Re: Question about the Vovida licence
On Fri, Jan 26, 2001, Jérôme Marant wrote: 4. Products derived from this software may not be called VOCAL, nor may VOCAL appear in their name, without prior written permission. Is this compatible with the third clause of the DFSG ? It looks like a restriction on the distribution. It's DFSG-compliant ; see the Apache License for instance, section #5 is exactly the same. -- Sam.
Re: Integrity of Source Code
On Wed, Nov 29, 2000, Wesley W. Terpstra wrote: The program by default pops up a splash saying 'This is the official version of X obtainable in source and binary form from Y' - justs popups up for 3 seconds or something not to obnoxious. If the source code (not build parameters) are changed you are required to have the message popup with 'This is an UNOFFICIAL version of X. The official version can be obtained from Y.' - again for ~3 seconds. I think this breaks the DFSG, because it simply prevents to remove the popup code. Further, we have no intention of inhibitting the free flow of modified version of the source or binaries, we merely want the user of derived works to be made aware that this is no longer a version approved by us although it is based off of work by us. [...] We want this warning prominently visible b/c unless the user knows to look they are not going to root through help files and documentation to see if the program has been modified. And of course, if they know to look, they probably know the program has been modified. [...] The reason for wanting this is because the company I work at does not want our product to have the quality impared and redistributed without the user knowing about it. One solution I may suggest is to require any modified version to have a fully different name. The Apache project is using such a license for their webserver: * 5. Products derived from this software may not be called Apache *nor may Apache appear in their names without prior written *permission of the Apache Group. You might find this solution acceptable, since it is DFSG compatible. Regards, Sam. -- Samuel Hocevar [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sam.zoy.org/ for DVDs in Linux screw the MPAA and ; do dig $DVDs.z.zoy.org ; done | \ perl -ne 's/\.//g; print pack(H224,$1) if(/^x([^z]*)/)' | gunzip
Re: GPL question
On Tue, Sep 05, 2000, Mike Cunningham wrote:
I work for a company which sells a proprietary closed-source call centre
application. We are looking to write a central printing server component which
would [hopefully] make use of Ghostscript. I understand that we would need to
release the printing server under the GPL and we have no problem with doing
that.
It depends on how ghostscript is called. If it is just called with
system(); or popen(); then you don't need to make it GPL.
My question is: would the rest of our product need to be re-licensed
under the GPL too?
Again, it depends on how the rest of your product communicates with
the printing server. If they are completely separate programs (ie. one
calling the other with system() or through a pipe), then both can have
their separate license.
However, if your printing server component is a library and is GPLed,
then every work linked to it has to be GPLed (or have an even less
restrictive license).
Also, is it relevant that at the moment the whole app. comes on a single CD?
This is considered mere aggregation of software by the GPL, and
thus the different parts of the work do not need to have the same
license, even if there is one GPLed app there.
I.e. if we added the new print server to the CD then have we just formed a
distribution (as described in the license) and ...aaagh.
Don't worry, as I said, just have a look at the very last sentence of
section 2 of the GPL.
Regards,
Sam.
--
Samuel Hocevar [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.via.ecp.fr/~sam/
1024D/29499F61 1999-04-221155 4B19 A50F 1136 6E60 A499 7CF3 F5AF 2949 9F61
dig goret.org @zoy.org axfr \
| perl -e 'for(sort()){print pack(H32,$1) if(/^c..\.(\w+)/)}' | gzip -d
Re: Is this license DFSG-free?
On Mon, Aug 21, 2000, Andrew Stribblehill wrote: I want to package something with this license. Is it acceptable to go into main? I'm most concerned with the 2nd paragraph -- does it pass DFSG 1? I don't think so. Also, this license does not explicitly allow modification and redistribution of modified forms. -- Sam.
About MPEG2 and DVDs
Hello, I plan to package vlc [1], an MPEG2 player which can also play DVDs. There is no MPEG2 Layer 3 support, nor is DeCSS included, so I do not think there are any legal issues with including it in Debian (the license is 100% GPL, no parts of the MPEG group's reference decoder have been included), though I'd appreciate any comments about this. My main concern is with CSS [2]. DeCSS [3] is not included, but (as I happen to be one of the main developers), I'd like to add support for it so that everyone can freely play all DVDs. I see several options : - no CSS support at all - integrate DeCSS. This would put it at least in non-US, or even into non-free or (even worse) not be legal in most countries outside Europe and would therefore not be possible at all. One of the problems is that DeCSS includes a cracked key from Xing. - implement a brute force algorithm that has been found and which lets you crack the CSS key of a single disk in a few seconds. I think this one would be legal everywhere, but not sure. Has anyone got a clue about what could decently be included into Debian ? Thanks for any pointers, Sam. [1] http://www.videolan.org/ - the VideoLAN project [2] http://www.opendvd.org/ - about legal issues of DVD playback [3] http://www.linuxvideo.org/ - the Linux DVD effort -- Samuel Hocevar [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.via.ecp.fr/~sam/ Do not try and fight the Cabal. That's impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth. There is no Cabal.
