On 01/06/2010 08:10 PM, Michal Ambroz wrote:

Hello dear list members, I would like to ask whether the amap license and amap program itself would be eligible to be included in the Fedora. Tool is opensource with license based on GPLv2 with additional restrictions, but I am not sure whether it is free enough to create amap package for Fedora. http://freeworld.thc.org/thc-amap/

Unfortunately, the amap license is non-free. The additional restrictions make it non-free (not to mention that they clearly conflict with the GPLv2).

It is not acceptable for inclusion in Fedora under that license.

~spot

On 01/07/2010 01:40 PM, Julius Davies wrote:

Hi, Tom,

Limiting ourselves to copyright (ignoring patents and trademarks and other IP), in general would you say a copyright license must either?

1. Be "Free" according to FSF: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

or

2. Be "Open Source" according to OSI: http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd

It depends upon what context you're asking that question.

If you mean "Does a copyright license have to be either "Free" according to the FSF definition of "Free" or "Open Source" according to the OSI definition of "Open Source" in order to be acceptable for Fedora", then the answer is no.

In Fedora, a copyright license _MUST_ be considered "Free" according to the FSF definition of "Free". Whether or not a license is considered "Open Source" by the OSI is irrelevant to Fedora.

The reasoning for this is that while effectively all "Free" copyright licenses meet the criteria to be considered "Open Source", the inverse is not true. Historically, some rather poorly worded licenses have been OSI approved as "Open Source", most notably, the Artistic 1.0 license.

***

Now, if you're asking that in the larger realm of the known universe, and mean: Aren't all copyright licenses either "Free" or "Open Source", the answer is obviously no. :)

I will assume you meant the former rather than the latter, and answer your additional questions.

If yes, I have three more questions:

a. What is currently the most restrictive license in Fedora that satisfies either of those definitions?

Impossible to say, because different licenses place different restrictions on different rights. There are a few licenses which are considered free only because of the clairifed intent of the copyright holder (the Sendmail license is a notable example where it is only considered Free when the copyright holder is Eric Allman, Sendmail Inc. or the University of California).

b. What is currently the least restrictive license in Fedora that satisfies either of those?

Well, the obvious answer is Public Domain. But seeing as how Public Domain is not a true copyright license (it is an abandonment of copyright).

There are many examples of very permissive licenses, which Fedora labels as "Copyright only", see: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/CopyrightOnly

Alternately, the MIT license (and its many, many, many variants) are considered to be extremely permissive.

c. Are there any examples of Fedora-acceptable licenses that do not satisfy either of those definitions?

As stated above, all Fedora-acceptable software and font licenses must be considered "Free" by the FSF definition. Our licensing requirements for "content" and "firmware" are slightly different, documented here:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#CodeVsContent https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Content_Licenses https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Binary_Firmware

I'm curious to know the limits of open source licenses: what might theoretically be the maximum and minimum (in terms of restrictions and conditions) that fall in the "open source" category of copyright licenses. Do these hypothetical boundary licenses already exist, e.g. can we get more restrictive than some kind of GPLv2/Knuth hybrid, and can we get less restrictive than 2-clause BSD-with-disclaimers?

It is possible to be more restrictive than GPLv2, GPLv3 is in several ways more restrictive. Again, it depends on which specific areas of rights we are focusing on. Use is the only right automatically granted (in the United States), so a license could be more/less restrictive in the generic areas of:

* distribution * modification * patents * sublicensing * etc, etc, etc

I'm vastly generalizing when I say that "Use" is automatically granted, there are additional narrowing factors there, although, most of them make a license non-Free (but not necessarily, non-Open Source, although, usually).

I'm presuming those BSD disclaimers actually make it less restrictive than public domain, since these disclaimers seem to remove some possible default restrictions.

It is not possible to be less permissive than code in the public domain, because that code is no longer copyrighted (in most jurisdictions). By the very nature of public domain, all copyrighted code (regardless of license) is more restrictive, because while you may be able to do _ANYTHING_ in accordance with the terms of the copyright license, you cannot claim copyright on the whole work with the first copyrightable change, which you can do with public domain code.

Hope that helps. :)

~spot

Hello dear list members,

I would like to ask whether the dnswalk license would be eligible to be included in the Fedora.

sf.net site states it is Artistic License, but the artistic license is not included or referenced in the tarball.

Tool is perl script with this text in a readme: This program may be freely distributed, as long as this notice and documentation are distributed with the program. This program is released as-is, with no warranty expressed or implied. Some assembly required, contents may settle during shipment. This program can be found at http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~barr/dnswalk/

Thank you Michal Ambroz