[Fedora-legal-list] Pymol license review

Tom "spot" Callaway tcallawa at redhat.com
Wed Aug 19 15:28:02 UTC 2009


On 08/19/2009 06:08 AM, Gianluca Sforna wrote:
> I just noticed this text in the F11 pymol license file:
> 
> Open-Source PyMOL Copyright Notice
> ==================================
> 
> The Open-Source PyMOL source code is copyrighted, but you can freely
> use and copy it as long as you don't change or remove any of the
> Copyright notices.  The Open-Source PyMOL product is made available
> under the following open-source license terms:
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Open-Source PyMOL is Copyright (C) 1998-2003 Warren L. DeLano and
> Copyright (C) 2003-2009 DeLano Scientific LLC, Palo Alto,
> California, U.S.A., (www.delanoscientific.com).
> 
>                         All Rights Reserved
> 
> Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and distribute modified
> versions of this software and its built-in documentation for any
> purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
> copyright notice appears in all copies and that both the copyright
> notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation,
> and that the names of Warren L. DeLano or DeLano Scientific LLC not be
> used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the
> software without specific, written prior permission.

After consulting with Red Hat Legal, we agree that this is an acceptable
license for Fedora. That phrase is occasionally seen in older permissive
licenses, and it means "you can do what you want with this, and
$COPYRIGHT_HOLDER won't charge you any royalty" as opposed to "you can
do what you want with this as long as you don't charge a fee".

Just a fun little MIT variant. :)

~spot




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