On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 03:31:02PM +0100, Ondřej Lysoněk wrote:
Hi,
I'm packaging espeak-ng [1] and it includes a file which has a somewhat
problematic license [2]. The license header in the file itself doesn't
explicitly permit modification, however the file is reachable from a page
saying that all the code listed there can be modified, if you send the
improvements back to the author [3]. Can we use code like this in Fedora?
I'd take the license at face value (including the appearance of having
been granted by Apple around 1991, where Turkowski evidently was
employed at that time) and I'd then apply the principle we've used for
similar informal licenses dating from around that time, that grants of
mere permission to "use" should be understood to cover (among other
things) modification, since there's a lot of general evidence that
this is what licensors from that time period meant. So that seems
okay.
I would also ignore the arguably contradictory statement on
Turkowski's website, though I note the use of "should".
The only thing that gives me a little pause is that it seems like all
the code he has on his website has essentially the same license as the
putative Apple license seen here, except that he changes 'Apple' to
'I'. That could simply mean that he took the old Apple license and for
sentimental or other reasons used it with nonsubstantive alteration
for code he wrote later on. It certainly looks plausible that it
really was a bona fide Apple license, and the Apple license came
first.
So, seems okay to me.
Richard