Licensing of package nauty
Nauty [1] is pretty much the standard software for graph isomorphism testing, and is used by a several other pieces of research software (e.g. polymake, which I have ITPed [2]). Unfortunately from the Debian point of view, the distribution conditions are somewhat restrictive. Copyright (1984-2007) Brendan McKay. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby given for use and/or distribution with the exception of sale for profit or application with nontrivial military significance. You must not remove this copyright notice, and you must document any changes that you make to this program. This software is subject to this copyright only, irrespective of any copyright attached to any package of which this is a part. Absolutely no guarantees or warranties are made concerning the suitability, correctness, or any other aspect of this program. Any use is at your own risk. I can ask the author if would distribute under some DFSG free license, but in the case that he declines, is there any other clarification needed before it can be included in non-free? David PS no-need to CC me, I'll follow the discussion via gmane [1] http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/nauty/ [2] http://bugs.debian.org/461976 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: Re: [gNewSense-users] PFV call for help.]
On Jan 24, 2008 12:23 AM, Ben Finney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's still unfortunate to have confusing and unclear language in the licence, but it's not non-free. I'll reserve judgement until we can know that this claim of retain copyright is not all-inclusive. Well, as ever in these cases, clarification from the copyright holder would be the best way to be sure of the position. But the more I think about it, the more I think retain copyright means what it says - i.e., keep something you already have, not obtain something you didn't previously have. This does illustrate yet again one easily-overlooked problem with licence proliferation and ad hoc licensing terms for free software - namely, that a lot of these non-mainstream terms are very poorly drafted. John (TINLA) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licensing of package nauty
On Thu Jan 24 09:35, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Copyright (1984-2007) Brendan McKay. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby given for use and/or distribution with the exception of sale for profit or application with nontrivial military significance. You must not remove this copyright notice, and you must document any changes that you make to this program. This software is subject to this copyright only, irrespective of any copyright attached to any package of which this is a part. Absolutely no guarantees or warranties are made concerning the suitability, correctness, or any other aspect of this program. Any use is at your own risk. I can ask the author if would distribute under some DFSG free license, but in the case that he declines, is there any other clarification needed before it can be included in non-free? This looks like it gives us permission to distribute it in non-free if you can get it licenced under a DFSG-compatible licence. Matt -- Matthew Johnson signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Licensing of package nauty
On Jan 24, 2008 8:35 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Copyright (1984-2007) Brendan McKay. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby given for use and/or distribution with the exception of sale for profit or application with nontrivial military significance. This is totally non-free, alas. It does not allow for modification of the software, prohibits commercial sale (thus making it impossible to distribute as part of a Debian DVD or CD set) and contains a serious use restriction (against nontrivial military significance, whatever *that* means). You must not remove this copyright notice, and you must document any changes that you make to this program. That bit's OK. This software is subject to this copyright only, irrespective of any copyright attached to any package of which this is a part. I'm a bit unclear as to what this means. The author seems to think that the notice itself is the copyright, so when he says the subject is subject to this copyright only, I assume he means subject to this copyright *notice* only. That's probably OK, though it could cause some compatibility problems if combined with GPLed software. I can ask the author if would distribute under some DFSG free license, but in the case that he declines, is there any other clarification needed before it can be included in non-free? I don't think any clarification is needed for inclusion in non-free, assuming that the no sale for profit wording is OK for non-free. John (TINLA) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licensing of package nauty
On Jan 24, 2008 9:47 AM, Matthew Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This looks like it gives us permission to distribute it in non-free if you can get it licenced under a DFSG-compatible licence. I assume you mean if you *can't* get it licensed under a DFSG-compatible licence. On that basis, I agree (assuming that the no sale for profit wording is OK for non-free - not sure what the policy is for non-free). John (TINLA) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs
