legal January 2011

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

17 participants
11 discussions

Re: [Fedora-legal-list] CAcert.org license
by Tom Callaway 12 Feb '16

12 Feb '16

On Tue, 2008-12-09 at 23:03 +0100, Matthias Saou wrote: > > >>>>> "TC" == Tom \"spot\" Callaway <Tom> writes: > > > > TC> Given that it does not give permission for us to redistribute (the > > TC> cornerstone requirement for Content licenses), this license is not > > TC> acceptable for Fedora. > > > > I guess I'm glad I looked before approving the package, but I have to > > wonder: Do the cacert folks actually want anyone to use their > > certificates? I mean, this prevents basically everyone from using > > them, because they can't come with the OS or the browser. > > Personally, the more I read the document, the more I'm confused. > > "You may NOT distribute certificates or root keys under this > licence"... does this mean we can distribute under a different license? Well, sortof. The wording here is strange because you can get a different license from the CA issuer. We can't just pick a license, but the CA issuer might be willing to give us a different one. > Would it be worth getting in contact with CAcert.org in order to try > and have them allow us to redistribute the root certs under conditions > which are acceptable to the Fedora Project? Probably, yes. :) ~spot

4 6

Forced copyright assignment
by Jason L Tibbitts III 16 Feb '11

16 Feb '11

A package I'm reviewing includes the following in a "docs/license" file (I have wrapped the text which was originally on two lines): ========= The !IguanaWorks USB Infrared Transceiver firmware and drivers are provided under the [http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/info/GPLv2.html Gnu Public License (GPL), version 2]. You are free to use the firmware and driver software freely within the constraints of the license. Any changes submitted back to !IguanaWorks become the property of !IguanaWorks and are then licensed to others under the GPL version 2. '''If you submit changes to us, you are giving !IguanaWorks the copyright on those changes.''' If you are interested in commerical use of our hardware or software, please contact us for alternative licensing. ========= I have a few questions regarding this: Is it remotely valid for them to claim copyright without any formal copyright assignment documents being exchanged? I suppose this depends on what "submit" means, but it sure sounds as if they claim that you hand over your copyright just by being friendly and sending a bugfix to them. Does this in any way impact the suitability of this package for Fedora? The firmware mentioned is given in the form of hex code, which doesn't seem to be "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it." I know the issue of GPL'd binary-only stuff must have come up before; is there a summary of the issue anywhere I can look at? Thanks, - J<

5 14

Drupal module licensing
by Orion Poplawski 12 Feb '11

12 Feb '11

Most of the drupal modules that I've looked into packaging do not have any license preamble in the code. They contain a copy of the GPLv2 license in LICENSE.txt. As such, I've marked them as GPLv2. According to http://drupal.org/licensing/faq/#q4 modules on the drupal.org cvs site should be GPLv2+, and I've had requests to update the license tag: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=640830#c3 However, without explicit mention in the text of the module code I'm hesitant to change the license tag. Help? -- Orion Poplawski Technical Manager 303-415-9701 x222 NWRA/CoRA Division FAX: 303-415-9702 3380 Mitchell Lane orion(a)cora.nwra.com Boulder, CO 80301 http://www.cora.nwra.com

6 7

Public domain works in Russia
by Jason L Tibbitts III 27 Jan '11

27 Jan '11

I'm trying to determine if the LZMA SDK is properly in the public domain. The author (Igor Pavlov) is Russian, and supposedly the work was placed into the public domain on 2008-11-23 which I guess would mean that the Russian Federation's new copyright code would be involved. However, that's about as far into the matter as I can comprehend. Anyway, this is about all I have: LICENSE ------- 7z ANSI-C Decoder is part of the LZMA SDK. LZMA SDK is written and placed in the public domain by Igor Pavlov. 4.61 beta 2008-11-23 ------------------------- - The bug in ANSI-C LZMA Decoder was fixed: If encoded stream was corrupted, decoder could access memory outside of allocated range. - Some changes in ANSI-C 7z Decoder interfaces. - LZMA SDK is placed in the public domain. The code is at http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sevenzip/lzma465.tar.bz2 Any guidance would be appreciated. - J<

