legal February 2008

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

9 participants
11 discussions

MeepZor Consulting Public Licence (MCPL) - good or bad?
by Robert Scheck 25 Apr '08

25 Apr '08

Good evening, is the MeepZor Consulting Public Licence (MCPL) a good or a bad license? License is here http://meepzor.com/packages/autoresponder/LICENCE.txt - suggestions? Greetings, Robert

2 4

Falcon Programming Language license
by Giancarlo Niccolai 26 Mar '08

26 Mar '08

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello, I have submitted the Falcon package for review and inclusion at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=428603 I will clear the rpmlint report later today. The Falcon Programming Language is released under FPLL: this is mainly an Apache2 license modified to extend the openness of the license to the embedding application and to the scripts. Here I am submitting the license to fedora-legal for approval. When I wrote the language, I searched around for a suitable license, mainly looking at other programming languages as Python and Ruby. I found there was too many gray areas about using the scripting languge as a scripting engine in foreign applications, and also the byproduct of the system (precompiled scripts) was left in a "undeclared state" which I didn't like. Even the script themselves, which are written in a certain language on which the copyright-copyleft extends, are often left in an undeclared state by those licenses. As I wanted more clarity and more explicit freedom for my users, I wrote the FPLL thinking at the apllication writers and at the applications embedding falcon as a scripting engine. Of all the open source licenses I checked, APACHE 2 was giving the guarantees I wanted both to Falcon and to their users, just it didn't cover "embedding" and "scripts"; so I used it and just extended it to scripts and embedding applications. I have started the OSI registration process, in the sense that I have asked for a legal advice of an accredited lawyer in my country, and I am waiting its relation to submit it to OSI. The license commentary (my intention) is here: http://www.falconpl.org/?page_id=license_comment and the text of the license is here: http://www.falconpl.org/?page_id=license I include the text of the two documents here below: Dear Reader, First of all, thanks for considering using The Falcon Language for Your job, or to embed it into Your application, or to use it for any other reason. The Falcon Programming Language License explains what You are allowed to do with Falcon and what You are supposed (and allowed) not to do. Since the legal jargon may be cryptic, You are provided here with a little resume of the License. It is important that You read and accept the License, as this resume hasn't any legal valence, and is provided only for the reason to express clarifications and examples that cannot find their place in the formal document. The License grants You the rights to use the Source code of Falcon and its various components in any way; You can study it, You can copy it, You can modify it, and You can even sell it, but You can't change the license under which it is distributed: even if You sell it, You have to provide the customers with the source code of Falcon and to grant them the same rights You have on it. The License also grants Your copyrights and intellectual rights for any modification or addition You may want to apply to Falcon. In case or addition and modifications, the License binds You to provide the user with the information that the original program, that is Falcon, was modified by You and what are the changes or the additions that You applied. Also, even if You can freely distribute, or even charge a fee, for Your derived work, You MUST apply the Falcon Programming Language License to Your modifications, and distribute them under the same terms. In other words, Your modifications, if made public, must be provided or available in source code. The license also grants You the right to embed Falcon in any application. Here You are granted the right to pick the terms and licenses You prefer, and to distribute Your embedding application without providing its source code. Even if significant portions of Falcon are in line functions, and even if You decide to statically link Falcon in Your application, this doesn't make it a "Derivative Work" of it: Your Embedding application is free to embed Falcon "as is" as it wish, without any requirements in terms of source distribution. You can also modify Falcon for Your specific needs and THEN embed Your modified version; the modified version of Falcon is under Falcon License, and must be made available in source code (or be proposed as a Contribution to the Falcon Committee), but Your Embedding application can still be distributed under Your preferred terms. The License has only a requirement that is demanded on Your Embedding application: You HAVE to state somewhere (in a place that CAN possibly be seen by the average user) that You are embedding Falcon and the reason for that. In example, You may state "ProgramX uses the Falcon Programming Language to automatize the Gamma procedure". About the scripts, which are more or less what a scripting language is for, You are granted the right to apply the license You prefer. As