On Wednesday, October 8, 2025 1:18:17 PM Mountain Standard Time Boyuan Yang wrote: > (Please explicitly put me into the cc list) > > Dear debian-legal, > > Following https://bugs.debian.org/1050520#12 , I am looking for your > confirmation on the DFSG compatibility of a customized license that > add an extra term on top of standard MIT license. This will be needed to > solve https://bugs.debian.org/1050520 . > > The full text of the license is as follows: > > =========================================================== > Copyright (c) [NAME] [YEAR] > > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy > of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal > in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights > to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell > copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is > furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: > > Permission is not granted to distribute or redistribute this software, the > derivative works of this software, or any of its associated files that was > generated in any approach (including building machine learning models), for > any purpose, without attributing the source material by including its > license. > > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in > all copies or substantial portions of the Software. > > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR > IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, > FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE > AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER > LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, > OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN > THE SOFTWARE. > > Note: Some of the examples include code not distributed under the terms of the > MIT License. > =============================================================== > > The license text comes from > https://github.com/itay-grudev/SingleApplication/blob/ a8da87d78238ac9ac92d2cd > a41793d4879c188b3/LICENSE . Of course, we can safely assume that the software > does not include any files under "examples/" directory at this moment. > > > Bug#1050520#12 raised three concerns on DFSG incompatibility: > > 1. The license contains self-contradictory terms (granting permission > "without > restriction" in para 1, then denying permission without attribution in > paragraph 2)
That is true. It is far from the first license to contain contradictory terms, especially when paragraphs are read in isolation. However, while I consider the wording unadvisable, when read together I don’t think there is any question as to the intent of the full license. > 2. It still appears to discriminate against ML use cases (DFSG #6 violation) I don’t see that at all. The paragraph in question is express that the restriction applies equally to everyone and every field of endeavor. It gives an express example as it relates to Machine Learning to make clear that Machine Learning is treated like everyone else and is not exempt (which is a reasonable thing to say considering that there are some people in the current environment who have argued that Machine Learning is exempt from all licensing and copyright considerations). > 3. The attribution requirements go beyond standard MIT license requirements, > creating compatibility issues with GPL and other licenses This is an interesting question. Being DFSG-free does not require compatibility with the GPL or other licenses, although it would be a problem if this software depends on any GPL software during build. It is common for many licenses, including the GPL, to require that the software or modified versions of the software must attribute the original upstream and distribute the license text under which the upstream software is released. What makes this a little different is that it appears to claim that works produced using the software must also attribute the original upstream project and distribute a copy of the original upstream software license. It does *NOT* say that works produced using the software must be *licensed* under the original upstream license. For example, if this license were applied to LibreOffice, it would require that any *documents* produced by LibreOffice be distributed with an attribution saying it was produced using LibreOffice and a copy of the LibreOffice license. I find the above to be very distasteful and I would not recommend that anyone use such a license. Note that the wording is a bit vague, so perhaps my understanding of what the license creators expect this to accomplish is incorrect. In any case, I am not certain that this is DFSG-non-free, but it is a license I would recommend nobody use. -- Soren Stoutner [email protected]
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