Aspell-en's questionable license
Richard, It has come to the attention of debian-legal that the aspell-en package is licensed under questionable terms. In particular, aspell-en uses the "DEC Word List," which contains the following notice: (NON-)COPYRIGHT STATUS To the best of my knowledge, all the files I used to build these wordlists were available for public distribution and use, at least for non-commercial purposes. I have confirmed this assumption with the authors of the lists, whenever they were known. Therefore, it is safe to assume that the wordlists in this package can also be freely copied, distributed, modified, and used for personal, educational, and research purposes. (Use of these files in commercial products may require written permission from DEC and/or the authors of the original lists.) ... Naturally, this violates the following clause of the Debian Free Software Guidelines: No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. The GNU/Aspell maintainer, Kevin Atkinson, has stated that you reviewed and accepted this license as suitable for use with the GNU/Aspell project. On behalf of debian-legal, I would like to ask if you could clarify your position regarding the terms of the aspell-en license, and in particular, the DEC Word List "license". Debian's current stance was nicely summarized by Jeff Licquia in this message: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/debian-legal-200211/msg00041.html Thank you for your time, Brian -- People said I was dumb, but I proved them!
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Re: Apple Public Source License and more
Hello, On Tue, Nov 05, 2002 at 08:22:05AM +0900, Jens Schmalzing wrote: > 2. Apple Public Source License >A number of drivers are adapted from Darwin and were released under >the Apple Public Source License (APSL). More specifically, version >1.2 applies, which to my knowledge was certified as free, but a few >posts on this list express doubts. What is the current situation >on this? I'm not sure why you have the impression that this license had been "certified" as free. If you mean "certified" in the sense of a formal certification, the only body I know of which certifies licenses in such a manner is the OSI, which uses the term "Open Source" -- not "free". The FSF (champions of the term "Free" :), for its part, states that the APSL is not free. I have read the license in the past in connection with my employer's rollout of quicktime streaming server, also made available under this license; and at the time my conclusion was also that the license is non-free (and not DFSG-compliant). I would have to look over the license again to give you a specific citation; perhaps another debian-legaler can be more specific. > 3. no clear license >Some drivers are based on example code that Apple supplies as a >starting point for driver development. This was before the APSL, >so Samuel believes it is possible to place them under a free >license. If "based on example code" means that the drivers contain substantial portions of the example code, either verbatim or in recognizable form, the driver is a derivative work of the original code and we must have the express consent of that code's copyright holder (Apple) before it can be considered free. Precisely how much of the original code must be included before this is a problem is a question of paralegal mathemagic, the answer to which may vary according to jurisdiction. Note that if there is no clear license on this code, upstream may also be violating copyright law by distributing these drivers at all, and should consult legal counsel if they have any doubts about this. > | All the binaries above run within the MOL session and they are > | coupled to MOL and the linux side through a syscall interface. > | Running non-GPL code in this manner might slightly violate the mol > | GPL license. > Is this correct? What modifications to the mol license would be > necessary to keep mol DFSG-free while allowing for non-free drivers to > run? [As an aside, the DFSG-freeness of a license can always be determined per se, without consideration for the nature of the licensed code or its dependencies. If a license is free, code distributed under that license belongs in one of three places: the main archive, the contrib archive if it depends on non-free code, or outside of the archive entirely if it cannot be distributed because of a license conflict. There is no combination of circumstances that would require code distributed under a DFSG-compliant license to be uploaded to the non-free archive.] Run-time coupling of GPL and non-GPL code is never prohibited by the GPL; it's only when you distribute such code together[1] that you run into license issues. You therefore cannot be held in violation of the GPL for distribution that you are not a party to, and by definition, anything that can legitimately be included in Debian's main archive does not require the non-free code in question, so there should not be a problem here. As long as non-free code is not included, nor required for the software to be useable, it should be ok to upload to main. If there are still doubts, upstream may wish to clarify their license in the same way that Linus has for the Linux kernel, making it clear that running non-free applications on top of mol is considered acceptable. Regards, Steve Langasek postmodern programmer [1] Or separately, if the GPL binary depends on the GPL-incompatible code pgpTQ8n8ySK9s.pgp Description: PGP signature
Apple Public Source License and more
Hi, I am packaging the Mac-on-Linux emulator mol, which is itself GPLed. Recently, it has become capable of booting both Mac OS and Linux on its virtual machine and therefore was moved from contrib to main. Now the question has arisen whether some of the low-level drivers that mol includes should actually be in main. If I understand Samuel's (he is the upstream author) explanation correctly, their licenses fall in three categories: 1. GPL This is no problem at all of course and since Linux runs on top of this driver, the package will stay in main and non-free drivers will be moved to a separate package in non-free if necessary. 2. Apple Public Source License A number of drivers are adapted from Darwin and were released under the Apple Public Source License (APSL). More specifically, version 1.2 applies, which to my knowledge was certified as free, but a few posts on this list express doubts. What is the current situation on this? 3. no clear license Some drivers are based on example code that Apple supplies as a starting point for driver development. This was before the APSL, so Samuel believes it is possible to place them under a free license. Furthermore, to quote Samuel, | All the binaries above run within the MOL session and they are | coupled to MOL and the linux side through a syscall interface. | Running non-GPL code in this manner might slightly violate the mol | GPL license. Is this correct? What modifications to the mol license would be necessary to keep mol DFSG-free while allowing for non-free drivers to run? Thanks for any comments, Jens. -- J'qbpbe, le m'en fquz pe j'qbpbe! Le veux aimeb et mqubib panz je pézqbpbe je djuz tqtaj!