Falcon is also a script "compiler", You may even retain from distributing the script sources, and apply closed-source license to Your script-based application or to the scripts that are embedded in Your embedding application. However, if You don't distribute the script sources, You are again required to state somewhere in Your documentation or where the user can read it that You are using "Falcon", and more or less why You are doing it. For a pure Falcon application, You can just state "This application is written in Falcon". In example, if You use Falcon to drive a web site, and You don't want Your site visitors to ever see Your scripts, You have to put somewhere a reading like "Powered with Falcon"; doesn't have to be a n-inch banner on Your home page, You may also have just a small reading in a secondary page. What You cannot do is to claim that any thing You learnt from Falcon is Yours: especially, You are forbidden to patent any element that is found in Falcon. Another thing that You can't do is to sell a Falcon based product as if it were "completely" Yours, forgetting to cite, even in a very small reading, the fact that Falcon is in. Finally, a thing that the License prevents You from doing is to put the blame for failures on Falcon: the product is provided as-is, without any warranty. It's up to You to test if it is suitable to solve Your problems, and if a Falcon based application can be sold and granted as "working" to Your customers. If that application breaks, whether there's a problem with Falcon or not, You can't issue any claim on the Falcon contributors. Be kind on the Open Source Community: they have already made a lot for You even if You don't know them (and even if they don't know You). Best regards, Giancarlo Niccolai Falcon Programming Language License Version 1.0, February 2005 http://www.falconpl.org/?page_id=license TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE, REPRODUCTION, AND DISTRIBUTION 1. *Definitions*. * "License" shall mean the terms and conditions for use, reproduction, and distribution as defined by Sections 1 through 9 of this document. * "Licensor" shall mean the copyright owner or entity authorized by the copyright owner that is granting the License. * "Legal Entity" shall mean the union of the acting entity and all other entities that control, are controlled by, or are under common control with that entity. For the purposes of this definition, "control" means (i) the power, direct or indirect, to cause the direction or management of such entity, whether by contract or otherwise, or (ii) ownership of fifty percent (50%) or more of the outstanding shares, or (iii) beneficial ownership of such entity. * "You" (or "Your") shall mean an individual or Legal Entity exercising permissions granted by this License. * "Source" form shall mean the preferred form for making modifications, including but not limited to software source code and example code. * "Object" form shall mean any form resulting from mechanical transformation or translation of a Source form, including but not limited to compiled object code, generated documentation, and conversions to other media types. * "Work" shall mean the work of authorship, whether in Source or Object form, made available under the License, as indicated by a copyright notice that is included in or attached to the work (an example is provided in the Appendix below). * "Derivative Works" shall mean any work, whether in Source or Object form, that is based on (or derived from) the Work and for which the editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications represent, as a whole, an original work of authorship. For the purposes of this License, Derivative Works shall not include works that remain separable from, or merely link (or bind by name) to the interfaces of, the Work and Derivative Works thereof. * "Embedding Works" shall mean any work, whether in Source or Object form, that links (or binds by name) to the interface of the Work and Derivative Works. * "Scripts" shall mean any work, weather in Source or Object form, that is expressed through the grammar rules which are known by the Work. * "Users" shall mean any person that uses, directly or indirectly, all or any of the Work, the Derivative Works, the Embedding Works or the Scripts. * "Contribution" shall mean any work of authorship, including the original version of the Work and any modifications or additions to that Work or Derivative Works thereof, that is intentionally submitted to Licensor for inclusion in the Work by the copyright owner or by an individual or Legal Entity authorized to submit on behalf of the copyright owner. For the purposes of this definition, "submitted" means any form of electronic, verbal, or written communication sent to the Licensor or its representatives, including but not limited to communication on electronic mailing lists, source code control systems, and issue tracking systems that are managed by, or on behalf of, the Licensor for the purpose of discussing and improving the Work, but excluding communication that is conspicuously marked or otherwise designated in writing by the copyright owner as "Not a Contribution." * "Contributor" shall mean Licensor and any individual or Legal Entity on behalf of whom a Contribution has been received by Licensor and subsequently incorporated within the Work. 2. *Grant of Copyright License*. