Re: summary of software licenses in non-free
On Sat, Jan 17, 2004 at 07:11:50AM +0300, Alexander Cherepanov wrote: 13-Jan-04 14:52 Branden Robinson wrote: I personally[1] would maintain that a requirement to change a filename is an unacceptable restriction on one's freedom to modify the work. The LaTeX Project no longer appears to be interested in contending this issue, and I know of no other copyright holder of software packaged by the Debian Project who does. Even if situation with TeX, Metafont and Computer Modern fonts is moot, I think there are other examples from the TeX world with a requirement to change a filename. First, other files by Knuth: plain.tex % This is the plain TeX format that's described in The TeXbook. % N.B.: A version number is defined at the very end of this file; % please change that number whenever the file is modified! % And don't modify the file unless you change its name: % Everybody's plain.tex file should be the same, worldwide. % Unlimited copying and redistribution of this file are permitted as long % as this file is not modified. Modifications are permitted, but only if % the resulting file is not named plain.tex. hyphen.tex % The Plain TeX hyphenation tables [NOT TO BE CHANGED IN ANY WAY!] % Unlimited copying and redistribution of this file are permitted as long % as this file is not modified. Modifications are permitted, but only if % the resulting file is not named hyphen.tex. Second, files by AMS (amslatex and amstex). Typical comment from their file: %%% copyright = Copyright 1995, 2000 American Mathematical Society, %%%all rights reserved. Copying of this file is %%%authorized only if either: %%%(1) you make absolutely no changes to your copy, %%%including name; OR %%%(2) if you do make changes, you first rename it %%%to some other name., (Quotes are taken from files on CTAN.) Thanks for the information, but this came up during the LaTeX Project Public License discussions. I maintain my position. -- G. Branden Robinson| The Bible is probably the most Debian GNU/Linux | genocidal book ever written. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- Noam Chomsky http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: summary of software licenses in non-free
13-Jan-04 14:52 Branden Robinson wrote: I personally[1] would maintain that a requirement to change a filename is an unacceptable restriction on one's freedom to modify the work. The LaTeX Project no longer appears to be interested in contending this issue, and I know of no other copyright holder of software packaged by the Debian Project who does. Even if situation with TeX, Metafont and Computer Modern fonts is moot, I think there are other examples from the TeX world with a requirement to change a filename. First, other files by Knuth: plain.tex % This is the plain TeX format that's described in The TeXbook. % N.B.: A version number is defined at the very end of this file; % please change that number whenever the file is modified! % And don't modify the file unless you change its name: % Everybody's plain.tex file should be the same, worldwide. % Unlimited copying and redistribution of this file are permitted as long % as this file is not modified. Modifications are permitted, but only if % the resulting file is not named plain.tex. hyphen.tex % The Plain TeX hyphenation tables [NOT TO BE CHANGED IN ANY WAY!] % Unlimited copying and redistribution of this file are permitted as long % as this file is not modified. Modifications are permitted, but only if % the resulting file is not named hyphen.tex. Second, files by AMS (amslatex and amstex). Typical comment from their file: %%% copyright = Copyright 1995, 2000 American Mathematical Society, %%%all rights reserved. Copying of this file is %%%authorized only if either: %%%(1) you make absolutely no changes to your copy, %%%including name; OR %%%(2) if you do make changes, you first rename it %%%to some other name., (Quotes are taken from files on CTAN.) Sasha
Re: summary of software licenses in non-free
On Jan 10, 2004, at 18:53, Glenn Maynard wrote: On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 05:44:36PM -0500, Anthony DeRobertis wrote: (if it's even valid, bitmap fonts can't be copyrighted in the US) This doesn't help Debian; I think the bitmap font copyright thing is an isolated strangeness of US law. Then we can't distribute it at all, even in non-free. All the problems I found with the x3270 license were of the form either we can't distribute this at all, or it is free.
Re: summary of software licenses in non-free
On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 06:53:55PM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote: On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 05:44:36PM -0500, Anthony DeRobertis wrote: (if it's even valid, bitmap fonts can't be copyrighted in the US) This doesn't help Debian; I think the bitmap font copyright thing is an isolated strangeness of US law. I don't think it's strange; it's one of the increasingly rare islands of sanity in the U.S. legal code. :) -- G. Branden Robinson| Suffer before God and ye shall be Debian GNU/Linux | redeemed. God loves us, so He [EMAIL PROTECTED] | makes us suffer Christianity. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Aaron Dunsmore signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: summary of software licenses in non-free
On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 11:11:52AM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote: [Cc:ed to debian-legal, as the detailed examination of licenses is more on-topic for that list; d-l folks, feel free to drop the reference to d-vote if further nitpicking is required ;)] [...] On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 06:57:09PM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote: some people expressed doubt about the claims i made regarding the actual contents of non-free. i said that very few packages were proprietary, that almost all were 'almost-free' (aka 'semi-free'). sgb modified files must be renamed and clearly identified. why is this in non-free? ISTR this license element came up for discussion in the context of the LaTeX license; I /thought/ the conclusion was that requiring changes to filenames in the source was ok, but that requiring changes to filenames in the binary package was not. Debian-legal, please correct me if I'm wrong. I don't believe that's correct. A requirement to change the filename at any stage was dropped from the latest draft of the LPPL that Frank Mittelbach posted to debian-legal (summer 2003). I personally[1] would maintain that a requirement to change a filename is an unacceptable restriction on one's freedom to modify the work. The LaTeX Project no longer appears to be interested in contending this issue, and I know of no other copyright holder of software packaged by the Debian Project who does. [1] other subscribers to -legal may feel differently -- G. Branden Robinson| Debian GNU/Linux | Ab abusu ad usum non valet [EMAIL PROTECTED] | consequentia. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: summary of software licenses in non-free
On Sat, 10 Jan 2004, Steve Langasek wrote: On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 06:57:09PM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote: mocka BSD-style license with noxious advertising clause. why is this in non-free? This does look like a mistaken categorization to me; to my eye, the license looks just like the 4-clause BSD. The problem with mocka is that the source is not exactly the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it, so we can't really consider that it includes source code. Google for debian mocka license and you will find an old discussion about this.
