I agree with this analysis; I think this is minimal risk. -Marshall
On 2/9/2016 4:24 AM, Peter Klügl wrote: > He crawled it from this site [1] and then he modified the result by > removing entries or single letters. > > I do not see any license notice. Is this a good or bad sign for us? > > IANAL (and actually do not know much about it) but I would assume that > it is not problematic. There is no specific source file and the owner > probably cannot call copyright for single firstnames. > > Best, > > Peter > > [1] http://www.vornamen-liste.de/ > > Am 09.02.2016 um 10:17 schrieb Peter Klügl: >> I additionally sent an email to the last address I know. >> >> Am 08.02.2016 um 22:26 schrieb Richard Eckart de Castilho: >>> The problem I see is that we currently do not know where the file comes from >>> (provenance). I find it hard to believe that the file was an original >>> creation >>> from Stefan. I believe that it could take quite some time to compile such a >>> list of names. More likely is in my opinion, that the file was obtained from >>> some third-party source. >>> >>> If we knew that third-party source, we might easily be able to clear IP. >>> >>> Since we do not know it, we currently have to resort to speculation about >>> the >>> lawfulness of compiling specialized unigram lists. >>> >>> It looks like we can agree this is not a blocker for the present release as >>> involved risk is apparently very low. Still, we should try to clear this. >>> >>> I've placed a comment on UIMA-3926 asking Stefan to shed some light on the >>> provenance of the file. Let's see what comes of it. >>> >>> Thanks for digging up the issue number Marschall! >>> >>> Cheers, >>> >>> -- Richard >>> >>>> On 08.02.2016, at 21:56, Marshall Schor <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>> So, first I'd like to summarize, in case I don't fully understand the >>>> issue. >>>> >>>> Ruta contains some examples; the example data include 90K file >>>> FirstNames.txt, >>>> in example-projects/GermanNovels/reosources. >>>> >>>> From what I can see, there are no actual German Novels included in the >>>> example-project/GermanNovels. >>>> >>>> From the discussion, it seems the word lists were not originally part of >>>> the >>>> contribution; but a comment in UIMA-3926 Peter asks if the word list could >>>> be >>>> contributed, but not the novels, and Stefan then contributed them. >>>> >>>> I am not a lawyer, so this is not a legal opinion, but I did a quick >>>> internet >>>> search and believe that compiling a list of words used in a novel does not >>>> infringe the copyright in that novel, because this data is entirely >>>> independent >>>> of the expressive value of any of the underlying sources that might have >>>> been >>>> used to compile the list; and the list has lost any similarity to the >>>> underlying >>>> sources in terms of things like plot, theme, etc. >>>> >>>> So I think the risk is low. We could probably reduce the risk by asking >>>> Stephan >>>> where these lists came from, and if he is aware of any IP issues with them. >>>> >>>> To the extent that we collect information and form opinions on issues like >>>> this, >>>> I recommend adding a file to the SVN, not necessarily included in the >>>> build, >>>> called something like license-notice-research.txt, just to record these >>>> things >>>> in one place, so we can find it quickly if a question comes up later and >>>> we want >>>> to remember what and why we did something. >>>> >>>> -Marshall >>>> >>>> >>>> On 2/8/2016 5:21 AM, Richard Eckart de Castilho wrote: >>>>> On 08.02.2016, at 11:11, Peter Klügl <[email protected]> wrote: >>>>>> Am 08.02.2016 um 10:44 schrieb Richard Eckart de Castilho: >>>>>>> On 08.02.2016, at 10:11, Peter Klügl <[email protected]> wrote: >>>>>>>> Hi, >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Am 07.02.2016 um 19:52 schrieb Richard Eckart de Castilho: >>>>>>>>> Checks: >>>>>>>>> - compared POMs in 2.3.0 svn tag against 2.4.0 tag: no new >>>>>>>>> dependencies - OK >>>>>>>>> - the FirstNames.txt file in GermanNovels is quite large 90k, but no >>>>>>>>> source info/license for this file is given anywhere: doesn't seem OK >>>>>>>>> - stopping checks at this point for the moment >>>>>>>> What kind of source info/license would you expect? The file together >>>>>>>> with the other files was contributed as part of UIMA-3926 with an ICLA >>>>>>>> present. I do not remember if I knew the source of the file by then, >>>>>>>> but >>>>>>>> I remember that I had some conversations with the contributor that the >>>>>>>> files need to be OK for a contribution. That's the reason why the >>>>>>>> test/dev data was not contributed since it had some CC license that was >>>>>>>> problematic. >>>>>>> The other dev/test data doesn't seem problematic at all, but the 90k >>>>>>> names >>>>>>> file seems non-trivial. If it were CC, the license would need to be >>>>>>> mentioned >>>>>>> in a LICENSE.txt file. My suggestion would be to simply strip the file >>>>>>> down >>>>>>> to the names needed for the example. >>>>>> If I have to guess I'd say that the names have been crawled and that >>>>>> there is no original source file with a specific license. >>>>>> >>>>>> The novels had the CC license last time I checked. I do not remember >>>>>> all, but when I looked it up in Apache's third party pages, it indicated >>>>>> that it was not possible to include them. However, I could have been >>>>>> wrong. >>>>>> >>>>>> Hmm... it depends what is needed for the example. The initial example >>>>>> were 10-20 novels. I could strip it down to the firstnames of one novel >>>>>> I remember to be part of the dev set, but is that really necessary? >>>>> Let's see what Marshall thinks about it. >>>>> >>>>> -- Richard >
