On Saturday, June 6, 2026 5:18:40 AM Mountain Standard Time Andreas Metzler wrote: > Hello, > netpbm's analyzer/pgmtexture.c features: > 8X------------------------------- > ** Code written partially taken from pgmtofs.c in the PBMPLUS package > ** by Jef Poskanzer. > ** > ** Algorithms for calculating features (and some explanatory comments) are > ** taken from: > ** > ** Haralick, R.M., K. Shanmugam, and I. Dinstein. 1973. Textural features > ** for image classification. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and > ** Cybertinetics, SMC-3(6):610-621. > ** > ** Copyright (C) 1991 Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, employer for > ** hire of James Darrell McCauley > ** > ** Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its > ** documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided > ** that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that > ** copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting > ** documentation. This software is provided "as is" without express or > ** implied warranty. > ** > ** THE TEXAS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION (TAES) AND THE TEXAS A&M > ** UNIVERSITY SYSTEM (TAMUS) MAKE NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES > ** (INCLUDING BY WAY OF EXAMPLE, MERCHANTABILITY) WITH RESPECT TO ANY > ** ITEM, AND SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL > ** OR CONSEQUENTAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE POSSESSION OR USE OF > ** ANY SUCH ITEM. LICENSEE AND/OR USER AGREES TO INDEMNIFY AND HOLD > ** TAES AND TAMUS HARMLESS FROM ANY CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR > ** POSSESSION OF SUCH ITEMS. > 8X------------------------------- > > The fishy bit is the broad indemnification clause »LICENSEE AND/OR > USER AGREES TO INDEMNIFY AND HOLD TAES AND TAMUS HARMLESS FROM ANY > CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR POSSESSION OF SUCH ITEMS.« > > RedHat/Fedora looked at it > https://gitlab.com/fedora/legal/fedora-license-data/-/work_items/255 > and dropped the respective file.
My first take is that I really dislike custom licenses because their implications are not already known, so it takes a lot of effort to parse them and interpret their implications. You mentioned that RedHat just dropped the file. Is it possible to do so without losing functionality? > What is our stanza? I have asked upstream and Bryan wrote: > | Actually, that isn't part of any license. The copyright license is the > | paragraph above that. This paragraph starts off as a disclaimer of > | warranty, > | and ends with a covenant, both of which presume to be part of some contract > | between the licensee and the author, which doesn't exist. I don’t think it is correct to say that this is part of a contract that doesn’t exist. This is fairly clearly part of the open source license and anyone who uses this file is bound by it. I don’t personally have any problem with this provision, and I doubt it runs afoul of the DFSG. The first part of the text is pretty common in a lot of licenses we accept: > THE TEXAS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION (TAES) AND THE TEXAS A&M > UNIVERSITY SYSTEM (TAMUS) MAKE NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES > INCLUDING BY WAY OF EXAMPLE, MERCHANTABILITY) WITH RESPECT TO ANY > ITEM, AND SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL > OR CONSEQUENTAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE POSSESSION OR USE OF > ANY SUCH ITEM. The next part of the text just restates in other words what it means that there is not warranty of any kind. Specifically: > LICENSEE AND/OR USER AGREES TO INDEMNIFY AND HOLD > TAES AND TAMUS HARMLESS FROM ANY CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR > POSSESSION OF SUCH ITEMS. Because these are the same ideas, it doesn’t really matter how many different ways they say it. -- Soren Stoutner [email protected]
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