[Fedora-legal-list] Some licenses which need checking

Richard W.M. Jones rjones at redhat.com
Mon Mar 10 15:38:07 UTC 2008


  [This is a repost of a message which I incorrectly sent to
   fedora-packaging list, so my apologies if you've seen it before.]

I'm trying to package a Unicode library which contains lots of
different "<some random NLS> to Unicode" mappings files.

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=253564

I've got some questions:

(1) Codepage 932 is an MS extension to Shift JIS.  The file that is
shipped in the source package is derived from this one:

  http://unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/MICSFT/WINDOWS/CP932.TXT

Note that we also ship essentially the same set of mappings in other
Fedora packages, eg:

  /usr/share/xemacs-21.5-b28/etc/unicode/unicode-consortium/CP932.TXT
  /usr/share/cups/charmaps/windows-932.txt

There's no license information but it was my understanding (IANAL)
that simple lists of facts like this couldn't be monopolized in the
US.

(2) The package ships Unicode data with the license below.  Is it OK?

  http://www.unicode.org/Public/3.2-Update/UnicodeData-3.2.0.html#UCD_Terms

(3) The package contains locales from the IBM ICU project.  The
license for this looks like BSD to me, so is this OK?

  http://source.icu-project.org/repos/icu/icu/trunk/license.html

(4) Finally there is one file whose license is described like this:

  The file allkey.txt [sic] is obtained from Unicode Consortium Web site.
  Its copyright is owned by Unicode Consortium.  Its use, reproduction,
  distribution are permitted under the term of
        http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html

where the link goes to a long-winded and confusing page.  The file
itself is just a list of facts
(http://www.annexia.org/tmp/allkeys.txt).

Ancillary question:

(5) If it turns out that some files aren't safe to distribute, do I
need to remove them from the source tarball, and if so how?  Do I have
to prepare my own tarball and host it too?

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat  http://et.redhat.com/~rjones
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