From jskala at redhat.com Tue Jan 5 09:27:48 2010 From: jskala at redhat.com (Jiri Skala) Date: Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:27:48 +0100 Subject: [Fedora-legal-list] unable to define license type Message-ID: <1262683668.2802.9.camel@localhost.localdomain> Hello, I found a license cited below during srpm review. I'm not able to define what kind of license is it. Could you help me with it? The source is a part of iputils package together with other sources/binaries. There is more type of licenses. Particular binaries contains sources of one license type. The package is used in Fedora and RHEL-6. I suppose spec file license definition should appear: License: BSD with advertising and GPLv2+ and Thank you for your help in advance Best regards Jiri Unknown license type: * Rdisc (this program) was developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. and is * provided for unrestricted use provided that this legend is included on * all tape media and as a part of the software program in whole or part. * Users may copy or modify Rdisc without charge, and they may freely * distribute it. * * RDISC IS PROVIDED AS IS WITH NO WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND INCLUDING THE * WARRANTIES OF DESIGN, MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR * PURPOSE, OR ARISING FROM A COURSE OF DEALING, USAGE OR TRADE PRACTICE. * * Rdisc is provided with no support and without any obligation on the * part of Sun Microsystems, Inc. to assist in its use, correction, * modification or enhancement. * * SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC. SHALL HAVE NO LIABILITY WITH RESPECT TO THE * INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHTS, TRADE SECRETS OR ANY PATENTS BY RDISC * OR ANY PART THEREOF. * * In no event will Sun Microsystems, Inc. be liable for any lost revenue * or profits or other special, indirect and consequential damages, even if * Sun has been advised of the possibility of such damages. * * Sun Microsystems, Inc. * 2550 Garcia Avenue * Mountain View, California 94043 From tcallawa at redhat.com Tue Jan 5 16:19:43 2010 From: tcallawa at redhat.com (Tom "spot" Callaway) Date: Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:19:43 -0500 Subject: [Fedora-legal-list] unable to define license type In-Reply-To: <1262683668.2802.9.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: <1262683668.2802.9.camel@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <4B43669F.5020008@redhat.com> On 01/05/2010 04:27 AM, Jiri Skala wrote: > Hello, > I found a license cited below during srpm review. I'm not able to define > what kind of license is it. Could you help me with it? The source is a > part of iputils package together with other sources/binaries. There is > more type of licenses. Particular binaries contains sources of one > license type. The package is used in Fedora and RHEL-6. I suppose spec > file license definition should appear: > > License: BSD with advertising and GPLv2+ and A new license! :) This one is Free and GPL compatible, please use: License: BSD with advertising and GPLv2+ and Rdisc Thanks, ~spot From rebus at seznam.cz Thu Jan 7 01:10:47 2010 From: rebus at seznam.cz (=?us-ascii?Q?Michal=20Ambroz?=) Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:10:47 +0100 (CET) Subject: [Fedora-legal-list] amap license Message-ID: <40075.12871.36066-4358-1191900570-1262826647@seznam.cz> Hello dear list members, I would like to ask whether the amap license and amap program itself would be eligible to be included in the Fedora. Tool is opensource with license based on GPLv2 with additional restrictions, but I am not sure whether it is free enough to create amap package for Fedora. http://freeworld.thc.org/thc-amap/ Thank you Michal Ambroz ------------------------- License ---------------------- LICENCE FOR AMAP (all version) by van Hauser 1. This software comes with no warrenty or promised features. If it works for you - fine. It just comes "AS-IS", which means as a bunch of bits and bytes. 2. Anyone may use this software and pass it on to other persons or companies as long as it is not charged for! (except for a small transfer/medium fee) 3. This tool may *NOT* be used for illegal purpose. Please check the law which affects your doing. I will have got no liability for any damage etc. done with this tool legally or illegaly. 4. If this tool is used while providing a commercial service (e.g. as part of a penetration test) the report has to state the tools name and version, and additionally the authors (van Hauser and Dj RevMoon) and the distribution homepage (http://www.thc.org). 5. If this tool is used within a commercial tool (being called out of such a tool or being incorporated), the report generated has to state the tools name and version, and additionally the authors (van Hauser and Dj RevMoon) and the distribution homepage (http://www.thc.org). A tool is "commercial" if it either costs money to purchase it, has a license fee, and/or has costs for upgrades. Additionally, a commercial version or license etc. must be made available to the author free of charge. 