New candidates for inclusion in Extras : udftools and starfighter-music

[Nils Philippsen]

On Fri, 2005-02-11 at 14:21 +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 13:30:03 +0100, Nils Philippsen wrote:
[...]
> I've submitted a query about licencing issues in a different package
> into the legal queue a few days ago.

"legal queue" -- care to explain? I can't seem to find a fedora-legal-
list yet ;-).

> > It's not the MOD format that we're discussing, it's including MODs (or
> > derived files, in fact the format is completely irrelevant as is whether
> > it is software or artwork or whatnot) where we don't know where they
> > come from, i.e. don't know who produced them initially, under what terms
> > they were released, etc.
> 
> The format suffers from similar problems. Or where do you see a
> difference?  (I don't know how much you know about .mod history.)

Not much. My knowledge about MODs can be summed up like "something like
a MIDI score along with the instrument samples" and that it originated
on the Amiga. Well, I had an ST at that time so forgive my
ignorance ;-).


> 
> > > Here, an accidental finding lead to discovering an unknown copyright
> > > situation of music files. It is assumed that the author of the game took
> > > music files he's not permitted to use and redistribute.
> > 
> > Not quite. We are fairly sure that the author hasn't produced them by
> > himself. We are not sure where he got them from and under what terms. If
> > I get a tarball from someone under the GPL, I look at it briefly and see
> > who produced it and that it is in fact licensed by the GPL. Barring any
> > clues that suggest otherwise I will take that as a fact. As soon as
> > there is some indication that this doesn't cover the whole package I
> > will have to rethink which is what we do now, it is my responsibility to
> > do so.
> 
> Doesn't contradict with what I wrote above.

What I meant to say was that I don't automatically assume that the
author didn't have permission to do what he did, but that the odds for
it seem to be considerably higher suddenly.

> > >  Similarly, his
> > > other work (game design/concept) could be challenged, too. This gets more
> > > interesting with regard to potentially patented technology, an area where
> > > FUD strategies are very successful.
> > 
> > This is similar with patents. If I don't think a certain piece of
> > software could be endangered by a patent, I won't act as if it were. If
> > people tell me that package foo could violate a patent that's where some
> > investigation is due.
> > 
> > Nils
> 
> The result of the investigation is the interesting bit. We've yet to deal
> with some example cases, including _rumours_ of patent claims.

Well I'd say it depends how much substance is behind such a rumour --
allegations of patent problems have so much more weight with patent
numbers behind them.

Nils
-- 
     Nils Philippsen    /    Red Hat    /    nphilipp at redhat.com
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
 safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."     -- B. Franklin, 1759
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