

Re: Is the Sun RPC License DFSG-free?

2003-08-22 Thread Florian Weimer
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 06:39:47AM +, Brian M. Carlson wrote: Sun RPC is a product of Sun Microsystems, Inc. and is provided for unrestricted use provided that this legend is included on all tape media and as a part

Re: Patents, gimp-nonfree and LAME

2003-08-22 Thread Florian Weimer
Paul C. Bryan [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: My question is: what are the guidelines on packaging code that has patented technology? Does GIMP's GIF support JPEG is the better example. It's about in the same league as MP3, in terms of enforcement, IMHO.

Re: [STATUS] SURVEY: Is the GNU FDL a DFSG-free license?

2003-08-24 Thread Florian Weimer
Joe Wreschnig [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I realized after I sent this that it doesn't convey what I actually meant. Maintainers must not put non-free software in main. The only guaranteed way to meet this requirement is to review the source code they package. The guidelines only require

Re: A possible GFDL compromise

2003-08-25 Thread Florian Weimer
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Nowadays we have to struggle constantly against the tendency to bury the free software movement and pretend that we advocate open source. So I don't think we can conclude that such precautions are no longer necessary. It's true that many have gladly

Re: A possible GFDL compromise

2003-09-03 Thread Florian Weimer
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It's true that many have gladly taken GNU software while ignoring the GNU philosophy (or actively working against it). But I doubt that invariant sections alone can ensure that the message will be heard. Such things are very hard to

Re: UnrealIRCd License (Click-Through issue)

2003-09-03 Thread Florian Weimer
Mika Fischer [EMAIL PROTECTED] quotes the UnrealIRCd license: In order to continue with the download and installation of UnrealIRCd you must accept the following license agreement: [Full copy of GPL] The UnrealIRCd Team reserves the right to modify this agreement at anytime as long as

Re: stepping in between Debian and FSF

2003-09-03 Thread Florian Weimer
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Non-free is up in the air for purely administrative issues, Soon, you might need it to distribute documentation for central software components. In fact, some DDs I asked think that this strengthening of non-free is a very favorable side effect of the

Re: Attribution-ShareAlike License

2003-09-11 Thread Florian Weimer
John Goerzen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This license is from the Creative Commons at http://creativecommons.org/license/results-one?license_code=by-saformat=text It is designed to apply to text or similar works (manuals, books, music, etc.) What do you think: DFSG free? It depends. If it is

Re: Attribution-ShareAlike License

2003-09-11 Thread Florian Weimer
David B Harris [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It depends. If it is applied to, say, a PDF document, I wouldn't consider the result DFSG-free because PDF is not a format suitable for editing. Are you being sarcastic, pointing out the vagueness of the terms? Not really. The license simply

Re: Attribution-ShareAlike License

2003-09-11 Thread Florian Weimer
Stephen Stafford [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: PDF is just plaintext (unless it uses encryption). Or compression. There are mostly plain-text PDF files, but they are quite unusual.

Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal

2003-09-18 Thread Florian Weimer
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Brian T. Sniffen) writes: The GFDL allows you to make any changes you like in the technical substance of the manual, just as the TeX license allows you to make any changes you like in the technical substance of TeX. This is not true. There is no way for me to create a

Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal

2003-09-18 Thread Florian Weimer
Anthony DeRobertis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: And we very clearly treat everything in Debian as software (see the first clause of the Social Contract). Not quite. Texts of licenses and logos typically fail DFSG tests. Lots of graphics (and probably some audio material, too) come in a form that

Re: License requirements for DSP binaries?

2003-09-26 Thread Florian Weimer
On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 08:25:44PM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote: If it's licensed under the GPL, and no source is provided, then it can not be distributed at all, not even in non-free, unless there never was source to begin with. (I assume this isn't the case, as you said no source code is

Re: RFC: GPL plus securities industry disclaimer suitable for main?

2003-10-03 Thread Florian Weimer
Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: One such CRAN package, GPL'ed and all, was written by someone in the financial industry which happens to be one of the preferred habitats of layers, and so it carries an extra rider. Could you good souls please opine if the following debian/copyright is ok for

Re: RFC: GPL plus securities industry disclaimer suitable for main?

2003-10-03 Thread Florian Weimer
Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: The laws of England control *interpretation* of the contract, Just interpreting the GPL according to the laws of Germany might result in further restrictions. For example, GPLed software released before 1995 is not redistributable over the Internet.