Re: DFSG Par. 9 and GPL Virulogical effekt
On Sat, Apr 22, 2000, Florian Lohoff wrote: The paragraph says License Must NOT Contaminate Other Software. As Debian and the FSF agree that the GPL and QPL are incompatible and this is mainly the cause of the GPL which requires the whole work distributed under THIS license this means a contamination into other programs read: QT2 Distributing a GPLed program and QT2 on the same medium is perfectly legal, thus there is no contamination. What is not tolerated is mixing QT2 and some GPL code to form a new piece of software. One might call this contamination, but it does not contaminate _other_ software. Sam. -- Only try to remember the truth : there is no Cabal.
Re: PINE Clone
On Wed, Dec 22, 1999, Julian Stoev wrote: I miss nntp in mutt. I switched to mutt recently after reading about present pine license, but I had to install also slrn for newsgroups. There is an nntp patch for mutt which requires inews ; it does not have the features of a real newsreader, but it might be worth a look : http://www.fiction.net/blong/programs/mutt/#nntp Sam. -- Samuel Hocevar [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.via.ecp.fr/~sam/ echo what is the universe|tr a-z 0-7-0-729|sed 's/9.//g;s/-/+/'|bc
Re: GPL source vs. binary
On Thu, Nov 18, 1999, Darren O. Benham wrote: Does a source that's licensed under the GPL automaticly produce a binary that can only be licensed under the GPL? Since a compilation is a translation into machine language, then the resulting binary can be considered a derivative of the Program, according to the GPL's section 0 (if I didn't miss anything there - IANAL). Thus I think it can only be licensed under the GPL, unless of course the author decides to release it under another license as well. Sam. -- Samuel Hocevar [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.via.ecp.fr/~sam/ echo what is the universe|tr a-z 0-7-0-729|sed 's/9.//g;s/-/+/'|bc
Re: the new IglooFTP license
On Thu, Jul 29, 1999, Steve Greenland wrote: On 28-Jul-99, 07:57 (CDT), Samuel Hocevar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Meanwhile, he implemented Igor's patch for VMS to one of those two 0.6.1 versions. This is the most alarming section. Did the patch go into the new proprietary version? Yes; it is in the changelog. If so, does Igor know? I have reasons to think that yes, he knows. But neither him nor the original IglooFTP author answered me yet. Does he approve? No idea, sorry. If I was Igor, I would *insist* on seeing the current source code, and making sure that the patch did not appear (assuming, of course, that I had licensed my patch appropriately). Alas, this seems to be a problem: the patch available for download has no copyright notice on it, no license. I'm quite curious about this: if a piece of code is released under no license, doesn't the author keep all the rights on the code ? Or is it implicitly thrown into 'public domain' ? Regards, Sam. -- Samuel Hocevar [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.via.ecp.fr/~sam/ echo what is the universe|tr a-z 0-7-0-729|sed 's/9.//g;s/-/+/'|bc
the new IglooFTP license
[To: programmers listed as IglooFTP contributors] [Cc: to debian-legal mailing list] Hello, sorry for bothering you about what you might consider a quite futile issue. As you might know, Jean-Marc Jacquet released a new 'PRO' version of his ftp software IglooFTP. The main point is that not only it has a non-free license, but sources aren't even distributed any more: http://www.littleigloo.org/iglooftp.php3 I also noticed that Jean-Marc has removed all traces of the GPLed 0.6.1 release from his website; the download section at http://www.littleigloo.org/softwares_fr.html#IGLOOFTP leads to broken links. But the GPLed 0.6.1 version still exists; it is in the source tree of the Debian distribution, for instance. Moreover, Jean-Marc re-released 0.6.1 under the Artistic license, which I don't know if he is allowed to do without changing the version number. Meanwhile, he implemented Igor's patch for VMS to one of those two 0.6.1 versions. Although I do not use IglooFTP very often, I am quite disappointed by this license change because: * I don't understand why Jean-Marc decided to make IglooFTP non-free if he only intends to provide email support. Anyone knowing the former versions' source code and/or having used IglooFTP as well might do the same. * this new version of IglooFTP won't be available for the Debian distribution. * the new version of IglooFTP crashes on my computer. There is no way I can fix it without having the source code. I will have to PAY for the registered version to be able to get support for a crash-free version ! So, what I intend to do is to ask Jean-Marc why he released his program under a non-free license, and whether he agrees to change his mind. Before that, I would like to know: - was Jean-Marc allowed to release IglooFTP 0.6.1 under the GPL, and later release the very same version under a different license ? - what license was Igor's patch released under ? - did the other contributors provide patches or just ideas ? It they were patches, what license were they released under ? - was Jean-Marc allowed to use those patches in the non-free version of IglooFTP ? Thanks a lot for your information, Sam. -- Samuel Hocevar [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.via.ecp.fr/~sam/ echo what is the universe|tr a-z 0-7-0-729|sed 's/9.//g;s/-/+/'|bc
