legal March 2010

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

17 participants
19 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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Please define "effective license" (for the love of consistency)
by Orcan Ogetbil 19 Jul '10

19 Jul '10

1) I came across another review with the same license question. The source files have one of the GPLv2, GPLv2+ and LGPLv2+ headers each. They get compiled and produce 1 final binary executable. None of the headers (or other source code files) go to the final RPM. What goes to the license tag of the package? Ref: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=537325#c4 2) Hypothetical question (although happens rather frequently): What if there was a -devel subpackage and .h files with different licenses ended up in this -devel subpackage? Orcan

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Trusster Open Source License
by Shakthi Kannan 08 Jul '10

08 Jul '10

Hi, Could you please clarify if the Trusster [1] Open Source License is an acceptable Free/Open Source Software License for the Fedora project. The Teal [2] project uses this license: === BEGIN === Trusster Open Source License version 1.0a (TRUST) copyright (c) 2006 Mike Mintz and Robert Ekendahl. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. * Redistributions in any form must be accompanied by information on how to obtain complete source code for this software and any accompanying software that uses this software. The source code must either be included in the distribution or be available in a timely fashion for no more than the cost of distribution plus a nominal fee, and must be freely redistributable under reasonable and no more restrictive conditions. For an executable file, complete source code means the source code for all modules it contains. It does not include source code for modules or files that typically accompany the major components of the operating system on which the executable file runs. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY MIKE MINTZ AND ROBERT EKENDAHL ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL MIKE MINTZ AND ROBERT EKENDAHL OR ITS CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. === END === Thanks! SK [1] Trustter. http://www.trusster.com [2] Teal. A Verification Utility and Connection Library. http://www.trusster.com/products/teal/ -- Shakthi Kannan http://www.shakthimaan.com

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gnome-js-common and seed licenses
by Michel Alexandre Salim 29 Mar '10

29 Mar '10

Hello all, I'm planning to package the aforementioned packages for Fedora, and have a couple of licensing issues I'd like to run through you as the authors of both: - gnome-js-common has a mixed bag of licenses -- MIT, BSD and GPLv3. Most source files are labeled with either MIT or BSD, but there's a stray COPYING file asserting GPLv3, and ArrayUtils.js does not have any license information in its header (it has no header, in fact). Could you perhaps add a text document summarizing the licensing situation, and if ArrayUtils is in fact *not* GPLv3, remove the COPYING file? - seed is licensed LGPLv3+ *but* it requires gnome-js-common to build. If gnome-js-common is GPLv3 then seed itself would also be effectively GPLv3, and this would propagate to any package that uses it. - when using LGPL, I believe you must also include the text for the full GPL. The current COPYING should perhaps be renamed COPYING.LGPL and the GPL text should be bundled as COPYING? Cc: ing our legal list in case I make some mistakes in reading the licensing situation Thanks, -- Michel Alexandre Salim

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Non-translatable export regulations?
by Paul W. Frields 25 Mar '10

25 Mar '10

There is a section of export regulations shown at the bottom of the fedoraproject.org/get-fedora page. Currently it's not set up to be translatable. Is this on purpose? Can I let the translators know they shouldn't worry about translating this content? Paul

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Iozone removed from Fedora but still in EPEL
by Jason L Tibbitts III 22 Mar '10

22 Mar '10

I note that iozone was removed from Fedora back in the F-9 days due to license issues, but it's still being shipped by EPEL. I'm not sure if this is an oversight, or if EPEL somehow gets a pass on this, or if the situation is more complex. Our procedure of killing a package in devel and letting it age out of Fedora doesn't really work for EPEL, it seems. - J<

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Licensing question: BSD with advertising + GPL
by Stefan Schulze Frielinghaus 22 Mar '10

22 Mar '10

The licensing list [1] states that the license "BSD with advertising" is not compatible with GPLv2/v3. But what means compatible? For example, I would like to use/create a package for a library which is released as "BSD with advertising". Consider an application licensed as GPLv2 which uses the shared library. Is this allowed? In this case the library would be licensed as "BSD with advertising" and the application which uses that library as GPLv2. If I remember right, then there was some kind of clause in the GPLv2/v3 license which said that even linking against such a library is not allowed but I'm really not sure. Maybe my mind plays tricks with me ;-) Can someone confirm or deny this? Regards, Stefan [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#SoftwareLicenses

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legal communities of practice [was Re: updating the MPL]
by Luis Villa 16 Mar '10

