Jim Hall <jh...@freedos.org> wrote:
> > I'd appreciate a discussion here about these programs and my
> > evaluations of their licenses. Especially the ones in red ("no") or
> > yellow ("maybe"). Do you agree with the decisions here? What are
> > your thoughts on the ones I marked in yellow?Tom Ehlert <t...@drivesnapshot.de> wrote: > all these programs/licenses have been 'free enough' for many years. I > don't see the point to change this. We've examined licenses for previous FreeDOS releases, and sometimes have removed programs from the next FreeDOS because we didn't think it was free or open enough for FreeDOS. For example, we removed almost all of the programs that didn't have source code (TPPATCH remained in FreeDOS 1.2). It's good to look at the licenses again to see what's still okay to include in FreeDOS 1.3. I'm trying to be very open by posting these on the wiki. If you have a wiki account, feel free to drop a comment in the "Discussion" tab. If not, let's talk about them here. If you go through the list, not much is changing. Almost the entire list is "green" meaning those packages stay. Here's a summary of the "not green" rows: 7 could go either way for me, and I'm looking for advice 3 games to remove 7 programs should be removed because of bad licenses 2 more programs are marked as "red" but I can easily be convinced to make them green ----- 19 total And if you disagree with my evaluations on these, please share them here. This is a discussion. I did the homework (using the FreeDOS 1.2 list as a starting point) to look at the licenses. Programs where I need others' opinions: 1. Emulators/MEKA wiki comment>> License is unclear. The website says "MEKA is a free software distributed under a BSD-like license, allowing you to browse and reuse sources and data with no restrictions." The sources.txt file includes a license that is unclear, but has these five terms: 1. "This source code comes free, without any warantee given." 2. You must publish source code if you publish the binary. 3. "Reuse of source code are authorized for any purpose." 4. Re-use of embedded data in other projects is not allowed. 5. Derivative projects is allowed but discouraged. The license appears incompatible with free software or open source software, but not sure. [I'm leaning to "no" on this one] 2. Networking/cURL wiki comment>> Would be good to be more specific on the license. The source code looks like it is a mix of several open source licenses, all of them permit redistribution and including in other software. [probably okay] 3. Networking/FDNet wiki comment>> MTCP is GNU GPL. NE2000 is a mix of GNU GPL v1 and public domain. PCNTPK claims "confidential proprietary information of AMD" but also has GNU GPL v1 and public domain code - really not sure about the license here. This is confusing. The dates suggest it was originally GNU GPL or public domain, then AMD stamped their own "confidential proprietary information of AMD" license on top of it. **I am not a lawyer, but it seems clear AMD incorrectly stamped these files with their license. The GNU GPL and public domain trumps the later message. I think this package is ok to include, but not sure. [probably okay] 4. Networking/WATTCP wiki comment>> Would be good to be more specific on the license. The license doesn't say "freeware" but does allow redistribution. Not sure. [probably okay] 5. Utilities/DOSLFN wiki comment>> Did not find license. No copyright message and no indication of copying terms or license. Without license, not sure if the software can be included. [probably okay] 6. Utilities/rawrite wiki comment>> No license, but RAWRITE3.DOC includes this disclaimer of warranty: "Users of this software must accept this disclaimer of warranty: 'This software is supplied AS IS. Mark Becker disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability and of fitness for any purpose. Mark Becker assumes no liability for damages, direct or consequential, which may result from the use of this software.'" Includes source code. Common interpretation is the author did want to share this. Also has been included in other, older Linux distributions previously. Can probably be included in FreeDOS, but not sure. If not needed, let's remove uncertainty and not include. [probably okay] 7. Utilities/USBDOS wiki comment>> License could be more clear. USBINTRO.DOC says the software is "Copyrighted Freeware" and says he is not a lawyer and didn't want to insert legal-like language that others could find loopholes in. Says in plain language that "All of these programs, as well as their documentation and source code, are freely available to anyone who wants them." But includes terms that may not be compatible with free software or open source software, including "You also cannot distribute the programs, documentation, or source code and charge (even indirectly) for their distribution." Note that distributors may include FreeDOS as part of system and charge for it. Not clear on author intent here. No license included with source code to indicate how source code can be used. Not sure. [probably okay] So of those 7 programs, I *think* 6 can still be included anyway, and 1 (MEKA game emulator) should