legal April 2009

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

20 participants
13 discussions

Re: [Fedora-legal-list] CAcert.org license
by Tom Callaway 12 Feb '16

12 Feb '16

On Tue, 2008-12-09 at 23:03 +0100, Matthias Saou wrote: > > >>>>> "TC" == Tom \"spot\" Callaway <Tom> writes: > > > > TC> Given that it does not give permission for us to redistribute (the > > TC> cornerstone requirement for Content licenses), this license is not > > TC> acceptable for Fedora. > > > > I guess I'm glad I looked before approving the package, but I have to > > wonder: Do the cacert folks actually want anyone to use their > > certificates? I mean, this prevents basically everyone from using > > them, because they can't come with the OS or the browser. > > Personally, the more I read the document, the more I'm confused. > > "You may NOT distribute certificates or root keys under this > licence"... does this mean we can distribute under a different license? Well, sortof. The wording here is strange because you can get a different license from the CA issuer. We can't just pick a license, but the CA issuer might be willing to give us a different one. > Would it be worth getting in contact with CAcert.org in order to try > and have them allow us to redistribute the root certs under conditions > which are acceptable to the Fedora Project? Probably, yes. :) ~spot

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Linux firmware
by Rahul Sundaram 06 May '09

06 May '09

Hi Planet GNOME points to this bug now which is apparently non-redistributable firmware being included in Ubuntu for quite sometime. Just a heads up to make sure we aren't having the same problem. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-firmware/+bug/223212 Rahul

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Another list of potential issues
by Rahul Sundaram 30 Apr '09

30 Apr '09

Hi I know there are differences in legal policies but there might be common problems as well. http://www.mail-archive.com/gnewsense-dev@nongnu.org/msg00125.html Rahul

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[Fwd: [Fedora-legal-list] Trademark - FEDORA]
by Pam Chestek 28 Apr '09

28 Apr '09

I'll handle. Pam -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Fedora-legal-list] Trademark - FEDORA Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:00:53 -0300 From: Kris Williamson (KRW) <krw(a)aribonifabbri.com.br> To: <fedora-legal-list(a)redhat.com> I am a trademark attorney working in Brazil. I have come across a company which has applied to register the trademark FEDORA in Brazil for services in Class 35. I want to know if this third party has permission to do so. Who do I contact regarding this? Kris Williamson Advocacia Pietro Ariboni Ariboni, Fabbri, Schmidt & Advogados Associados Rua Guararapes, 1909 -10º andar Brooklin Novo São Paulo - SP Tel: (11) 5502-1222 Fax (11) 5505-3306 E-mail: krw(a)aribonifabbri.com.br <mailto:krw@aribonifabbri.com.br> aribonifabbri(a)ariboni.com.br <mailto:aribonifabbri@ariboni.com.br> _______________________________________________ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list(a)redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list

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Trademark - FEDORA
by Kris Williamson (KRW) 28 Apr '09

28 Apr '09

I am a trademark attorney working in Brazil. I have come across a company which has applied to register the trademark FEDORA in Brazil for services in Class 35. I want to know if this third party has permission to do so. Who do I contact regarding this? Kris Williamson Advocacia Pietro Ariboni Ariboni, Fabbri, Schmidt & Advogados Associados Rua Guararapes, 1909 -10º andar Brooklin Novo São Paulo - SP Tel: (11) 5502-1222 Fax (11) 5505-3306 E-mail: krw(a)aribonifabbri.com.br aribonifabbri(a)ariboni.com.br

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NIST "license"
by Jerry James 15 Apr '09