Re: RFC: GPL plus securities industry disclaimer suitable for main?

2003-10-03 Thread Florian Weimer
Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: Why do you want to include it? I can't see any indication that you have Same reason as for other packages I maintain: Because it is very useful code. Sorry, I wanted to know why you think you have to include this text in the debian/copyright file. It doesn't look

Re: RFC: GPL plus securities industry disclaimer suitable for main?

2003-10-03 Thread Florian Weimer
Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: Right now I'm not sure if there is a problem at all. It don't think it is necessary to inlcude upstream's terms for the _initial_ download, if upstream doesn't mandate it. Interesting thought. But then they also have some not so pretty do not distribute

Re: RFC: GPL plus securities industry disclaimer suitable for main?

2003-10-04 Thread Florian Weimer
Michelle Konzack wrote: Just interpreting the GPL according to the laws of Germany might result in further restrictions. For example, GPLed software released before 1995 is not redistributable over the Internet. Can you give me spme online Resources about it ? In Germany, a copyright

Re: RFC: GPL plus securities industry disclaimer suitable for main?

2003-10-04 Thread Florian Weimer
Andreas Barth wrote: Online distribution of copyrighted works is known since 1995 (in the legal sense, at least that's the year that is mentioned in all such discussions). Sorry, but that's not totally true. There was substantial distribution via modem networks before (e.g. Fido). IMHO

Re: Early Software Free?

2003-10-04 Thread Florian Weimer
D. Starner wrote: Okay, I have an Algol68 compiler written at Oklahoma State University in 1971. (This is not a hypothetical - I have this code, and have considered porting it to a more modern system, say Fortran 77 targetting a VAX.) Is it clearly in the public domain? No, the legal

ISO country codes are freely usable

2003-10-05 Thread Florian Weimer
A few days ago, ISO has confirmed that the country, currency and language codes are freely usable: http://www.iso.org/iso/en/commcentre/pressreleases/2003/Ref871.html | Ref.: 871 | 30 September 2003 | | ISO reaffirms free-of-charge use of its country, currency and language | codes | | ISO

Re: RFC: GPL plus securities industry disclaimer suitable for main?

2003-10-07 Thread Florian Weimer
Fedor Zuev wrote: AFAIK, you are right in general, but there a small correction needed. I apologize, if you cite any official source, but all I read about this appears slightly otherwise. Copyright holder cannot grant right for as yet unknown types of use, not the right for

Re: Bug#220464: gimp: LZW patent is still valid in Europe and Japan

2003-11-15 Thread Florian Weimer
Ben Gertzfield wrote: I'm quite sure we have cryptographic software in main that is patent-encumbered and illegal for other reasons in many non-US countries worldwide. Isn't this exactly the same thing? It's been rehashed many times. What's worse, GIF and JPEG are now essentially in the

Re: I'll contact upstream

2003-12-23 Thread Florian Weimer
Anthony DeRobertis wrote: I hope we get as solution soon; however, at the moment, this appears to be quite a valid bug. Using even marginally cautious standard of what constitutes a work based on [the Program] under Section 2 [of the GPL], the manuals qualify. Huh? Why do you think that

Re: I'll contact upstream

2003-12-23 Thread Florian Weimer
Anthony DeRobertis wrote: On Dec 23, 2003, at 13:21, Florian Weimer wrote: Huh? Why do you think that running a document written in Texinfo through a Texinfo interpreter makes the document a derivative work of a (specific) Texinfo interpreter? Because that's not what we're doing. We're

Re: SRFI copyright license

2003-12-24 Thread Florian Weimer
Lionel Elie Mamane wrote: I wish to get your opinions on the case of the reference implementations in the SRFI's. An SRFI, Scheme Request For Implementation, is the process by which the Scheme community agrees on standard libraries and features for various scheme implementations. Every SRFI

Re: a legal problem with 'filters' in germany

2004-10-26 Thread Florian Weimer
* MJ Ray: On 2004-10-22 18:24:02 +0100 martin f krafft [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: please refer to #277794. One single line needs to be erased from the package because otherwise, the package is unconstitutional in Germany (and Austria). [...] For other -legal contributors, this involves a

Re: License for VCP

2004-10-26 Thread Florian Weimer
* Piotr Roszatycki: I think it is BSD-like license with advertising clause. It looks more like a 3-clause BSD license, *without* the obnoxious advertising clause. Is it fit to the main archive? I think so. However, IIRC, Bastian Blank is working on packaging VCP and its dependencies.