2 2

PublicDomain license: MonadCatchIO-mtl Haskell package
by Shakthi Kannan 20 Jan '11

20 Jan '11

Hi, I had contacted upstream regarding PublicDomain license for Haskell package MonadCatchIO-mtl [1] as mentioned at: http://www.mail-archive.com/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org/msg00380.html The response is as follows: === REPLY === Hi If I recall correctly, this package was built from gathering code snippets that were posted by others on public mailing lists. Hence, I consider it to be in the public domain and don't want to claim any form of copyright on it (not even the claiming-and-releasing that, if I understand correctly, the CC-0 license does). If I understand correctly, if I don't claim to be the copyright holder, I cannot provide you with a useful statement. Of course, I'm not a lawyer and I don't have much experience with licensing issues, so I'm open to more knowledgable advice. Thanks Daniel === END === Please let me know as to how we can proceed further? Appreciate any inputs, Thanks! SK [1] HackageDB. MonadCatchIO-mtl. http://hackage.haskell.org/package/MonadCatchIO-mtl -- Shakthi Kannan http://www.shakthimaan.com

2 1

Documentation and header files seemingly without a license
by Ville-Pekka Vainio 18 Jan '11

18 Jan '11

Hi, I'm reviewing erlang-bitcask for Fedora: <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=652623>. A good way of browsing through upstream source is here: <https://bitbucket.org/basho/bitcask/src>. Upstream doesn't have a LICENSE file or similar and the license is not mentioned in the README file either. I have two licensing related questions: 1. All other relevant source files have a license header except include/bitcask.hrl and c_src/erl_nif_compat.h. I'm not sure if they constitute a "work" in terms of copyright and should have licenses. What do you think? 2. This is, to me, the more important question. There is a .pdf file and some .png files in the doc directory. To me these seem like works which are under copyright, but I can't find a license for them anywhere in the source tree. Does this make them non-free and non-redistributable? -- Ville-Pekka Vainio

4 6

Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Documentation and header files seemingly without a license
by Ville-Pekka Vainio 17 Jan '11

17 Jan '11

su, 2011-01-16 kello 08:56 -0500, Justin O'Brien kirjoitti: > On 01/16/2011 06:10 AM, Ville-Pekka Vainio wrote: > > su, 2011-01-16 kello 13:22 +0300, Peter Lemenkov kirjoitti: > >> Also he kindly > >> granted us permission to redistribute doc-file freely w/o > >> modifications. I hope that it's ok for content. > > > > I would like to get a confirmation from someone that this is OK in > > Fedora before accepting the package. > > > > without the right to modify I doubt this will be excepted. I think so too. The .png files seem to be images from the .pdf file, so effectively we're talking about distributing the .pdf file. If (and when) that can't be done in Fedora, Peter could just put a README.Fedora file into the package, which would contain a URL to the .pdf file. It seems to be available in http://downloads.basho.com/papers/ -- Ville-Pekka Vainio

2 1

C Library ABI for ARM Architecture
by Shakthi Kannan 14 Jan '11

14 Jan '11

Hi, Could you please let me know if the license (Section 1.4) mentioned in the specification document, "C Library ABI for ARM Architecture" [1] an acceptable one for Fedora? Thanks! SK [1] http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/com.arm.doc.ihi0039b/IHI0039B_clibabi.… -- Shakthi Kannan http://www.shakthimaan.com

3 4

Lightspark
by gatlin sullivan 10 Jan '11

10 Jan '11

Lightspark is packaged at rpm-fusion. Is there a legal exception to it being held in Fedora's official repositories?

2 1

Bug 657552 - License violation
by Kai-Uwe Behrmann 10 Jan '11

10 Jan '11

Hello, when is a appropriate response to be awaited to the above issue in Fedora 13, Fedora 14 and probably in development data for the next Fedora release? As the author of the original ICC profile data I find this not acceptable. kind regards Kai-Uwe Behrmann -- developing for colour management www.behrmann.name + www.oyranos.org

1 0

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

legal January 2011