Hello legal@,

I have a question about a copyright header on a file that looks dubious to me, but I wanted to get an opinion from here.

https://github.com/alberthdev/spasm-ng/blob/master/inc/ti83plus.inc is the file in question; it's an z80 assembly include written for the TI-83+, a graphing calculator made by Texas Instruments. The file was originally written by TI and made freely available, but it includes the following copyright notice:

;======================================================================

; Include File for the TI-83 Plus

; Last Updated 11/09/2001

;

; copyrighted by TI. LICENSEE agrees that it will

; not delete the copyright notice, trademarks or

; protective notices from any copy made by LICENSEE.

;

; Warranty: TI does not warrant that the Licensed Materials will

; be free from errors or will meet your specific requirements.

; The Licensed Materials are made available "AS IS" to LICENSEE.

;

; Limitations: TI MAKES NO WARRANTY OR CONDITION, EITHER EXPRESS

; OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY IMPLIED

; WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE,

; REGARDING THE LICENSED MATERIALS. IN NO EVENT SHALL

; TI OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL

; OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, LOSS OF PROFITS, LOSS OF USE OR DATA,

; OR INTERRUPTION OF BUSINESS, WHETHER THE ALLEGED DAMAGES ARE

; LABELED IN TORT, CONTRACT OR INDEMNITY.

;

The calculator hacking community has since modified this file, and redistributes it in a lot of projects (many of which are open source). However, as best as I can tell, this copyright statement does not explicitly grant the right to redistribute this file. My thinking then is that Fedora cannot ship it. But I'd be interested in getting a second opinion.

This is redistributed by spasm-ng (a z80 assembler), which I'm in the process of packaging; but due to this licensing question, I've elected *not* to ship the file. (The rest of spasm-ng is GPLv2; it's just this include file that is dubious). The package is perfectly functional without it, since, as I said, most authors include this as part of their projects anyway.

Thanks in advance,

Ben Rosser