not. Thoughts? Agree? Disagree? I've also emailed Eric about Memteste, and he says we can use a new license. I've replied to him on specifics. So that line on the wiki will change to green. There are 3 games that have a license I didn't recognize. They might be okay, but I didn't look into them, and just suggested we find other games. I view games as very replaceable, they are not "core" in the same way other programs are. So taking games out and adding other games is no big deal. 1. Kiloblaster 2. Linley's Dungeon Crawl 3. INVADERS If you feel these are okay, and feel strongly they should remain in FreeDOS 1.3, I'll take another look at them. And there are these programs that I think should not be included in FreeDOS 1.3, and I marked those in red. I know we've included some of these in previous releases, but I don't think the licenses are really that free or open. 1. Archivers/LHa for unix wiki comment>> License is unclear, but appears incompatible with free software or open source. For example, license.txt includes additional terms on commercial use. "7b. If the recipient of commercial use deems inappropriate as a program user, you must not distribute." 2. Archivers/UnRAR wiki comment>> Unrar's license says you can view the source code and share it, so that's good. But it also says you cannot study the source code to reproduce the RAR compression algorithm. That's bad, definitely not open source. 3. Development/TPPATCH wiki comment>> no source code, no license text 4. Utilities/4DOS wiki comment>> 4DOS uses modified license that does not qualify as open source by Open Source Initiative or Free Software Foundation standards. The license does not permit use on non-DOS systems. [I've also talked about this one elsewhere, including the FreeDOS Blog, that we should replace 4DOS with something else. I was the one who worked with JP on the license when he open-sourced 4DOS, and I gave him bad advice. I didn't have enough experience then, and I thought his suggested change to the license was still okay. It's not. So I feel really bad about this, but it's "non-free."] 5. Utilities/SLOWDOWN wiki comment>> SLOWDOWN.DOC says "SLOWDOWN is a free program" but later includes terms that are incompatible with free software or open source software, including "You do need my permission to distribute SLOWDOWN as a "companion" to some other program." This can be commonly interpreted to mean you need permission to distribute SLOWDOWN as part of a larger distribution, such as FreeDOS. 6. Utilities/tail wiki comment>> TAIL.DOC says "Free & Open DOS Utility" but later has conditions that appear to be incompatible with free software or open source software, including "3. You must obtain the permission of the author(s) before distributing this software or derived works (including combining it with commercial systems) commercially or depart in any way from the above conditions." 7. Utilities/uptime wiki comment>> UPTIME.DOC says "Free & Open DOS Utility" but later has conditions that appear to be incompatible with free software or open source software, including "3. You must obtain the permission of the author(s) before distributing this software or derived works (including combining it with commercial systems) commercially or depart in any way from the above conditions." Since we have a duplicate with Chamorro's uptimec, which uses a different license, let's omit this one. These programs are also marked in red, but I could be convinced to change my mind: 1. Utilities/SHSUFDRV License is unclear. Documentation says "Copyright 2005 Jason Hood. Freeware." But no explicit license in documentation. No mention of redistribution or other license in source code. Without license, "Freeware" is not enough to indicate that the software can be included. 2. Utilities/Start Did not find license. Source code says "Copyright (c) Joe Cosentino 2000. All Rights Reserved." Without license, this is not enough to indicate that the software can be included. > any other changes from 1.2 to 1.3 other then 'correct license > verified' ? live CD? anything else? Yes, the FreeDOS 1.3 distribution should have a LiveCD. I've been discussing this with Jerome off-list, but made of note of it in the Releases/1.3 wiki page. Tom suggested a while back that running FreeDOS these days shouldn't be that complicated if you have a bootable CDROM. I agree, especially if the LiveCD component is a complete FreeDOS environment. So you should be able to boot the FreeDOS 1.3 install CDROM, exit out of the install program, and get a DOS prompt with a complete FreeDOS "Base" environment. I refer to this on Releases/1.3 as "plain DOS." I think "plain DOS" should be "Base" plus only a *few* other programs: probably this is zip, unzip, and FDIMPLES. That gives you all the tools you need to install manually if you want to. I view most of FreeDOS 1.3 to be an update to FreeDOS 1.2. No packages from "Base" will be removed (at one time, I had suggested we move certain of the "compatibility" programs like SUBST into a "Compat" package group - but others convinced me that made no sense, so I'm not suggesting that anymore.) Jim _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