Re: The purpose of debian-legal

2004-04-23 Thread Florian Weimer
Sam Hartman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 1) Minimizing the probability that Debian, that or contributers to Debian will be involved in legal action arising from Debian's distribution or modification of software. I don't think this is among the goals of debian-legal. Can you remember discussions

Re: lookandfeel General Public License (LAFGPL)

2004-04-24 Thread Florian Weimer
Glenn Maynard [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Sat, Apr 24, 2004 at 02:28:01AM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote: *Sigh* Unfortunately, it doesn't matter. The license itself appears to be a violation of the FSF's copyright in the preamble of the GPL; the FSF doesn't grant any right to modify that

Re: Forgent starts litigating JPEG...

2004-04-26 Thread Florian Weimer
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Their patent expires *really* soon, like, a few months away. It's likely that the issue will become moot. One patent in their portfolio expires between 2007 and 2014. I'm sorry, but you can't just wait until the issue goes away. -- Current mail

Re: Forgent starts litigating JPEG...

2004-04-26 Thread Florian Weimer
Anthony DeRobertis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Is JPEG any different than GIF was I don't remember that anyone was actually sued for using the LZW compression algorithm (certainly not a company rather close to Debian). Maybe the case was so clear that every paid royalties. In this case, it

Re: Not inherently free, but inherently non-free?

2004-04-27 Thread Florian Weimer
Martin Schulze [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: There seems to be some confusion about whether the GNU FDL renders every document non-free or only those that include invariant sections. Personally, I think the GNU FDL is acceptable as a free documentation license, as long as the invariant sections

Re: Not inherently free, but inherently non-free?

2004-04-28 Thread Florian Weimer
Anthony DeRobertis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I agree that this position --- and similar ones --- were voiced by several people. However, for the sake of completeness, it should be pointed out that: 1) None of the proponents of this position came up with a good definition of

Re: Not inherently free, but inherently non-free?

2004-04-28 Thread Florian Weimer
Branden Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: However, debian-legal assumes that the GFDL with invariant sections is non-free, and there seems to be a majority for a general rejection as a free _software_ license (but the poll was worded quite carefully, after the software is documentation

CA certificates (was: Re: Mass bug filing: Cryptographic protection against modification)

2004-05-05 Thread Florian Weimer
Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Tue, 04 May 2004, Florian Weimer wrote: A few packages contain software (well, everything's software these days) which is cryptographically protected against modification. This seems to violate DFSG §3. Uh, if you're refering to the PGP keys

Re: CA certificates

2004-05-06 Thread Florian Weimer
* Niklas Vainio: On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 11:52:39PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: There's an interesting question. Is a public key copyrightable? In other words, does VeriSign have any legal grounds to restrict use of their public keys at all? My understanding is that copyright laws speak

Re: CA certificates

2004-05-06 Thread Florian Weimer
* Russ Allbery: Florian Weimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I've digged a bit more, and VeriSign actually has a license governing the *use* of their certificates (including the root and intermediate certificates): https://www.verisign.com/repository/rpa.html The license seems to violate

Re: Draft Debian-legal summary of the LGPL

2004-05-12 Thread Florian Weimer
* Henning Makholm: Well, exactly in the LGPL case we don't need to scrutinize the entire license. We can do with noticing that any work covered by the LGPL is effectively dual-licensed with pure GPL, so the freedom of the former follows from freedom of the latter. Linking with

Re: Bug#247802: ITP: libfasttrack-gift -- giFT plugin for the fastrack network

2004-05-23 Thread Florian Weimer
* Bartosz Fenski aka fEnIo: May I ask you in which country reverse-engineering for compatibility is forbidden? Probably in none. But publishing your results is not automatically allowed, and sometimes, there are safeguards against producing a clone (which serves as a replacement of the

Re: oaklisp: contains 500kB binary in source

2004-06-07 Thread Florian Weimer
* Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS: I assume that cyclic Build-Depends are acceptable in Debian. It would be difficult if they weren't. Provided that we have complete source code and all the DFSG requirements are fulfilled, they are acceptable. This has to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, there is no

Re: license change for POSIX manpages

2004-06-09 Thread Florian Weimer
* Josh Triplett: Agreed. In the text could imply right next to where you differ from the standard, which would probably be unreasonable enough to be non-free. Without the in the text, modifiers could simply add a blanket notice somewhere in the distributed work saying this has been changed