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of, prepare Embedding Works, prepare Scripts, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form. 3. *Grant of Patent License*. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed. 4. *Redistribution of Work and Derivative Works*. You may reproduce and distribute copies of the Work or Derivative Works thereof in any medium, with or without modifications, and in Source or Object form, provided that You meet the following conditions: 1. You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a copy of this License; and 2. You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating that You changed the files; and 3. You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works; and 4. You must state in the Source Form and in the documentation of any Derivative Work the fact that such work is a derivation of the Work, and include a copy of the Work in its Source form or provide directions on how to obtain a copy of the Work in its Source form; and 5. The Derivative Works are distributed under the terms of this License, or under terms that do not cause infringement of this License. 5. *Distribution of Embedding Works and Scripts*. You may produce and distribute any Embedding Work or Scripts thereof in any medium, in Source or Object form, provided You meet the following conditions: 1. The Embedding Works and Scripts are distributed under the term of this License, or the application of another License is explicitly stated in the documentation of the Embedding Works and Scripts or included in the Source form of the Embedding Works and Scripts; and 2. The Embedding Works carry a prominent notice in their documentation, or when not applicable, in any place that the Users are exposed to, about the fact that the Work is embedded, along with a general statement about the task that the Work is performing in the Embedding Works; and 3. If the Source form of Embedding Works is distributed or made available to the Users in any medium and by any means, the portions of the Source form that causes the Work to be embedded must carry a prominent notice about this fact, along with a general statement about the task that the Work is performing in the Embedded Works; and 4. If the Source form of Scripts is not distributed nor made available by any mean to the Users, a prominent notice about the fact that the Scripts have been written in the Language must be presented in a place which the Users are exposed to. 6. *Submission of Contributions*. Unless You explicitly state otherwise, any Contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the Work by You to the Licensor shall be under the terms and conditions of this License, without any additional terms or conditions. Notwithstanding the above, nothing herein shall supersede or modify the terms of any separate license agreement You may have executed with Licensor regarding such Contributions. 7. *Trademarks*. This License does not grant permission to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of the Licensor, except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Work and reproducing the content of the NOTICE file. 8. *Disclaimer of Warranty*. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, Licensor provides the Work (and each Contributor provides its Contributions) on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. You are solely responsible for determining the appropriateness of using or redistributing the Work and assume any risks associated with Your exercise of permissions under this License. 9. *Limitation of Liability*. In no event and under no legal theory, whether in tort (including negligence), contract, or otherwise, unless required by applicable law (such as deliberate and grossly negligent acts) or agreed to in writing, shall any Contributor be liable to You for damages, including any direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages of any character arising as a result of this License or out of the use or inability to use the Work (including but not limited to damages for loss of goodwill, work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, or any and all other commercial damages or losses), even if such Contributor has been advised of the possibility of such damages. 10. *Accepting Warranty or Additional Liability*. While redistributing the Work or Derivative Works thereof, You may choose to offer, and charge a fee for, acceptance of support, warranty, indemnity, or other liability obligations and/or rights consistent with this License. However, in accepting such obligations, You may act only on Your own behalf and on Your sole responsibility, not on behalf of any other Contributor, and only if You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold each Contributor harmless for any liability incurred by, or claims asserted against, such Contributor by reason of Your accepting any such warranty or additional liability. *END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS * ** -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHkdKp5nwsoBIDC4YRAvNbAJ9VYOfQKtEF24VjWNMJp3xgR2WrewCghWFn kF85IrTEteSzxHLmGlHQHGQ= =SMTx -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Sendmail license
by Paul Howarth 26 Mar '08