6. In all other respects the GPL 2.0 applies From tcallawa at redhat.com Thu Jan 7 16:36:03 2010 From: tcallawa at redhat.com (Tom "spot" Callaway) Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:36:03 -0500 Subject: [Fedora-legal-list] amap license In-Reply-To: <40075.12871.36066-4358-1191900570-1262826647@seznam.cz> References: <40075.12871.36066-4358-1191900570-1262826647@seznam.cz> Message-ID: <4B460D73.2050706@redhat.com> On 01/06/2010 08:10 PM, Michal Ambroz wrote: > Hello dear list members, > I would like to ask whether the amap license and amap program itself would be eligible to be included in the Fedora. > Tool is opensource with license based on GPLv2 with additional restrictions, but I am not sure whether it is free enough > to create amap package for Fedora. > http://freeworld.thc.org/thc-amap/ Unfortunately, the amap license is non-free. The additional restrictions make it non-free (not to mention that they clearly conflict with the GPLv2). It is not acceptable for inclusion in Fedora under that license. ~spot From juliusdavies at gmail.com Thu Jan 7 18:40:09 2010 From: juliusdavies at gmail.com (Julius Davies) Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2010 10:40:09 -0800 Subject: [Fedora-legal-list] amap license In-Reply-To: <4B460D73.2050706@redhat.com> References: <40075.12871.36066-4358-1191900570-1262826647@seznam.cz> <4B460D73.2050706@redhat.com> Message-ID: <598ad5b51001071040g3dd5a568j56cf796b691e8eed@mail.gmail.com> Hi, Tom, Limiting ourselves to copyright (ignoring patents and trademarks and other IP), in general would you say a copyright license must either? 1. Be "Free" according to FSF: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html or 2. Be "Open Source" according to OSI: http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd If yes, I have three more questions: a. What is currently the most restrictive license in Fedora that satisfies either of those definitions? b. What is currently the least restrictive license in Fedora that satisfies either of those? c. Are there any examples of Fedora-acceptable licenses that do not satisfy either of those definitions? I'm curious to know the limits of open source licenses: what might theoretically be the maximum and minimum (in terms of restrictions and conditions) that fall in the "open source" category of copyright licenses. Do these hypothetical boundary licenses already exist, e.g. can we get more restrictive than some kind of GPLv2/Knuth hybrid, and can we get less restrictive than 2-clause BSD-with-disclaimers? I'm presuming those BSD disclaimers actually make it less restrictive than public domain, since these disclaimers seem to remove some possible default restrictions. Very tired... saw the 10:30PM - 1:15AM avatar showing last night, and I have kids (early mornings)! So this email probably makes no sense. I apologize for that. yours, Julius On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 8:36 AM, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote: > On 01/06/2010 08:10 PM, Michal Ambroz wrote: >> Hello dear list members, >> I would like to ask whether the amap license and amap program itself would be eligible to be included in the Fedora. >> Tool is opensource with license based on GPLv2 with additional restrictions, but I am not sure whether it is free enough >> to create amap package for Fedora. >> http://freeworld.thc.org/thc-amap/ > > Unfortunately, the amap license is non-free. The additional restrictions > make it non-free (not to mention that they clearly conflict with the GPLv2). > > It is not acceptable for inclusion in Fedora under that license. > > ~spot > > _______________________________________________ > Fedora-legal-list mailing list > Fedora-legal-list at redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list > -- yours, Julius Davies 250-592-2284 (Home) 250-893-4579 (Mobile) http://juliusdavies.ca/logging.html From tcallawa at redhat.com Thu Jan 7 19:09:13 2010 From: tcallawa at redhat.com (Tom "spot" Callaway) Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:09:13 -0500 Subject: [Fedora-legal-list] amap license In-Reply-To: <598ad5b51001071040g3dd5a568j56cf796b691e8eed@mail.gmail.com> References: <40075.12871.36066-4358-1191900570-1262826647@seznam.cz> <4B460D73.2050706@redhat.com> <598ad5b51001071040g3dd5a568j56cf796b691e8eed@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4B463159.7080801@redhat.com> On 01/07/2010 01:40 PM, Julius Davies wrote: > Hi, Tom, > > Limiting ourselves to copyright (ignoring patents and trademarks and > other IP), in general would you say a copyright license must either? > > 1. Be "Free" according to FSF: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html > > or > > 2. Be "Open Source" according to OSI: http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd It depends upon what context you're asking that question. If you mean "Does a copyright license have to be either "Free" according to the FSF definition of "Free" or "Open Source" according to the OSI definition of "Open Source" in order to be acceptable for Fedora", then the answer is no. In Fedora, a copyright license _MUST_ be considered "Free" according to the FSF definition of "Free". Whether or not a license is considered "Open Source" by the OSI is irrelevant to Fedora. The reasoning for this is that while effectively all "Free" copyright licenses meet the criteria to be considered "Open Source", the inverse is not true. Historically, some rather poorly worded licenses have been OSI approved as "Open Source", most notably, the Artistic 1.0 license. *** Now, if you're asking that in the larger realm of the known universe, and mean: Aren't all copyright licenses either "Free" or "Open Source", the answer is obviously no. :) I will assume you meant the former rather than the latter, and answer your additional questions. > If yes, I have three more questions: > > a. What is