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