combination of LGPL and BSD licence with pos+neg advertisment clause
The upstream author of mlglade asked me for advise in choosing a licence since he wants to put a licence that will allow mlglade to be packaged for debian. He intends to put it under LGPL v2. The problem is that the mlglade program contains foreign code of a module whose complete licence is appended below. I'm concerned about the two advertisement clauses. 1) In my reading, (3) and (4) can lead to a contradiction, in case someone wants to promote a program using this library. On the other hand these two clauses seem to be common in the UCB/LBL licence. 2) Is the below licence compatible with LGPL? I'm thinking in particular of clause (10) of the LGPL which does not allow to impose any constraints on the product besides the ones expressed in LGPL (if I understand correctly) 3) If the composition of LGPL and the licence listed below is consistent, is it DFSG compliant? -Ralf. Copyright of the foreign module included in mlglade --- The code contained in this directory has the following license: "Copyright (c) 1998 Christian Lindig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement: This product includes software developed by Christian Lindig. 4. The name of the author and copyright holder may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without with the distribution. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT HOLDER BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE." -- - Ralf Treinen, L.R.I. Bât. 490, Université Paris-Sud, F91405 Orsay cedex, France.http://www.lri.fr/~treinen
Re: distributable but non-free documents
On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 07:41:51PM +0100, Marcus Brinkmann wrote: > > > I would like to do the same with C99, POSIX, and other standards. > > > > I agree. I've whished more than once that I could just do > > "C-h i m posix". And I also agree that those standards should be > > free. But when is it free? :) > > You don't really want to drag me into a discussion about what freedom means > for software and related technical, generally useful documentation? I never thought that discussion with you were unpleasant. But I don't the rest of Debian wants such a discussion. :) > > To quote the RFC copyright notice from RFC 2026 "Internet Standards > > Process": > > > > This document and translations of it may be copied and > > furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or > > otherwise explain it or assist in its implmentation may be > > prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in > > part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above > > copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such > > copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may > > not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright > > notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet > > organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing > > Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights > > defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or > > as required to translate it into languages other than English > > This license is really horrible. It is neither precise nor consistent. > It is definitely non-free. For example, I am not allowed to work in parts > of it into a game documentation that does not implement, explain or comment > on the standard. Although it is a honest attempt at doing the right thing, > it is too restrictive, as it does only foresee some of the possible uses of > the text, and not all. > > It is in so far unusable even for the areas where it does allow usage of > parts of the text and creating derivative works, as it is incompatible with > the GPL and the GFDL, so it is unusable for GNU projects documentation and > source code (comments!) except for reference or quoting (fair use). I agree, but at least they attempt to do the right thing. Now only somebody should tell them what the right thing is and they might do that. :) > > I agree with you that POSIX is non-free (and that should change!), but > > the original dicussion was about the RFC copyright. I still don't see > > how this license really restricts the user, the things you were > > talking are allowed. Enlighten me if I'm wrong. > > It restricts you in a similar way as a license for Mozilla would restrict > you if it would say: "You are only allowed to reuse part of this source > code if you implement software directly related to the world wide web." > > You can probably always try to stretch the definition to include whatever > you want. But that doesn't change that it is horrible in the first place. True, including the thing you don't want for good reasons is better IMHO. (Think about linking with proprietary software, relicensing, etc) > > The problem is that the Debian Free Documentation Guidelines don't > > exist and that documentation is really different from software. > > It is? Well, I clearly see the difference between a computer program and a > book, but I don't think that the differences are in a way that matters to > the DFSG. The problem is that the DFSG talks about programs, source code, that is should not contaminate other software, etc. The idea behind the DFSG doesn't differ for books, but the current implementation does only talk about software. Jeroen Dekkers -- Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org IRC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] pgpbHor83yG7W.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: distributable but non-free documents