On Jan 24, 2008 7:41 AM, Arnoud Engelfriet [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is actually a very intriguing question. If I have a shell account on someone's computer, and I can copy a binary that resides somewhere in /bin (or wherever), is the work being distributed to me? toad:~ ls -l /bin/ls -r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 29624 Jan 15 04:30 /bin/ls* toad:~ cp /bin/ls myls toad:~ Can I now demand the source to /bin/ls from the administrators of 'toad'? That is indeed an intriguing question. Within the GPL language of distribution, it's probably a little unclear. However, GPL v.3 would appear to be a little tighter on the issue: - To propagate a work means to do anything with it that, without permission, would make you directly or secondarily liable for infringement under applicable copyright law, except executing it on a computer or modifying a private copy. Propagation includes copying, distribution (with or without modification), making available to the public, and in some countries other activities as well. To convey a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying. - It seems clear enough that the administrators of toad are propagating /bin/ls. And that propagation is one that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Nor is this mere interaction ... with no transfer of a copy - *running* /bin/ls would fit this category, but making a copy of /bin/ls in your home directory is a different matter. So this would seem to be conveying within the meaning of GPL v.3, and thus will fall within clause 6 of GPL v.3, Conveying Non-Source Forms. John (TINLA) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs
On Thu Jan 24 11:37, John Halton wrote: It seems clear enough that the administrators of toad are propagating /bin/ls. And that propagation is one that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Nor is this mere interaction ... with no transfer of a copy - *running* /bin/ls would fit this category, but making a copy of /bin/ls in your home directory is a different matter. So this would seem to be conveying within the meaning of GPL v.3, and thus will fall within clause 6 of GPL v.3, Conveying Non-Source Forms. So, do we need to have the sources all installed on our shell hosts? or a written offer good for three years to provide the source? Maybe having a deb-src line is good enough since users can run apt-get source? Matt -- Matthew Johnson signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs
On Jan 24, 2008 11:41 AM, Matthew Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu Jan 24 11:37, John Halton wrote: It seems clear enough that the administrators of toad are propagating /bin/ls. And that propagation is one that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Nor is this mere interaction ... with no transfer of a copy - *running* /bin/ls would fit this category, but making a copy of /bin/ls in your home directory is a different matter. So this would seem to be conveying within the meaning of GPL v.3, and thus will fall within clause 6 of GPL v.3, Conveying Non-Source Forms. So, do we need to have the sources all installed on our shell hosts? or a written offer good for three years to provide the source? That does sound a bit excessive, I agree. But it's difficult to see how this can be avoided, unless you make it impossible to transfer files from users' home directories on toad to their own local systems. If you were to do that, then arguably no conveying would occur as an copying would be done on a remote system as mere interaction over a computer network. But I'm guessing that prohibiting file transfers in this way would create rather more problems than it would solve! A contrary interpretation - that this is not conveying - would leave a massive loophole in the GPL, because you could say, We are not going to distribute our modified software directly. No, instead we're going to give people shell access by which they can then copy the software to their remote home directory and thence to their own local system. That said, I would be *delighted* if someone can show me where I've gone wrong in my analysis. I don't claim to be a world expert on GPL v.3! Maybe having a deb-src line is good enough since users can run apt-get source? Clause 6(d) of GPL allows the source to be made available in this way, so I assume that would be fine. However, you would need to ensure the relevant details were given next to the object code, whatever *that* means (a README for every affected file in /bin? i.e. /bin/ls.README etc? ***shudder***). John (TINLA) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
License compatibility with GPLv3
Hi, I have some small problem with Gnash that might be extensible to other packages, so I'm asking here to find out if anyone else has had that problem too and how did they manage it. Gnash is GNU's free Flash player. It is now licensed under GPLv3 (it was previously GPLv2 or above). It has a really huge list of build dependencies: dpkg-dev (= 1.13.19), debhelper (= 4.0.0), quilt, autoconf, dh-buildinfo, automake1.9 | automake, libtool, libltdl3-dev, help2man, libxmu-dev, dejagnu, autotools-dev, libboost-dev, libboost-thread-dev, libxml2-dev, libjpeg-dev, libpng12-dev | libpng-dev, libagg-dev, libgstreamer0.10-dev, libkonq4-dev, libpango1.0-dev | pango-devel, libgtkglext1-dev, libmad0-dev, libdirectfb-dev, libcurl4-gnutls-dev | libcurl3-gnutls-dev | libcurl4-openssl-dev | libcurl3-openssl-dev, libcaca-dev, libboost-date-time-dev, libavcodec-dev, libavformat-dev, libming-dev, libming-util, mtasc, libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev, libboost-serialization-dev, python, base-files (= 4.0.1) All these dependencies already have their own list of dependencies too, right now I'm concerned about libkonq4-dev and Qt being GPLv2 only. Even though all of these packages might be GPLv3 compatible, it is not guaranteed that their dependencies are, like: Package A (GPLv3) depends on package B (GPLv2 or above) Package B (GPLv2 or above) depends on package C (GPLv2 only) Both dependencies would be OK on their own, but I'd be effectively linking A (GPLv3) with C (GPLv2 only) which are not compatible. As you can imagine, the work of checking all the dependencies by hand would be enormous. I could check the dependencies of the resulting binary packages instead, but I'm not sure if that would be enough (or I should check their dependencies too), would it be? Any ideas? Greetings, Miry -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs
