On Mon, Apr 04, 2016 at 01:16:51AM -0500, Yaakov Selkowitz wrote:
On 2016-03-25 12:55, Yaakov Selkowitz wrote:
>On 2016-03-25 12:23, Richard Fontana wrote:
>>On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 12:12:06PM -0500, Yaakov Selkowitz wrote:
>>>MMIX is the successor to Donald Knuth's MIX machine in later editions
>>>of The
>>>Art of Computer Programming. The canonical software implementation
>>>is made
>>>available with the following license:
>>>
>>>http://mmix.cs.hm.edu/websvn/wsvn/MMIX/mmixware/trunk/boilerplate.w
>>>
>>>While the wording is different from the same author's license on TeX
>>>(approved as the "Knuth license"), the intent appears to be the
same.
>>>
>>>Is this acceptable for Fedora, and what name should be used?
>>
>>The interesting part is this: "Changes are permissible only if the
>>modified file is given a new name, different from the names of
>>existing files in the {\ninett MMIX}ware package, and only if the
>>modified file is clearly identified as not being part of that package."
>>
>>This is reminiscent of a feature of the LaTeX Project Public License
>>1.2 of which the FSF said:
>>
>> This license contains complex and annoying restrictions on how to
>> publish a modified version, including one requirement that falls
>> just barely on the good side of the line of what is acceptable: that
>> any modified file must have a new name.
>>
>> The reason this requirement is acceptable for LaTeX is that TeX has
>> a facility to allow you to map file names, to specify “use file bar
>> when file foo is requested”. With this facility, the requirement is
>> merely annoying; without the facility, the same requirement would be
>> a serious obstacle, and we would have to conclude it makes the
>> program nonfree.
>>
>>I assume in this context there is nothing corresponding to the
>>filename mapping facility.
>
>No, but OTOH MMIX is just a standalone program, not a set of macros
>meant for inclusion like LaTeX is, so I'm not sure that this is
>comparable one way or the other. IANAL but I suspect the *intention*
>was (particularly given the author's wording on his other major work)
>that anyone is free to modify but they may not then call it "MMIX". Note
>that, aside from the license boilerplate, the source files correspond to
>the program names, so one practically necessitates the other.
>
>There is also mention of using CWEB change-files in both the license and
>the README. Therefore, this could be interpreted as a rule about *how*
>the files should be modified, not if, which is acceptable to the FSF:
>
>"However, rules about how to package a modified version are acceptable
>... it is acceptable for the license to require that you change the name
>of the modified version, remove a logo, or identify your modifications
>as yours."
Ping?
I don't think this can be considered a free software license because
of the file renaming condition. Hence I don't think it meets Fedora's
current policies around acceptable licenses.
Richard