legal March 2017

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

18 participants
13 discussions

New github TOS
by Stuart Gathman 03 Mar '17

03 Mar '17

Should Fedora Legal issue an opinion on this? This affects a lot of upstream projects used by Fedora. A number of people (not lawyers) have seen the new github Terms of Service as incompatible with GPL, CC-BY and other free/libre licenses - and therefore recommend removing all affected content immediately. Examples: Recommend removing content: https://www.mirbsd.org/permalinks/wlog-10_e20170301-tg.htm#e20170301-tg_wlo… http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/removing_everything_from_github/ New TOS are innocuous: https://www.earth.li/~noodles/blog/2017/03/github-tos-change.html My (IANAL) opinion so far (from #spf(a)irc.perl.org) : (01:48:09 PM) SDGathman: ScottK: My reading of the new TOS is that *IF* you don't bother to include an explicit LICENSE in a repo, it has an implicit BSD license. (01:48:53 PM) SDGathman: Maybe he is worried he might accidentally upload a repo with no LICENSE ? (01:50:57 PM) julian: I doubt that a git hoster's TOS can legally force any license on your code without you explicitly declaring it. (01:51:27 PM) julian: unless they, say, explicitly create a `LICENSE` file for you stating that license. (01:51:35 PM) julian: and you don't remove/replace it. (01:55:01 PM) SDGathman: Mainly, the TOS explicitly says that by uploading, you grant github the right to reproduce your content to provide their service, *and* grant other github users the right to "fork" the content. (01:55:33 PM) SDGathman: There is no implicit license to distribute beyond github. (01:56:11 PM) SDGathman: If you don't want people to fork your repo, maybe it shouldn't be on github? (Or you can buy their private commercial service.) (02:16:32 PM) lennyvaknine: or bitbucket :) (03:03:48 PM) ScottK: One of those posts (or one referenced) says bitbucket is similar. (03:04:25 PM) ScottK: sdgathman: OK. I didn't have a strong opinion, but wanted to make sure you were aware. (03:07:10 PM) SDGathman: The main takeaway is, just like github warns you, make sure your repo has a license before uploading. When you create a new repo on github, they have a menu of standard free/libre licenses to put in your empty project from the getgo. (03:07:52 PM) ScottK: And yet, so many don't have it. (03:09:15 PM) SDGathman: And in that case, the github TOS says it has an implicit BSD like license. (03:10:53 PM) SDGathman: Which isn't so bad - unless you are a commercial company and don't want a competitor grabbing your code just before the commit that added the LICENSE. (03:12:35 PM) SDGathman: I always start with GPL, and add PSF or other looser license later if needed. (03:13:13 PM) SDGathman: It took a while to cultivate that habit...

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DO WHATEVER PUBLIC LICENSE
by David Labsky 02 Mar '17

02 Mar '17

Hello Fedora Legal, Would software under the following license be okay for inclusion in Fedora? Should I pursue the author to relicence? > DO WHATEVER PUBLIC LICENSE* > TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION > > 0. You can do whatever you want to with the work. > 1. You cannot stop anybody from doing whatever they want to with the work. > 2. You cannot revoke anybody elses DO WHATEVER PUBLIC LICENSE in the work. > > This program is free software. It comes without any warranty, to > the extent permitted by applicable law. You can redistribute it > and/or modify it under the terms of the DO WHATEVER PUBLIC LICENSE > > Software originally created by Justin Lloyd @ http://otakunozoku.com/ Source: https://github.com/rednex/rgbds/blob/master/LICENSE Thank you Sanqui

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SPDX license tags and Rust packaging
by Neal Gompa 01 Mar '17

01 Mar '17

Hello all, I know that it's been discussed from time to time about using SPDX identifiers for our license tags[1][2]. In the Rust SIG, we're beginning the work to figure out the packaging of Rust things. Cargo, the Rust equivalent of Python's pip, enforces the usage of SPDX identifiers for license tags in the Cargo.toml (the file indicating the metadata of a "crate"). If we're considering using SPDX identifiers for license tags (as it appeared to be the case in Tom's FOSDEM talk[3]), would it be possible to grant us the ability to just use that data instead of having to attempt to maintain a mapping of SPDX to Fedora short tags? Since our ecosystem in Fedora is basically zero right now, we could avoid the ugliness right from the get-go. Thanks and best regards, Neal [1]: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org… [2]: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org… [3]: https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/fedoras_legal_state/ -- 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!

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legal March 2017