Matthew Johnson wrote: On Thu Jan 24 11:37, John Halton wrote: It seems clear enough that the administrators of toad are propagating /bin/ls. And that propagation is one that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Nor is this mere interaction ... with no transfer of a copy - *running* /bin/ls would fit this category, but making a copy of /bin/ls in your home directory is a different matter. So this would seem to be conveying within the meaning of GPL v.3, and thus will fall within clause 6 of GPL v.3, Conveying Non-Source Forms. So, do we need to have the sources all installed on our shell hosts? or a written offer good for three years to provide the source? Perhaps a simple way to avoid this is to simply 'chmod g-r' the executables in question. With only execute permission a mortal user cannot copy the binary, so there's no propagation going on. If the system has a world-readable /usr/src with full sources, I would argue that satisfies any obligation to make source available. Arnoud -- Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch European patent attorney - Speaking only for myself Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/ Arnoud blogt nu ook: http://blog.iusmentis.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tshirt with the official logo
Hello there, I was looking for a tshirt and i saw this one [1] which has the official logo and afaik, these shirts just can be given as a pack with debian products or made by a DD (but can't be sold, though) (How) Should i ask politely to the people running this site/shop to remove the tshirt? Any advices would be great. i dont really want to send them an email with something like hey remove that tshirt because i say so ;) Regards, Mauro [1] http://ex-it.com.ar/geek/catalogo/Debian_%5B2%5D.html -- BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK Version: 3.12 GCM/O d-dpu$ s-:- a--a+++$ C+++ LU P+ L++ E W+++ N !o K w O !M !V PS+ PE Y+ PGP t 5– X R tv++ b- DI D++ G+ e h!h-- rr+++ y+ END GEEK CODE BLOCK
Re: Tshirt with the official logo
On Jan 24, 2008 2:31 PM, Mauro Lizaur [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (How) Should i ask politely to the people running this site/shop to remove the tshirt? Any advices would be great. i dont really want to send them an email with something like hey remove that tshirt because i say so ;) You could always point them in the direction of the Debian policy at http://www.debian.org/logos/. If they don't give a satisfactory answer then that's a matter for SPI rather than Debian as such. Looks like you can contact them here: http://www.spi-inc.org/contact John (TINLA) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licensing of package nauty
On 11274 March 1977, Matthew Johnson wrote: I can ask the author if would distribute under some DFSG free license, but in the case that he declines, is there any other clarification needed before it can be included in non-free? This looks like it gives us permission to distribute it in non-free if you can get it licenced under a DFSG-compatible licence. Err, what? If its dfsg compatible then its fine for main. The current license is idiotic but acceptable for non-free. -- bye Joerg pasc man pasc the AMD64 camp is not helped by the list of people supporting it pasc when nerode is on your side, you know you're doing something wrong -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: License compatibility with GPLv3
Hi Miriam, On 2008-01-24 13:49 +0100, Miriam Ruiz wrote: I have some small problem with Gnash that might be extensible to other packages, so I'm asking here to find out if anyone else has had that problem too and how did they manage it. Gnash is GNU's free Flash player. It is now licensed under GPLv3 (it was previously GPLv2 or above). It has a really huge list of build dependencies: dpkg-dev (= 1.13.19), debhelper (= 4.0.0), quilt, autoconf, dh-buildinfo, automake1.9 | automake, libtool, libltdl3-dev, help2man, libxmu-dev, dejagnu, autotools-dev, libboost-dev, libboost-thread-dev, libxml2-dev, libjpeg-dev, libpng12-dev | libpng-dev, libagg-dev, libgstreamer0.10-dev, libkonq4-dev, libpango1.0-dev | pango-devel, libgtkglext1-dev, libmad0-dev, libdirectfb-dev, libcurl4-gnutls-dev | libcurl3-gnutls-dev | libcurl4-openssl-dev | libcurl3-openssl-dev, libcaca-dev, libboost-date-time-dev, libavcodec-dev, libavformat-dev, libming-dev, libming-util, mtasc, libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev, libboost-serialization-dev, python, base-files (= 4.0.1) All these dependencies already have their own list of dependencies too, right now I'm concerned about libkonq4-dev and Qt being GPLv2 only. Even though all of these packages might be GPLv3 compatible, it is not guaranteed that their dependencies are, like: Package A (GPLv3) depends on package B (GPLv2 or above) Package B (GPLv2 or above) depends on package C (GPLv2 only) Both dependencies would be OK on their own, but I'd be effectively linking A (GPLv3) with C (GPLv2 only) which are not compatible. You will be interested that Trolltech has released Qt 3.3.8 under GPL 3: http://trolltech.com/company/newsroom/announcements/press.2008-01-18.5377846280/pressrelease_view Cheers, Sven -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: License compatibility with GPLv3
2008/1/24, Sven Joachim [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Hi Miriam, You will be interested that Trolltech has released Qt 3.3.8 under GPL 3: Thanks, it really solves a great part of the problem, but I have no idea on how to check that there are no other GPLv2 only libraries directly or indirectly linked, apart from spending hours checking manually. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs
