Henry Spencer's license
by Petr Šabata
Dear legal,
While checking the contents of our `perl' package, I noticed the following:
(...)
/* NOTE: this is derived from Henry Spencer's regexp code, and should not
* confused with the original package (see point 3 below). Thanks, Henry!
*/
/* Additional note: this code is very heavily munged from Henry's version
* in places. In some spots I've traded clarity for efficiency, so don't
* blame Henry for some of the lack of readability.
*/
/* The names of the functions have been changed from regcomp and
* regexec to pregcomp and pregexec in order to avoid conflicts
* with the POSIX routines of the same names.
*/
(...)
* pregcomp and pregexec -- regsub and regerror are not used in perl
*
* Copyright (c) 1986 by University of Toronto.
* Written by Henry Spencer. Not derived from licensed software.
*
* Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any
* purpose on any computer system, and to redistribute it freely,
* subject to the following restrictions:
*
* 1. The author is not responsible for the consequences of use of
* this software, no matter how awful, even if they arise
* from defects in it.
*
* 2. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented, either
* by explicit claim or by omission.
*
* 3. Altered versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not
* be misrepresented as being the original software.
*
**** Alterations to Henry's code are...
****
**** Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
**** 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
**** by Larry Wall and others
****
**** You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public
**** License or the Artistic License, as specified in the README file.
(...)
You can see the whole file here:
https://metacpan.org/source/SHAY/perl-5.20.1/regexec.c
I looked but couldn't find any common name for this license
of Henry's. Is it on our list? Is it free? What name should
I use in the License tag?
Thank you,
Petr
3 weeks, 5 days
FIGlet fonts
by Lyes Saadi
Hello Legal,
I'm bringing back a discussion from 2012[1]: Figlet fonts!
Indeed, I am trying to package python-pyfiglet[2] as a dependency for other
packages. But, after the review, it came up that a lot of weird fonts were
included. At the time, I didn't know anything about the discussion, and
decided
to abort everything.
Recently though, a developer contacted me through the bug report, and
proposed
to help on the issue. He triaged the fonts and separated them depending on
whether they were Open-Source or not, and we were thus able to create a
clean
package with none of the problematic fonts in it.
In that discussion[3], emerged the fact that a discussion over this already
happened ([1]), but it seems that either no consensus was reached, or
that such
consensus was lost to time as I wasn't able to find any conversation on
figlet
either on legal or devel mailing lists archives. And, it seems that the
issue
was just simply avoided since figlet ended up removing the problematic fonts
anyway.
But, upstream would like to keep the problematic fonts if possible in
Fedora.
And so, I would like to ask Legal to either give me the answer, if it
actually
was a settled matter, or to reach a consensus on Figlet fonts.
To resume the situation (as I understand it, I am not a lawyer, obviously):
In the US, fonts glyphs are not copyright-able as it is considered
insufficiently creative. For the same reason, Bitmap fonts (fonts
defined pixel
by pixel) are also not copyright-able, as they are only considered as
data which
represents glyphs. But, Vector fonts (fonts defined using drawing
instructions
and code), is, on the other hand, copyright-able because it is defined
through a
software code.
Then, we come to Figlet fonts. For those not aware of what Figlet fonts,
they
are also known as ASCII fonts:
__ __ ____ __ ____
/ / / /__ / / /___ / / ___ ____ _____ _/ / /
/ /_/ / _ \/ / / __ \ / / / _ \/ __ `/ __ `/ / /
/ __ / __/ / / /_/ / / /___/ __/ /_/ / /_/ / /_/
/_/ /_/\___/_/_/\____( ) /_____/\___/\__, /\__,_/_(_)
|/ /____/
The issue with those is that no ruling (as far as I know) ever concerned
that
type of font in US Court. Though, one argument would be that Figlet
fonts are
similar to Bitmap fonts, as they only contain data about glyphs, and do
not, in
the same way as Vector fonts do, contain code giving to the computer drawing
instructions for the fonts. As such Figlet fonts are not modular, or
extensible,
they just contain raw data about a font.
But still, all this is speculation, and, as I said, I am not a lawyer, so I
don't have any slight idea if such a defense would hold in court.
I hope to have resumed the situation clearly enough and that I didn't
make any
mistake.
Greetings,
Lyes Saadi
[1]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=820642
[2]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1876108
[3]: https://github.com/pwaller/pyfiglet/issues/89
PS: Can we remove the FE-legal blocker from the review request now that
all the
fonts have been sorted out?
8 months, 1 week
Bytepath packaging question
by Dennis Payne
Bytepath is a commercial game which has been released open source. I’ve
avoided packaging commercial games since that might decrease sales.
However the official release requires love 10.2 and can’t be run
directly from steam. I forked the code to make it run on love 11. Do
you think packaging it for Fedora is a good idea? I’ve tracked down the
license for some of the sound files but I don’t know the source for
most. I don’t doubt that the creator followed the license requirement
but can’t confirm. I’ve debated replacing all the sounds.
--
Dennis Payne
dulsi(a)identicalsoftware.com
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@dulsi
1 year, 4 months
ttyp0 font license
by Artur Frenszek-Iwicki
I maintain the easyrpg-player package [0]. Recently, it had a v0.7.0 release [1]. As it often happens, this release added some new dependencies.
One of those is the "ttyp0" font [2], which uses its own, custom license. Reading through, it seems to me that it's basically MIT with one extra clause:
> If the design of any glyphs in the fonts that are contained in the
> Software or generated during the installation process is modified
> or if additional glyphs are added to the fonts, the fonts
> must be renamed. The new names may not contain the word "UW",
> irrespective of capitalisation; the new names may contain the word
> "ttyp0", irrespective of capitalisation, only if preceded by a
> foundry name different from "UW".
I'm posting here because I'd like to confirm that the license is OK with Fedora.
A.FI.
[0] https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/easyrpg-player
[1] https://github.com/EasyRPG/Player/releases/tag/0.7.0
[2] https://people.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~uwe/misc/uw-ttyp0/
1 year, 4 months