Re: license change for POSIX manpages

2004-06-10 Thread Florian Weimer
* Josh Triplett: Florian Weimer wrote: * Josh Triplett: One other issue: does and the nroff source is included mean that if I want to hand someone a printed copy of a manual page, I have to either print the nroff source or supply it on an attached disk? This seems onerous for physical

Re: request-tracker3: license shadiness

2004-06-11 Thread Florian Weimer
* Michael Poole: Can Debian properly redistribute rt3 if rt3 alleges both distribution under the GPL and GPL-incompatible restrictions? I could send you a copy of RT3 without the offending paragraph. Would this make you somewhat more comfortable with RT's license? -- Current mail filters:

Re: Copyright on 'non-creative' data?

2004-07-05 Thread Florian Weimer
* Jacobo Tarrio: O Domingo, 4 de Xullo de 2004 ás 20:54:48 +0100, Andrew Suffield escribía: They may be covered by database property laws in some jurisdictions. ... which are not Copyright or Intellectual Property laws [...] Wrong for Germany. Our analogue of copyright law does cover

Re: Copyright on 'non-creative' data?

2004-07-06 Thread Florian Weimer
* Matthew Palmer: Wrong for Germany. Our analogue of copyright law does cover databases. Mechanical compilations, as well as those requiring creative effort? Mechanical compilations as well. Of course, most of our codified moral rights don't apply to them. 8-)

Re: CeCILL license : Free Software License for french research

2004-07-06 Thread Florian Weimer
* Lucas Nussbaum: IANAL, but the license[4] look quite ok for me, even if the part about GPL compatibility seems a bit unclear. It looks like a fallback close similar to the LGPL. My french is rusty, though, I shouldn't try to interpret contracts. 8-

Re: Bug#256332: Clarification of redistribution

2004-07-09 Thread Florian Weimer
* Brian M. Carlson: Actually, the Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike Licenses from Creative Commons are not DFSG-free. See the summary on debian-legal [0]. [0] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/04/msg00031.html This is a different license, version 1.0 of the Attribution

Re: RE-PROPOSED: The Dictator Test

2004-07-12 Thread Florian Weimer
* Josh Triplett: The Dictator Test: A licence is not Free if it prohibits actions which, in the absence of acceptance of the licence, would be allowed by copyright or other applicable laws. What about warranty disclaimers? Or quite reasonable clauses dealing with patent issues? Much

Re: RE-PROPOSED: The Dictator Test

2004-07-12 Thread Florian Weimer
* Nathanael Nerode: You have hit the nail on the head. The warranty disclaimers don't say You agree not to sue... or You agree that there is no warranty... Wrong, there are certainly some cases: | THIS DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY CONSTITUTES AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THIS | LICENSE. NO USE OF ANY

Re: RE-PROPOSED: The Dictator Test

2004-07-12 Thread Florian Weimer
* Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS: A typical warranty disclaimer doesn't prohibit you from suing the author; it just makes it less likely that you would win if you did. But isn't the Dictator Test trying to prevent that? License grantors do not have a private right of legislation; that is, they are

Re: RE-PROPOSED: The Dictator Test

2004-07-12 Thread Florian Weimer
* Branden Robinson: What about warranty disclaimers? What do you propose is permitted under law before the corresponding copyright license is granted that is not permitted afterwards? It depends on who receives a license. For end users, the warranty disclaimers are completely without

Re: GPL-compatible, copyleft documentation license

2004-07-12 Thread Florian Weimer
* Branden Robinson: In the copyright holder's understanding, re-imposition of the requirements of sections 2a and and 2c by those creating a derivative work is not allowed, since those restrictions never attached to this work; see section 6. This work can be combined with another work

Re: GPL-compatible, copyleft documentation license

2004-07-12 Thread Florian Weimer
* Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS: Florian Weimer [EMAIL PROTECTED]: * Branden Robinson: In the copyright holder's understanding, re-imposition of the requirements of sections 2a and and 2c by those creating a derivative work is not allowed, since those restrictions never attached

Re: GPL-compatible, copyleft documentation license

2004-07-12 Thread Florian Weimer
* MJ Ray: On 2004-07-12 13:27:53 +0100 Florian Weimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Creative Commons is doing this already, so why not use their efforts? ...because CC*SA is not DFSG-free at the moment, Why do you think so? ShareAlike 2.0 hasn't been reviewed so far.

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