26 Mar '08

The sendmail license (http://www.sendmail.org/ftp/LICENSE) is not currently listed in the "Good licenses" list, nor is it listed on the FSF "list of licenses" page. However, sendmail *is* listed in the FSF directory of free software (http://directory.fsf.org/sendmail.html) Please can the sendmail license be added to the good licenses list? Cheers, Paul.

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man-pages-ko licence
by Ding Yi Chen 28 Feb '08

28 Feb '08

Hi, I am packing the man-pages-ko, the Korean manpages. The package (man-pages-ko) itself contain nothing more than collection of translated manpages. Nevertheless, it does have a Korean copyright announcement (http://man.kldp.org/wiki/ManPageCopyright) . The Google translates it to: Translation copyright page manual # English translations of all the registered in the project Manpage page manual to the rights of the copyright to the original (English), as follows. Put additional restrictions on the Korean Manpage project. However, such a translation, which occurred on the secondary rights such as coherent. 1. Translation copyright page manual translated translators identified with the principles of translators. 2. Unspecified translators translate the manual page, the copyright of the English translation of the page Manpage project. 3. Distributed as a package in the form of projects Manpage English, the archive, the archive's Manpage copyright of the Korean project. 4. Even if the cases listed above, the modified document / Do not put restrictions on the redistribution. However, modifying / redistribution if the source of the page manual explicitly that the project since the Korean Manpage raised by the feedback to be sent to the Korean Manpage project. ====================================================================================== To me, it looks a bit like IEEE, but it lacks of POSIX copyright, and it adds extra requirement such as notify the Korean Manpage project. Should we still consider it IEEE? Regards. Ding-Yi Chen

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Consolidating licensing information
by Rahul Sundaram 28 Feb '08

28 Feb '08

Hi All the licensing information is somewhat spread out in packaging guidelines needs to be consolidated to the licensing page in the wiki IMO. There are other repositories and distributions referring to the packaging guidelines or licensing guidelines and it would be useful for us to have a single reference. Also as discussed earlier, the following exception must be dropped from the exceptions section in the packaging guidelines as this is legacy information not applicable anymore. "Some fonts are released as upstream as TTF only. These fonts are treated as content. When source code is available (like ?DejaVu), then the font must be built from source. " It would probably be useful to put out a announcement of this change in fedora-devel-announce list that fonts must be free and open source too. Rahul

1 1

ExtJS license
by Nils Philippsen 27 Feb '08

27 Feb '08

Hi all, I'm thinking about wrapping up ExtJS (a JavaScript framework, http://extjs.com) for TurboGears and wondered if the license conditions are okay for it to be included in Fedora. Note that there are two stable versions, v1.1 and v2.0, which are partly incompatible and there is code that won't work with the newer one. Basically it sounds to me like "LGPLv3 for the JavaScript code, other assets (graphics, style sheets) may only be shipped with these components" which seems to be what we allow for e.g. games where artwork often has a restrictive license, but anyway here are the relevant bits from LICENSE.txt in the relevant ZIP archive: --- 8< --- ExtJS v1.1.1 ------- http://extjs.com/license The CSS and Graphics ("Assets") distributed with Ext are licensed for use ONLY with their associated Ext JavaScript component ("Component"). Use of the Assets in any way that does not also include the Component is prohibited without explicit permission from Ext JS, LLC. Deriving images and CSS from the Assets in an effort to bypass this license is also prohibited. -- The JavaScript code distributed with Ext (the "Software") is licensed under the Lesser GNU (LGPL) open source license version 3.0. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html If you are using this library for commercial purposes, we encourage you to purchase a commercial license. Please visit http://extjs.com/license for more details. This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details. --- >8 ----------------------- --- 8< --- ExtJS v2.0.1 ------ http://extjs.com/license License of CSS and Graphics ("Assets") ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Assets distributed with Ext are licensed for use ONLY with their associated Ext JavaScript component ("Component"). Use of the Assets in any way that does not also include the Component is prohibited without explicit permission from Ext JS, LLC. Deriving images and CSS from the Assets in an effort to bypass this license is also prohibited. Open Source License ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ext is also licensed under the terms of the Open Source LGPL 3.0 license. You may use our open source license if you: * Want to use Ext in an open source project that precludes using non-open source software * Plan to use Ext in a personal, educational or non-profit manner * Are using Ext in a commercial application that is not a software development library or toolkit, you will meet LGPL requirements and you do not wish to support the project http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html [...] -- This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details. --- >8 --------------------- Thanks, Nils -- Nils Philippsen / Red Hat / nphilipp(a)redhat.com "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- B. Franklin, 1759 PGP fingerprint: C4A8 9474 5C4C ADE3 2B8F 656D 47D8 9B65 6951 3011