16 Mar '10

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 10:40 AM, Karsten Wade <kwade(a)redhat.com> wrote: > On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 09:45:53AM -0800, Luis Villa wrote: > >> process and participation fora are easy for you to find. I will of >> course continue to hang out on this list, but we're hoping we can >> aggregate >> many comments through our own tools: > > I'd like to make a relate-topic observation. > > During Richard Fontana's talk at SCALE, I heard a clear need for a > community of practice[1] for the FLOSS legal community, both lawyers > and interested practitioners such as Spot. > > I'd be very interested in seeing if some of what you learn in this MPL > refresh process would have benefited from having such a community of > practice in place already. Not sure if folks care enough to follow > through on the little bit of infrastructure needed (stand alone, > neutral space mailing list at e.g. flosslaw.org) so I'll keep beating > on this drum for a little longer.[2] nutshell: I think the basic answer to 'would you have benefited from this being in place already' is 'it already was basically in place, though perhaps not in the form you're thinking of, and so we did benefit from it. Improving the situation further will be hard.' The more detailed version: In an unstructured way, there is definitely a growing floss legal community of shared interests and relationships; when we started this process I could list at least a half-dozen people who I knew would want to be involved and would give of their time, and this list is much longer now. This 'can I call on them for help' test is at the heart of my personal test for 'are people a community', and the legal community passed the test. This informal trans-organizational community was very helpful in evaluating the early groundwork for the MPL process. In a more structured way, there already are several mailing lists/organizations for FLOSS lawyers. I am aware of at least three besides the OSI and distro lists. One such group that is publicly visible (though private membership/mailing list) and has already provided some useful MPL feedback is http://www.fsfe.org/projects/ftf/index.en.html. OSI and Linux Foundation have also started building some legal infrastructure; see, e.g., http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.com/blog/?p=421 Unfortunately, lawyers have a lot of structural and cultural impediments to forming real communities of practice, which is part of why you (very reasonably) have assumed that they don't exist. The structure of privilege, evidence, and ethics law, for example, make lawyers very nervous to discuss anything in public, helping keep those groups mentioned above quiet and out of the limelight. The billable hour encourages us (even those of us not on the billable hour) to be very skeptical of any activity which doesn't give an immediate payoff. Our occasional arrogance about the complexity of what we do makes it very, very hard to break down the insider/outsider boundary. And our habitual allergy to cluetrain-style plain language, which is so essential to a functional community that you don't even mention it in the Open Source Way, is obviously also a problem. None of this is to say it shouldn't be improved- your concern is well placed- and I hope it will improve when I rule the legal world with an iron fist. But in the meantime that improvement probably has to start with the culture rather than with infrastructure. So... does that answer your question? :) Luis

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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] README.openfwwf license? -- [[PkgWrangler] Review b43-openfwwf-5.2-2.1.el6 (ON_REVIEW) got new comment]
by John W. Linville 16 Mar '10

16 Mar '10

Peter, thanks for the quick reply! Perhaps fedora-legal can provide useful advice? John On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 06:31:03PM +0300, Peter Lemenkov wrote: > Hello John! > > 2010/2/25 John W. Linville <linville(a)redhat.com>: > > Peter, > > > > We are in the process of reviewing packages for RHEL-6. The review > > of b43-openfwwf generated the comment below. Do you have any input? > > I'm sure, that GPL does NOT cover the text of the README, since it > simply a dump of web-page, and I didn't think they licensed their site > contents under GPL :) > > > Perhaps README.openfwwf needs to be removed or revised? > > Although, I almost absolutely think that nobody will sue Redhat for > inclusion of this text, I think, that properly re-licensing a README > is a generally good idea. At least we should ask upstream for > clarification - could you ask someone, who skilled enough in solving > these boring legal issues? I could contact them by myself, but I'n not > sure, what should I ask them. To send us e-mail with license > clarification or to add README (listed below) to their tarball. > > Just for the reference - here is a full text of README > > http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewvc/rpms/b43-openfwwf/devel/README.openfwwf… > > -- > With best regards, Peter Lemenkov. -- John W. Linville Linux should be at the core linville(a)redhat.com of your literate lifestyle.

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ike (Shrew Soft) license
by jan.klepek 16 Mar '10

16 Mar '10

Hi, I'm looking for possibility to package ike VPN client [1]with following license [2]. It looks like TOSL license. It uses headers from openssl (OpenLDAP license) and header files from QT3 (which is QPL or GPLv2 or GPLv3). Is this acceptable for fedora? ---- [1] http://www.shrew.net/software [2] Copyright (c) 2007 Shrew Soft Inc. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. Redistributions in any form must be accompanied by information on how to obtain complete source code for the software and any accompanying software that uses the software. The source code must either be included in the distribution or be available for no more than the cost of distribution plus a nominal fee, and must be freely redistributable under reasonable conditions. For an executable file, complete source code means the source code for all modules it contains. It does not include source code for modules or files that typically accompany the major components of the operating system on which the executable file runs. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY SHREW SOFT INC ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL SHREW SOFT INC BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

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legal March 2010