Dear legal beagles, all I know is if one day I couldn't do [EMAIL PROTECTED] dpkg -l apt-get --print-uris ... wget ... to examine the .debs that were Debian debs but slightly modified by Dreamhost (or other such web host), well that would mean the whole Free Software concept had come to a grinding halt. I.e., Junior is sitting at the prompt using $ emacs ...; grep ... but no longer able to see the source of what he is using. Yes he could go to gnu.org or debian.org and see some progenitor versions, but not the source of what he is using, despite all the Copyleft labels still visible in them using strings(1). So Dear legal beagles, please close this loophole, if any. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs
On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 03:33:34AM +0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So Dear legal beagles, please close this loophole, if any. As outlined previously in the discussion, I don't think there *is* a loophole here. Anyone using GPL v.3 software (which includes almost all GNU software issued since GPL v.3 was introduced) to provide remote shell access appears to be bound by GPL v.3 to provide the source, whether they have modified that software or otherwise. At least, that's my take, and no-one has yet put forward a counter-argument on this thread. So there is no loophole, but equally there is probably a very high rate of non-compliance, which is a different matter. John (TINLA) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So Dear legal beagles, please close this loophole, if any. To remove this misapprehension: debian-legal is a discussion forum only. We have no special power to *change* license terms. If there's a loophole, all we can do is expose it. Addressing the loophole will be for those who have the power to change the license terms on the specific work you're interested in. -- \ Eccles: I just saw the Earth through the clouds! Lew: Did | `\ it look round? Eccles: Yes, but I don't think it saw me. | _o__) -- The Goon Show, _Wings Over Dagenham_ | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs
John Halton [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: That said, I would be *delighted* if someone can show me where I've gone wrong in my analysis. I don't claim to be a world expert on GPL v.3! Here's a 2003 debian-legal discussion about the ASP loophole: URL:http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/03/msg00755.html -- \ Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering? I think so, | `\ Brain, but what if the hippopotamus won't wear the beach | _o__)thong? -- _Pinky and The Brain_ | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: License compatibility with GPLv3
Miriam Ruiz [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I have no idea on how to check that there are no other GPLv2 only libraries directly or indirectly linked, apart from spending hours checking manually. This seems like an ideal case to promote the proposed format URL:http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/CopyrightFormat for machine-parseable 'debian/copyright' files. In the absence of that, it does seem the only way to know is to manually parse the 'debian/copyright' files until you've investigated all dependencies that would count as derived work. -- \ If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of | `\ danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, | _o__)Mr. Brave man, I guess I'm a coward. -- Jack Handey | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs
On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 08:26:19AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote: Here's a 2003 debian-legal discussion about the ASP loophole: URL:http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/03/msg00755.html Thanks. The distinction here is that in the classic ASP loophole situation you are accessing the software through a web browser or other intermediary means, which prevents you from getting direct access to the executable: it is mere interaction over a computer network, with transfer of a copy, as GPL v.3 puts it. A remote shell is a different matter. This isn't just access through a web browser; it is direct access to the executable in a manner not wildly dissimilar to accessing a local file through a shell, and indeed access in a way that will usually allow the user to create a copy of the executable either on the remote system and/or their local system. Hence the first scenario, if considered to be a problem requiring a solution, leads to the Affero GPL. The second scenario is, I would argue, already covered by the regular GPL. (Incidentally, I'm assuming that the earlier suggestion of removing the read permissions for users wouldn't work, because they wouldn't be able to execute the binaries without read as well as execute privileges. Is that correct?) John (TINLA) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: web hosting providers' modified .debs
On Thu Jan 24 22:02, John Halton wrote: On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 08:26:19AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote: Here's a 2003 debian-legal discussion about the ASP loophole: URL:http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/03/msg00755.html (Incidentally, I'm assuming that the earlier suggestion of removing the read permissions for users wouldn't work, because they wouldn't be able to execute the binaries without read as well as execute privileges. Is that correct?) You can execute things you cannot read: $ ls -l /bin/ls ---x--x--x 1 root root 77352 2007-01-30 18:51 /bin/ls Matt -- Matthew Johnson signature.asc Description: Digital signature