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xmlroff BSD with usage restriction
by Jens-Ulrik Petersen 20 Feb '08

20 Feb '08

xmlroff (http://xmlroff.org/) is under a BSD license http://xmlroff.org/browser/trunk/xmlroff/COPYING which has an additional sentence: "You acknowledge that this Software is not designed, licensed or intended for use in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility." Does this means it can't be included in Fedora? Jens

4 5

Free software licenses and documentation
by Rahul Sundaram 19 Feb '08

19 Feb '08

Hi http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing does not mention GPL etc as permissible for documentation though I pretty sure we do ship GPL'ed documentation. Perhaps a generic note should be added that what is permissible for code is permissible for content (though may or may not be suitable). Rahul

2 3

Free software licenses and documentation
by Rahul Sundaram 18 Feb '08

18 Feb '08

Hi http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing does not mention GPL etc as permissable for documentation though I pretty sure we do ship GPL'ed documentation. Perhaps a generic note should be added that what is permissible for code is permissible for content (though may or may not be suitable). Rahul

1 0

Fedora Legal issues wiki page is outdated
by Rahul Sundaram 10 Feb '08

10 Feb '08

Hi http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraLegalIssues We need to clean up and maintain it or just delete it and track issues elsewhere in a issue tracker. Rahul

2 1

License of Lazarus and fpc (freepascal)
by Joost van der Sluis 02 Feb '08

02 Feb '08

Hi All, I'm packaging Lazarus, a program written in freepascal (fpc). (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=187243) The libraries of freepascal and Lazarus come with a license they call 'modified LGPL'. In fact it's just LGPL but since freepascal can't link dynamically like for example gcc does, the 'exception' of the LGPLG to the GPL that you may link dynamical to it, become useless in the case of freepascal. So this 'Modified LGPL' has the addition to the LGPL that you may link statically. This license isn't in the official list of allowed licenses although in fact it's the LGPL with exception #3 of the FLTK license. (http://www.fltk.org/COPYING.php) Code written under the 'modified LGPL' can be freely used in LGPL projects, but it doesn't work the other way around. In practice this is never a problem, since almost all LGPL-code written for the freepascal compiler uses this 'modified LGPL' license, since the LGPL itself is rather useless in this case. So far my IANAL explanation of the issue. This is what the official license text was in the past: "The source code of the Free Pascal Runtime Libraries and packages are distributed under the Library GNU General Public License (see the file COPYING) with the following modification: - object files and libraries linked into an application may be distributed without source code." This is how the developers stated it, but soon some people came up with all sort of problems. Eventually the text became like this: (Lazarus) "These files are distributed under the Library GNU General Public License (see the file COPYING.LGPL) with the following modification: As a special exception, the copyright holders of this library give you permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an executable, regardless of the license terms of these independent modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting executable under terms of your choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked independent module, the terms and conditions of the license of that module. An independent module is a module which is not derived from or based on this library. If you modify this library, you may extend this exception to your version of the library, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version." Question is now if this 'modified LGPL' license can be added to the list of licenses allowed in Fedora. Regards, Joost van der Sluis.

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legal February 2008