Re: summary of software licenses in non-free
[Cc:ed to debian-legal, as the detailed examination of licenses is more on-topic for that list; d-l folks, feel free to drop the reference to d-vote if further nitpicking is required ;)] Craig, On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 06:57:09PM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote: some people expressed doubt about the claims i made regarding the actual contents of non-free. i said that very few packages were proprietary, that almost all were 'almost-free' (aka 'semi-free'). since no-one else has bothered to answer this question, i did it myself. a classification of every non-free package that was in my debian mirror. a total of 273 packages, but only 259 packages had a 'copyright' file (odd, i thought there were more...about 350 or so. we must have got rid of a lot of non-free packages). the facts conclusively support my claims. out of all the packages in non-free, only 9 are binary-only/proprietary. the rest are almost-free (actually, there are a handful of mis-classified packages which seem to qualify as DFSG-free) btw, note that 273 non-free packages is miniscule compared to the ~13,000 packages in main. only 2% of the total package pool. it's amazing what a huge fuss is being made over such a tiny number of packages. Thanks for taking the time to do this; having more information here can't be a bad thing. FWIW, our handling of the 3270 code doesn't seem undue caution; the same principle applies to angband, AIUI -- we *think* the copyright holders would be ok with the work being distributed under a free license, but if we try it and it turns out we're wrong, we have no legal protection. Since copyrights can be bought and sold, consider the worst case scenario of somebody like SCO getting ahold of these rights for offensive purposes. OTOH, this does point out some potentially low-hanging fruit in non-free -- packages that, with a bit of effort on someone's part, might be eligible for inclusion in main. POSSIBLE MISTAKES - edict seems like it may be free. long complicated license. strange requirement to make every effort to only distribute latest version. explicitly mentions personal use but does not prohibit non-personal use, in fact doesn't prohibit much at all. IMO, maintainer may be overly cautious about license...although i've only spent a few minutes looking at it. Make every effort is probably a lot more than we're doing right now. Not only is this not free enough for main, I'm concerned about the potential liability we could incur by distributing it at all given how little effort the project as a whole spends paying attention to this requirement. This doesn't make it non-distributable, but it does make me want to avoid distributing it. mmix-srcpart GPL. part Donald Knuth license - modified files must be renamed and clearly identified. why is this in non-free? Probably non-distributable in binary form, but probably ok in source form (as this is). mocka BSD-style license with noxious advertising clause. why is this in non-free? This does look like a mistaken categorization to me; to my eye, the license looks just like the 4-clause BSD. molphy very simple license says it is free software. fails to have an explicit clause allowing modification. clarification would be good, but IMO there is no compelling reason why this can't go in main. Lack of permission to modify is itself a compelling reason. In the absence of an explicit grant of permission, all rights are reserved (as the copyright file for this package says). The use of the phrase free software in the copyright statement provides no protection to any of our users who, seeing that this package is in main, assume that they can safely modify it and redistribute the result. mwavem says license is GPL. why is this in non-free? does it contain binary-only driver or something?? Relevant bug from the changelog is 192270. The copyright file says GPL, but it contains DSP binaries that don't come with source (certainly a disputed topic). AFAICT, the conclusion in that bug report was hmm, we don't seem to have an explicit license for these binaries at all -- which would make this package non-distributable, not non-free. sgb modified files must be renamed and clearly identified. why is this in non-free? ISTR this license element came up for discussion in the context of the LaTeX license; I /thought/ the conclusion was that requiring changes to filenames in the source was ok, but that requiring changes to filenames in the binary package was not. Debian-legal, please correct me if I'm wrong. sl-modem-daemon looks like BSD-style license with noxious advertising clause. why is this in non-free? sl-modem-source
Re: summary of software licenses in non-free
On Jan 10, 2004, at 18:21, Raul Miller wrote: On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 04:54:30PM +, Oliver Elphick wrote: Only true if it incorporates someone else's GPL source. If it is all the author's own work, he can do whatever he likes and the licence becomes a composite of the GPL and his additional restrictions. But we're not the author. Yeah, the author always has the right to copy and distribute the files, but I don't see how that applies here. Actually, I think the real point here is that the packaging --- e.g., debian/rules, etc. is under GPL. The mmix source code is just data to the GPL stuff, or aggregation.
