legal November 2011

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

10 participants
9 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

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IDEA patent expiration?
by Orcan Ogetbil 13 Jan '12

13 Jan '12

Hi all, We explicitly exclude the "International Data Encryption Algorithm" (IDEA) in a few Fedora packages (bouncycastle, opengpg, ?) due to its patent issues. Recently it occurred to me that this patent [1] may actually have been expired by now. There is some debate in the wikipedia's discussion page about this topic [2]. From what I understand, the general perception is that the US patent expired in May 2011. Could you please check this? When is it possible to have the IDEA in Fedora? Thanks, Orcan [1] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2F… [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Data_Encryption_Algorithm

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Suprem4 Stanford license clarification
by Shakthi Kannan 30 Nov '11

30 Nov '11

Hi, I would like to know if the following license terms are acceptable for Fedora? === LICENSE === (C) Copyright (1994) The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Except for commercial resale, lease, license or other commercial transactions, permission is hereby given to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software. STANFORD MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THIS SOFTWARE. No support is implied or provided for these older versions of Stanford TCAD software. === END === Source: https://github.com/cogenda/Suprem4 My assumption is that it is non-free because it restricts its resale, lease for a specific purpose? SK -- Shakthi Kannan http://www.shakthimaan.com

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iLBC codec sources status
by Peter Lemenkov 23 Nov '11

23 Nov '11

Hello All! The legal status of iLBC codec (which has some advantages over other speech codecs) prevented us from inclusion its sources into Fedora repository. We even were forced to modify original tarballs for several VoIP software projects to remove its sources before uploading to the Fedora packaging repository. Fortunately Google had bought Global IP Sound company, the original author of iLBC and several months ago they released WebRTC project under free license which contains several codecs (and ILBC among them). Unfortunately it's not an easy task to properly package software from Google (as usual), so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for proper support for iLBC codec in the nearest future. So current situation with iLBC looks quite complicated to me. We have old sources stripped from RFC text which were licensed under non-free custom license and were included in a lot of other VoIP projects as is. Also we have new modified sources released by Google under free license (within WebRTC) with somewhat different API (none of the existing VoIP software is compatible with them AFAIC). Google explicitly states that iLBC now available under the same license as other WebRTC parts but I'm not sure what's the status of old sources. *My* *question* *is* - can we at least stop stripping of iLBC sources from packages? I will definitely ask FESCo later which is in charge of making technical decisions regarding unbundling libraries, however before asking technical questions I'd like to hear some legal advises. * http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3951.txt * http://www.webrtc.org/ilbc-freeware * http://code.google.com/p/webrtc/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2Fsrc%2Fmodules%… * http://www.soft-switch.org/downloads/voipcodecs/ilbc-0.0.2.tar.gz * http://nucleo.fedorapeople.org/rpms/mediastreamer/SPECS/ilbc.spec -- With best regards, Peter Lemenkov.

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Legal approval of the mingw-w64 toolchain?
by Erik van Pienbroek 21 Nov '11

21 Nov '11

Hi Fedora Legal, Back in Januari this year we (the Fedora MinGW SIG) filed a review request for various packages belonging to the mingw-w64 cross compiler toolchain. This was done because we want to add support for cross-compiling binaries for the win64 target in Fedora. We made two of these packages (mingw-headers [1] and mingw-crt [2]) block FE-LEGAL as we received some signals in the past that a legal audit should be done for these packages. We are not entirely sure if such a legal audit is really necessary but in order to play it safe we wanted someone from FE-LEGAL/RH-LEGAL to take a look at it. Earlier this year, one of the lead mingw-w64 developers was hired by Red Hat. With this step we (the Fedora MinGW SIG) expected that the legal issues would get sorted out soon, but unfortunately there's still no news. This mingw-w64 developer has tried to contact RH-LEGAL multiple times, but he kept getting the answer from the lawyer that other more important issues got between. As there have already passed about 10 months since the initial request we're getting a bit frustrated with the situation as we still don't know how long this legal approval is going to take. All other preparations for the introduction of the mingw-w64 toolchain are already done. We've updated our packaging guidelines [3] and got them approved by the FPC [4]. We've already ported about 75 mingw32 packages to use these new packaging guidelines [5] and have been testing everything in a separate yum repo [6] for the time being. As you can see we have to maintain the mingw packages in two different places at the moment. Once in the Fedora repos and once in the testing repo. As this is quite a maintenance burden to keep everything in sync we would like to merge all changes from the mingw-w64 testing repo back to the Fedora repos sooner than later. The only thing which is blocking is from going forward right now is the legal approval. We are currently aiming for Fedora 17 to introduce the mingw-w64 toolchain. This means that the legal approval has to be done before the F17 feature submission deadline which is at the end of Januari 2012 [7]. Is there anything we can do to help speed up the legal approval? Kind regards, Erik van Pienbroek Fedora MinGW SIG [1]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=673790 [2]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=673792 [3]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:MinGW_Future [4]: https://fedorahosted.org/fpc/ticket/71 [5]: http://svn.openftd.org/svn/fedora_cross/ [6]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MinGW/CrossCompilerFramework [7]: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/17/Schedule

