On Sun, Nov 6, 2011 at 4:10 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton <[email protected]> wrote: > +1 I heartily agree with Dave's suggestion. > > The issue has been made very clear by Andrea and I think it would be good to > raise an issue on the LEGAL JIRA. (Registration required, but I don't think > committer status is needed.) Also, legal-discuss@ apache.org is an useful > place, but my experience is that eventually a LEGAL JIRA issue will obtain > more consistent attention. >
Just make sure that you explain what a spell checking dictionary is. Otherwise any legal types will be confused. This is not a dictionary like Webster's, with words and definitions, where the definitions are creative content. A spell checking dictionary is more of a word list. I'm not sure what the creative expression is in a list of all common words in a language and how that could be copyrighted. Of course, I am not a lawyer. But this case seems relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural > I also think Pedro raises an important concern. My sense of other materials > I have seen about that is binaries (or at least not human-readable and > editable) might work since it is possible to make it clear that a non-Apache > license applies and there is no confusion by having source anywhere in a > release for something with an unacceptable license. I don't know how this > applies to the present case. I suspect it has some bearing on how safe > inclusion of various dictionaries in binary distributions is seen to be. > > - Dennis > > -----Original Message----- > From: Dave Fisher [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Sunday, November 06, 2011 12:57 > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: GPL'd dictionaries (was Re: ftp.services.openoffice.org?) > > HI Andrea, > > This looks like some good questions for Apache Legal. You should send this to > [email protected]. > > Regards, > Dave > > On Nov 6, 2011, at 11:06 AM, Andrea Pescetti wrote: > >> On 05/11/2011 Gianluca Turconi wrote: >>> 2011/11/5 Pedro Giffuni >>>> I have been looking at the situation of the dictionaries, >>>> and particular the italian dictionary. >>>> You are right that it will not be covered by the SGA. >> >> Sure, and to be more precise there are no portions of which Oracle has the >> copyright in the Italian dictionary. And we are discussing about three >> completeley separate tools (this is true of all languages): a dictionary >> (used for spell-checking), a thesaurus (for synonyms) and hyphenations >> patterns. Each has its own licence and copyright holders; in most cases, >> hyphenation patterns come from the LaTeX project. >> >>>> Perhaps more worrying is that the italian dictionary is >>>> the only dictionary under the GPL; most others are triple >>>> licensed (LGPL/MPL/GPL). >>>> We are not allowed to use it, so it will be removed >>>> from the SVN server for sure. >> >> The fundamental thing to consider here is that dictionaries cannot be >> considered like libraries, for the following reasons: >> - OpenOffice.org dictionaries are not code; their binary form is coincident >> with their source form. >> - OpenOffice.org dictionaries are not a dependency: they are pluggable data >> files, and they are packaged (all of them, even in the installer for native >> builds) as extensions to remark that there is no dependency whatsoever on >> them. >> - OpenOffice.org dictionaries fall in the "mere aggregation" provision in >> the GPL license; even though it is customary to distribute a package >> containing, say, the Italian version of OpenOffice.org and the Italian >> dictionary, it is considered the same as distributing an Ubuntu ISO file, >> containing software with different licenses aggregated together. >> >> The existing Apache policy probably assumes that we are talking about code >> and that the (L)GPL libraries constitute a dependency, and it was probably >> built by examining what the implications of (L)GPL components would have >> been in that case. But this is a much different situation. >> >>>> I am not a lawyer and I don't have any idea how the >>>> GPL could be enforced in this case, but things are not nice. >> >> I can't understand these worries about enforcing the GPL. We even got an >> answer from the Free Software Foundation that said it is absolutely OK to >> include GPL dictionaries into OpenOffice.org, since it is "mere >> aggregation"; see the (long) story in >> https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=65039 >> >>> We've discussed a lot about this issue, but there isn't any consensus yet >>> about *how *to solve the problem, in a pragmatic way that doesn't include a >>> license change. >> >> Gianluca is right, in our situation we won't be able to change the license >> of the dictionary and thesaurus (at least, not to Apache License); we might >> get the hyphenation patterns released under the Apache License, but since >> virtually all of them are taken from the LaTeX project it's probably better >> that the legal team checks whether it's fine to import from the LaTeX >> project with the existing license. >> >>> An AOOo without a native language GUI and linguistic tools would be just >>> useless outside the anglosaxon world and, indeed, a rather disastrous >>> presentation of the new project for people who don't speak English. >> >> Sure, especially considering that the project description says that >> OpenOffice.org supports 110 languages... >> >> What I would recommend is: >> >> 1) Recheck the Apache policy and find out the rationale behind it; I have >> nothing to teach to the legal team, but this is a very rare case where the >> "virality" of GPL does not apply. >> >> 2) See if we can find a way to keep dictionaries as they are; note that no >> dictionary is developed in the OOo trunk, they are synchronized from time to >> time, usually before a release; the Italian dictionary SVN trunk, for >> example, is not in the OOo sources. Even just the possibility to provide an >> extension that can be included in binary releases would be OK for me. >> >> 3) If there is really no way to include a GPL extension this way, then we >> should think about downloading the extension at installation time. But we >> managed to get Sun and the FSF agree to ship dictionaries in the most >> convenient way (i.e., included in the installer), so we might succeed this >> time as well. >> >> Regards, >> Andrea. > >