currently the most restrictive license in Fedora that > satisfies either of those definitions? Impossible to say, because different licenses place different restrictions on different rights. There are a few licenses which are considered free only because of the clairifed intent of the copyright holder (the Sendmail license is a notable example where it is only considered Free when the copyright holder is Eric Allman, Sendmail Inc. or the University of California). > b. What is currently the least restrictive license in Fedora that > satisfies either of those? Well, the obvious answer is Public Domain. But seeing as how Public Domain is not a true copyright license (it is an abandonment of copyright). There are many examples of very permissive licenses, which Fedora labels as "Copyright only", see: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/CopyrightOnly Alternately, the MIT license (and its many, many, many variants) are considered to be extremely permissive. > c. Are there any examples of Fedora-acceptable licenses that do not > satisfy either of those definitions? As stated above, all Fedora-acceptable software and font licenses must be considered "Free" by the FSF definition. Our licensing requirements for "content" and "firmware" are slightly different, documented here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#CodeVsContent https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Content_Licenses https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Binary_Firmware > I'm curious to know the limits of open source licenses: what might > theoretically be the maximum and minimum (in terms of restrictions and > conditions) that fall in the "open source" category of copyright > licenses. Do these hypothetical boundary licenses already exist, e.g. > can we get more restrictive than some kind of GPLv2/Knuth hybrid, and > can we get less restrictive than 2-clause BSD-with-disclaimers? It is possible to be more restrictive than GPLv2, GPLv3 is in several ways more restrictive. Again, it depends on which specific areas of rights we are focusing on. Use is the only right automatically granted (in the United States), so a license could be more/less restrictive in the generic areas of: * distribution * modification * patents * sublicensing * etc, etc, etc I'm vastly generalizing when I say that "Use" is automatically granted, there are additional narrowing factors there, although, most of them make a license non-Free (but not necessarily, non-Open Source, although, usually). > I'm presuming those BSD disclaimers actually make it less restrictive > than public domain, since these disclaimers seem to remove some > possible default restrictions. It is not possible to be less permissive than code in the public domain, because that code is no longer copyrighted (in most jurisdictions). By the very nature of public domain, all copyrighted code (regardless of license) is more restrictive, because while you may be able to do _ANYTHING_ in accordance with the terms of the copyright license, you cannot claim copyright on the whole work with the first copyrightable change, which you can do with public domain code. Hope that helps. :) ~spot From rfontana at redhat.com Thu Jan 7 21:59:15 2010 From: rfontana at redhat.com (Richard Fontana) Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2010 16:59:15 -0500 Subject: [Fedora-legal-list] amap license In-Reply-To: <4B463159.7080801@redhat.com> References: <40075.12871.36066-4358-1191900570-1262826647@seznam.cz> <4B460D73.2050706@redhat.com> <598ad5b51001071040g3dd5a568j56cf796b691e8eed@mail.gmail.com> <4B463159.7080801@redhat.com> Message-ID: <20100107215915.GA2555@redhat.com> On Thu, Jan 07, 2010 at 02:09:13PM -0500, Tom spot Callaway wrote: > On 01/07/2010 01:40 PM, Julius Davies wrote: > > Hi, Tom, > > > > Limiting ourselves to copyright (ignoring patents and trademarks and > > other IP), in general would you say a copyright license must either? > > > > 1. Be "Free" according to FSF: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html > > > > or > > > > 2. Be "Open Source" according to OSI: http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd > > It depends upon what context you're asking that question. > > If you mean "Does a copyright license have to be either "Free" according > to the FSF definition of "Free" or "Open Source" according to the OSI > definition of "Open Source" in order to be acceptable for Fedora", then > the answer is no. > > In Fedora, a copyright license _MUST_ be considered "Free" according to > the FSF definition of "Free". Whether or not a license is considered > "Open Source" by the OSI is irrelevant to Fedora. > > The reasoning for this is that while effectively all "Free" copyright > licenses meet the criteria to be considered "Open Source", the inverse > is not true. Historically, some rather poorly worded licenses have been > OSI approved as "Open Source", most notably, the Artistic 1.0 license. Interestingly, Artistic 1.0 was effectively grandfathered into the Debian Free Software Guidelines, of which the Open Source Definition is a derivative. As I recall, there are several OSI-approved licenses that we have determined do not meet the free software definition. Others include certain of the corporate 'vanity licenses' that were in vogue some years ago. There was one case where the OSI rejected a license as failing to meet the OSD where we determined that it met the free software definition. I forget which license that was. - Richard