On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 07:02:15PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: > > To quote the RFC copyright notice from RFC 2026 "Internet Standards > > Process": > > Just for the record, I don't think RFC 2026 is technical > documentation. It documents a social process, not a technical one. > But the same copyright notice is found in newer technical RFCs. It documents the process of how to make an RFC. It also says which copyright all RFCs should have, that was why I was referring to it. > > the original dicussion was about the RFC copyright. I still don't see > > how this license really restricts the user, the things you were > > talking are allowed. Enlighten me if I'm wrong. > > It says that modification is not allowed "except as needed for the > purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures > for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be > followed". > > That means that if I and a group of like-minded people want to > experiment with an email transport system where the mail agents demand > micropayments prior to accepting a mail for delivery (to effectively > eliminate spamming), we are not allowed to document our experimental > special-purpose delivery protocol simply by distributing a document > based on the text from RFC 2821, but with appropriate changes - unless > we decide to wait and put up with whatever bureaucracy the "Internet > Standards process" entails. > > Of course, we will be allowed to distribute a document that describes > the *differences* between SMTP and our new protocol, which in a sense > is akin to distributing software changes as patches. That means that > *perhaps*, by analogy, we should consider the RFC's free - but the > patch clause in the DFSG was always a compromise, and I don't think > it will do anybody any good to extend it to documentation, now that > the trend seems to be towards a stricter application of the DFSG to > software that we've had some years ago. I think you're right. I don't know what reasons the IETF has for the copyright policy, maybe we should move the discussion to them. I guess that they just want to be sure that nobody makes small changes to an RFC and distribute it as the official document. I agree that such things should not be allowed. However, I am convinced that it's useful to allow modification and redistribution of the documents. When I look at the way the RFCs are developed, it should be possible to convince them to make the RFCs free. But I don't have enough time to do that. Jeroen Dekkers -- Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org IRC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] pgpkD2DGbnubw.pgp Description: PGP signature
Legal status of using a GPL'd LD_PRELOADed with a non-GPL'd app ...
[please CC all replies to me, I'm not on this list] Hi, I've posted an ITP[1] for libtrash, a library that uses LD_PRELOAD to intercept application calls to unlink(), rename(), open(), fopen(), freopen() and other system calls which may delete/truncate files, and moves them to a "trash can" rather than deleting them. My question is this: libtrash is licensed under the GPL, and the LD_PRELOAD is likely to allow non-GPL'd (including non-free) binary code to use it. The binary code is not actually "linked" with libtrash, however. [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=137108&repeatmerged=yes Branden Robinson seems to think that the distribution of this is OK, but suggested that I bring this discussion to the -legal forum. Any ideas on this? Cheers, Timshel -- Timshel Knoll <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> for Debian email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Debian GNU/Linux developer, see http://people.debian.org/~timshel/ For GnuPG public key: finger [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Legal status of using a GPL'd LD_PRELOADed with a non-GPL'd app ...
On Mar 07, Timshel Knoll wrote: > I've posted an ITP[1] for libtrash, a library that uses LD_PRELOAD to > intercept application calls to unlink(), rename(), open(), fopen(), > freopen() and other system calls which may delete/truncate files, and > moves them to a "trash can" rather than deleting them. My question is > this: libtrash is licensed under the GPL, and the LD_PRELOAD is likely > to allow non-GPL'd (including non-free) binary code to use it. The > binary code is not actually "linked" with libtrash, however. > > [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=137108&repeatmerged=yes > > Branden Robinson seems to think that the distribution of this is OK, but > suggested that I bring this discussion to the -legal forum. Any ideas on > this? The GPL really only applies when you are distributing a GPL'd work linked to a non-GPL'd work. Using LD_PRELOAD is not distribution, so I can't see how this would pose a problem. The only exception I can think of is if someone distributed a script like (lame example): #!/bin/sh LD_PRELOAD="/your/hack/here" /usr/bin/nonfree-application That case might be problematic from a legal standpoint, and might be worth mentioning in README.Debian. Even there, the legal issue is somewhat ambiguous, though I think the FSF's position would be that this is infringement (it certainly violates the spirit of the GPL). But the script is incredibly trivial, so it's hard to argue that even it is infringement (especially since an end-user doing this independently wouldn't be infringement, and you could tell an end-user how to do this in documentation). Chris -- Chris Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.lordsutch.com/chris/