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LGPL and MPL
by Orion Poplawski 18 Nov '11

18 Nov '11

I'm submitting pslib for review: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=753855 License tag as we see it is: LGPLv2+ and MPLv1.0 and MIT MPLv1.0 is listed as GPL incompatible, does that also apply to the LGPL? Thanks! -- 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

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Research Software License Agreement
by Shakthi Kannan 14 Nov '11

14 Nov '11

Hi, What type of license does this research license fall under? http://embedded.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/downloads/software.agree.html === B3TERMS_OF_USE === The terms under which the software is provided are as the following. Software is distributed as is, completely without warranty or service support. The University of California and its employees are not liable for the condition or performance of the software. The University owns the copyright but shall not be liable for any infringement of copyright or other proprietary rights brought by third parties against the users of the software. The University of California hereby disclaims all implied warranties. The University of California grants the users the right to modify, copy, and redistribute the software and documentation, both within the user's organization and externally, subject to the following restrictions: 1. The users agree not to charge for the University of California code itself but may charge for additions, extensions, or support. 2. In any product based on the software, the users agree to acknowledge the UC Berkeley BSIM Research Group that developed the software. This acknowledgment shall appear in the product documentation. 3. The users agree to obey all U.S. Government restrictions governing redistribution or export of the software. 4. The users agree to reproduce any copyright notice which appears on the software on any copy or modification of such made available === END === Is it acceptable for Fedora? SK -- Shakthi Kannan http://www.shakthimaan.com

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Organization address (required for volunteer work)
by John5342 07 Nov '11

07 Nov '11

Hi. Tax and benefit requirements here require me to declare all work, both paid and unpaid, and provide the full name and address of each company, organization or person i am working for. I am volunteering for the Fedora Project but i cannot find these details clearly defined anywhere on the fedoraproject.org website. Therefore i am writing to this list in the hope that somebody can provide the details details or point me to where i can find them. To summarize, i need the the full name and address of the company/organization/person i am working for as a result of volunteering for Fedora Project. Thank you very much in advance. -- There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't...

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Is the Dxflib license free?
by Volker Fröhlich 31 Oct '11

31 Oct '11

Dear list readers, A package I put on review can utilize dxflib: http://www.qcad.org/dxflib_downloads.html This license file ships in the tarball: http://www.geofrogger.net/review/dxflib_commercial_license.txt What looks like a proprietary license, is suddenly interupted by: "NOTE: dxflib Open Source Edition is licensed under the terms of the GPL and not under this Agreement. If Licensee has, at any time, developed all (or any portions of) the Application(s) using RibbonSoft's publicly licensed dxflib Open Source Edition, Licensee must comply with RibbonSoft's requirements and license such Application(s) (or any portions derived there from) under the terms of the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License version 2 (the "GPL") a copy of which is located at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html#SEC1 ..." The headers in the various file mention GPLv2. With all the rubble in the license, around mentioning it was GPLv2, is this certainly free software? Thanks in advance, Volker Fröhlich

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legal November 2011