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/
On 04/09/2009 12:09 PM, Jerry James wrote:
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.
NIST's statement above seems to only apply to their "World Wide Web pages". They're not declaring it public domain either, they're granting explicit rights to distribute and copy. It is notably more complicated to put something in the Public Domain in the US, so it safe to assume that no code that you might come across is in the Public Domain. When in doubt, ask. (There are some notable cases where we accept that code is in the Public Domain, such as sqlite and SELinux, but they're corner cases.)
Now, if they say that that "license" applies to all code offered on their website that they are the copyright holder, it would still not be acceptable in Fedora, because they did not give us the right to modify code. (They didn't disclaim warranty either, but that's just stupidity on their part.) I strongly suspect that this license does not apply to their copyrighted code, due to the way it is worded.
~spot
P.S. Jerry, I almost didn't see your post because it got caught in the mailman spam trap. This mailing list is reasonably low-traffic, perhaps you should subscribe? :)
On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 3:59 PM, Tom "spot" Callaway tcallawa@redhat.com wrote:
NIST's statement above seems to only apply to their "World Wide Web pages". They're not declaring it public domain either, they're granting explicit rights to distribute and copy. It is notably more complicated to put something in the Public Domain in the US, so it safe to assume that no code that you might come across is in the Public Domain. When in doubt, ask. (There are some notable cases where we accept that code is in the Public Domain, such as sqlite and SELinux, but they're corner cases.)
Now, if they say that that "license" applies to all code offered on their website that they are the copyright holder, it would still not be acceptable in Fedora, because they did not give us the right to modify code. (They didn't disclaim warranty either, but that's just stupidity on their part.) I strongly suspect that this license does not apply to their copyrighted code, due to the way it is worded.
Thanks, Tom. I'll assume that the first person I reached was clueless and try asking the question again.
Or I may not bother. I've discovered that one of the outside files they filched comes from "shorten", an audio processing program with a "no commercial use" license. There are truly open source programs that do the same thing, so this is not necessarily fatal, but I'm not sure I've got the time to devote to recoding NIST's software.
P.S. Jerry, I almost didn't see your post because it got caught in the mailman spam trap. This mailing list is reasonably low-traffic, perhaps you should subscribe? :)
Yeah, probably. I'm on so many mailing lists already, how much pain could one more cause me? :-)
Hmmm, why doesn't this list appear on http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate ?
On 04/13/2009 01:08 PM, Jerry James wrote:
Yeah, probably. I'm on so many mailing lists already, how much pain could one more cause me? :-)
Hmmm, why doesn't this list appear on http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate ?
Dunno. It is there now. :)
~spot
Here is the NIST license for another piece of their software, SCTK. It says that the software is public domain, but also includes an explicit disclaimer. Is that still "Public Domain" for spec file purposes?
This software was developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology by employees of the Federal Government in the course of their official duties. Pursuant to title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code this software is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain. SCTK is an experimental system. NIST assumes no responsibility whatsoever for its use by other parties, and makes no guarantees, expressed or implied, about its quality, reliability, or any other characteristic. We would appreciate acknowledgement if the software is used.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS." With regard to this software, NIST MAKES NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY AS TO ANY MATTER WHATSOEVER, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Incidentally, there's yet another of those broken "AS IS" clauses here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/MIT#Old_Style_with_legal_disclaimer...
Regards,
On 04/15/2009 01:14 PM, Jerry James wrote:
Here is the NIST license for another piece of their software, SCTK. It says that the software is public domain, but also includes an explicit disclaimer. Is that still "Public Domain" for spec file purposes?
Yes. Works commissioned by employees of the US government are automatically public domain, so this is fine.
Incidentally, there's yet another of those broken "AS IS" clauses here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/MIT#Old_Style_with_legal_disclaimer...
There is nothing wrong with disclaiming warranty in a FOSS license, in fact, it is generally a pretty good idea.
~spot
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Jerry James -
Tom Callaway