15 Apr '09

Re: the recent speech recognition thread on Fedora-devel, I am looking at packaging up a few tools from http://www.nist.gov/speech/tools/, SPHERE in particular. However, the distribution contains no mention of a license. A query about this was answered with a pointer to this page: http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/disclaim.htm which says, "These World Wide Web pages are provided as a public service by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). With the exception of material marked as copyrighted, information presented on these pages is considered public information and may be distributed or copied. Use of appropriate byline/photo/image credits is requested." The SPHERE source distribution contains a directory, src/lib/sp, which does contain code with copyright and license statements. However, this is code that was written outside of NIST and appears to be released under a variety of open source licenses. I will do a thorough audit of that directory before proceeding. Assuming that audit turns up no problems, what do you think of NIST's statement above? Since the code they wrote contains no copyright statements, are they declaring it public domain? I can ask for more information if necessary, but I'd appreciate a hand with crafting the questions if so. I hope this doesn't turn into the conversation I had with a prominent computer scientist a couple of years ago. He distributes some excellent software with no clear license. We had a conversation that went something like this. Me: "Under what license are you distributing this software?" Him: "Argh! I hate it when people ask me that! I'm just doing research and making the results of my research available to the public!" Me: "Yes, but the public doesn't know what they are allowed to do with your software. That's what the license spells out." Him: "They can do whatever they want with it. That's why I put it on a web page!" Me: "Great, would you mind just writing that in a license file and including it with the software?" Him: "I haven't got time for this nonsense. If you find the software useful, then use it. If not, don't use it!" [Conversation then goes in circles for the next 5 minutes until me gives up.] -- Jerry James http://loganjerry.googlepages.com/ http://jjames.fedorapeople.org/

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ProjectX
by Göran Uddeborg 15 Apr '09

15 Apr '09

Would it be possible to package ProjectX in Fedora (http://project-x.sourceforge.net/)? It is a DVB demuxing tool. The license is GPLv2+, so that part is fine. I understand MPEG2 is a patented codec (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems#DVD_Playback) but does that also affect a tool that just demultiplexes the stream?

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modified MIT license in GPLv3+ source
by Christian Krause 11 Apr '09

11 Apr '09

Hi, I'm currently packaging the tool "pianobooster": https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=494965 and I've discovered the following problem: The source (GPLv3+) contains 3 files ("rtmidi/*") which are licensed under a modified MIT license. In general this should be ok, but this license contains the statement that modifications must be sent back to the author. For the full license text from the source files see below. I've set the FE-LEGAL block for the review request (BZ #494965) Please can the legal team have a look at the problem (and hopefully remove the FE-LEGAL block)? ;-) If there's no problem, what would be the correct License tag in the spec file? GPLv3+ and MIT? Thanks! Best regards, Christian Here is the problematic license: RtMidi WWW site: http://music.mcgill.ca/~gary/rtmidi/ RtMidi: realtime MIDI i/o C++ classes Copyright (c) 2003-2009 Gary P. Scavone Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Any person wishing to distribute modifications to the Software is requested to send the modifications to the original developer so that they can be incorporated into the canonical version. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

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CDF license
by Jussi Lehtola 07 Apr '09

07 Apr '09

Hi, I'm packaging TeLa, which requires the NASA CDF library. http://cdf.gsfc.nasa.gov/ Review request is at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=494520 The copyright is as follows: Copyright 2008 Space Physics Data Facility NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center This software may be copied or redistributed as long as it is not sold for profit, but it can be incorporated into any other substantive product with or without modifications for profit or non-profit. If the software is modified, it must include the following notices: - The software is not the original (for protectiion of the original author's reputations from any problems introduced by others) - Change history (e.g. date, functionality, etc.) This copyright notice must be reproduced on each copy made. This software is provided as is without any express or implied warranties whatsoever. ** Is the license acceptable for inclusion? -- Jussi Lehtola Fedora Project Contributor jussilehtola(a)fedoraproject.org

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Using Fedora as a base for some custom appliance.
by Fabian Deutsch 05 Apr '09

05 Apr '09

Hi, I hope this is the correct list :) I'd like to use Fedora as a base for an appliance including some closed-source components. Is this legal, when following the guidelines mentioned in http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal/TrademarkGuidelines#Distributing_combin… ? The questions is not about how the closed-sourced-components are linked, but more about, whether we can use fedora as a base or not. Greetings fabian

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legal April 2009