Re: summary of software licenses in non-free
On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 05:44:36PM -0500, Anthony DeRobertis wrote: (if it's even valid, bitmap fonts can't be copyrighted in the US) This doesn't help Debian; I think the bitmap font copyright thing is an isolated strangeness of US law. -- Glenn Maynard
Re: summary of software licenses in non-free
On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 06:57:09PM +1100, Craig Sanders wrote: mmix-srcpart GPL. part Donald Knuth license - modified files must be renamed and clearly identified. why is this in non-free? On Sat, 2004-01-10 at 13:38, Raul Miller wrote: We probably don't have the legal right to distribute that one. The Knuth license imposes an additional restriction beyond the GPL, and the GPL itself says that that means you're not allowed to distribute it. On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 04:54:30PM +, Oliver Elphick wrote: Only true if it incorporates someone else's GPL source. If it is all the author's own work, he can do whatever he likes and the licence becomes a composite of the GPL and his additional restrictions. But we're not the author. Yeah, the author always has the right to copy and distribute the files, but I don't see how that applies here. Also, at leat in the U.S., distributing source and distributing binaries are legally the same thing. Otherwise, distributing binaries wouldn't be restricted by a copyright on the source. If the grant of copyright grants some exception to this rule, that's a different issue. The bits on the wire aren't the issue. -- Raul
Re: summary of software licenses in non-free
[ I've taken the liberty of cc'ing debian-legal, where license issues are discussed. -legal readers probably want to drop -vote. Reply-to set. ] On Jan 10, 2004, at 02:57, Craig Sanders wrote: X3270 - x3270 seems to be free. IMO, maintainer is overly cautious about license. I just read the copyright file in x3270 and either this is free, or we can't distribute it at all, even in non-free. Copyright © 1989 by Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta, GA 30332. All Rights Reserved. GTRC hereby grants public use of this software. Derivative works based on this software must incorporate this copyright notice. Strictly speaking, this does not appear to give permission to distribute the software. The fonts copyright (if it's even valid, bitmap fonts can't be copyrighted in the US) is fine, AFAICT. The copyright notice for the 5250 emulation just reads: 5250 Emulation Code Copyright © Minolta (Schweiz) AG, Beat Rubischon. This is worrying, as no license appears to be granted. I'd need to check the source code to be sure. Either this package should be removed (because we can't distribute it at all) or put in main, IMO. POSSIBLE MISTAKES - edict seems like it may be free. long complicated license. Several problems I see: b. must undertake not to assert copyright over any portion of the files. (Prohibits me from enforcing my copyrights, if the edict happens to misappropriate my work.) c. may use the file for personal purposes such as to assist with reading texts, research, translation services, etc. (This appears to disallow non-personal use, such as commercial use. However, it must be a no-op because commercial use is explicitly permitted at the end...) i. must either make every endeavour to ensure that the versions of the files they distribute are the most recent available, or must make the version and date clear and prominent in their documentation, WWW page, etc. and supply information as to where and how the most recent version may be obtained. Blech. We might be able to argue that we make the version and date prominent, and thus fall under that exception. Otherwise, time to file a bug on ftp.d.o for removal. k. may use these files as part of, or in association with a software package or system. Full acknowledgement of the source of the files must be made both in the promotional material, WWW pages and software documentation, Aren't we using these files as part of or in association with a system, namely Debian GNU/Linux? If so, time for removal. Any individual or organization in possession of copies of the files, upon becoming aware that a possible copyright infringement may be present in the files, must undertake to contact the Group immediately with details of the possible infringement. This probably fails the desert island test. All permissions for use of the files granted by James William Breen prior to March 2000 will be honoured and maintained, however the placing of the KANJD212 and EDICTH files under the GNU GPL has been withdrawn as of 25 March 2000. This simply put doesn't make sense. It's not clear how you can un-GPL a work, but they seem to claim to while at the same time saying they're not. With regard to the Frequency codes, Mr Halpern has stated as follows: The commercial utilization of the frequency numbers is prohibited without written permission from Jack Halpern. Use by individuals and small groups for reference and research purposes is permitted, on condition that acknowledgement of the source and this notice are included. Obviously non-free, and probably very silly (see Feist) in the U.S. at least. edict-fpw part GPL, part same as edict. This appears to belong in contrib, not non-free. It sounds like it is essentially an installer which functions by transforming the non-free edict. mmix-srcpart GPL. part Donald Knuth license - modified files must be renamed and clearly identified. why is this in non-free? There have been very long arguments on -legal about 'must rename source files' on -legal. One reason: Can we modify the files, then distribute binaries produced from modified sources? I'm not sure; Knuth's licenses are notoriously unclear... mocka BSD-style license with noxious advertising clause. why is this in non-free? No idea. molphy very simple license says it is free software. fails to have an explicit clause allowing modification. clarification would be good, but IMO there is no compelling reason why this can't go in main. Because copyright law says we can't create derivative works unless the copyright holder says we can, and he hasn't. This is a great