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> Well, the idea was that you glance at the word list, maybe remove a word >> or two, and then copyright it for yourself. Should take no more than 5 >> minutes. > > No, it doesn't work that way. It would still be freeriding on the > original author's creative choice of which words to include in the > original list. But isn't the compilation of several wordlists to make one big wordlist a form of creative choice, thereby creating an original copyright-able work? After all, it's possible that a small-ish wordlist is a subset of another unrelated, much larger wordlist. But the larger wordlist wouldn't infringe on the copyright of the small list. > Likewise, a novel does not escape its author's copyright just because > you strike out a couple of sentences at random. What comprises the originality of a novel is more than just the words used. That's not true of a wordlist. -- People said I was dumb, but I proved them!
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, Brian Nelson wrote: > Kevin Atkinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Um no. This is not a statement of rights. It is merely an assessment of > > how the DEC word list author views the situation. He assigns no > > additional copyright to his work. > > Who holds the copyright then? DEC? Does anyone even hold a copyright > on the list? > > Prior to the above quoted clause, the license states: > > To the best of my knowledge, all the files I used to build these > wordlists were available for public distribution and use, at least > for non-commercial purposes. I have confirmed this assumption with > the authors of the lists, whenever they were known. > > Any idea what "the files I used to build these wordlists" were? If they > weren't wordlists themselves, then there is no issue here. Is this what > RMS was referring to? I do not have a clue. I suggest someone contacts RMS on this matter. Do not expect me to because I am sick of this whole discussion. -- http://kevin.atkinson.dhs.org
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
Kevin Atkinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On 4 Nov 2002, Henning Makholm wrote: > >> Scripsit Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> >> > However, this "license" contains the same questionable clause as the >> > aspell-en license: >> >> > Therefore, it is safe to assume that the wordlists in this package >> > can also be freely copied, distributed, modified, and used for >> > personal, educational, and research purposes. (Use of these files in >> > commercial products may require written permission from DEC and/or >> > the authors of the original lists.) >> >> Now there's a real problem. > > Um no. This is not a statement of rights. It is merely an assessment of > how the DEC word list author views the situation. He assigns no > additional copyright to his work. Who holds the copyright then? DEC? Does anyone even hold a copyright on the list? Prior to the above quoted clause, the license states: To the best of my knowledge, all the files I used to build these wordlists were available for public distribution and use, at least for non-commercial purposes. I have confirmed this assumption with the authors of the lists, whenever they were known. Any idea what "the files I used to build these wordlists" were? If they weren't wordlists themselves, then there is no issue here. Is this what RMS was referring to? -- People said I was dumb, but I proved them!
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
Scripsit Kevin Atkinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, Brian Nelson wrote: > > However, this "license" contains the same questionable clause as the > > aspell-en license: > > Therefore, it is safe to assume that the wordlists in this package > > can also be freely copied, distributed, modified, and used for > > personal, educational, and research purposes. (Use of these files in > > commercial products may require written permission from DEC and/or > > the authors of the original lists.) > This is not a statement of rights. It is merely an assessment of how the > DEC word list author views the situation. He assigns no additional > copyright to his work. Yes, but do we then have any good-faith basis for assuming that one can "use the files in a commercial product" (such as a Debian cd-rom sold for profit) witout infringing anybody's copyright? -- Henning Makholm "No one seems to know what distinguishes a bell from a whistle."
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
On 4 Nov 2002, Henning Makholm wrote: > Scripsit Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > However, this "license" contains the same questionable clause as the > > aspell-en license: > > > Therefore, it is safe to assume that the wordlists in this package > > can also be freely copied, distributed, modified, and used for > > personal, educational, and research purposes. (Use of these files in > > commercial products may require written permission from DEC and/or > > the authors of the original lists.) > > Now there's a real problem. Um no. This is not a statement of rights. It is merely an assessment of how the DEC word list author views the situation. He assigns no additional copyright to his work. --- http://kevin.atkinson.dhs.org
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, Brian Nelson wrote: > However, this "license" contains the same questionable clause as the > aspell-en license: > > Therefore, it is safe to assume that the wordlists in this package > can also be freely copied, distributed, modified, and used for > personal, educational, and research purposes. (Use of these files in > commercial products may require written permission from DEC and/or > the authors of the original lists.) This is not a statement of rights. It is merely an assessment of how the DEC word list author views the situation. He assigns no additional copyright to his work. RMS has looked over the copyright of SCOWL and given me the all clear for use in the FSF project. -- http://kevin.atkinson.dhs.org
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
Scripsit Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > However, this "license" contains the same questionable clause as the > aspell-en license: > Therefore, it is safe to assume that the wordlists in this package > can also be freely copied, distributed, modified, and used for > personal, educational, and research purposes. (Use of these files in > commercial products may require written permission from DEC and/or > the authors of the original lists.) Now there's a real problem. > Well, the idea was that you glance at the word list, maybe remove a word > or two, and then copyright it for yourself. Should take no more than 5 > minutes. No, it doesn't work that way. It would still be freeriding on the original author's creative choice of which words to include in the original list. Likewise, a novel does not escape its author's copyright just because you strike out a couple of sentences at random. -- Henning Makholm"De er da bare dumme. Det skal du bare sige til dem."
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
Scripsit Jeff Licquia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > On Mon, 2002-11-04 at 13:54, Henning Makholm wrote: > > Man, you're way out. Some people (not all developers) point out that > > the Database Directive exists. Not a word has been said about it being > > "supreme" in any way. It exists. That is all. It that so har to grasp? > Since we acknowledge that it exists, what should we do about it? I don't argue any way here. In fact, it was probably a misrepresentation of my own position to attach it so aggressively to the database directive. What I really think (I think) is that word lists may be protected by conventional (Berne) copyright. My main interests here are to prevent history from recording d-l consensus as "we don't need to worry about copyright for spell-checking dictionaries because such copyright can't exist". > So, given that we have: > - a good-faith effort to respect rights that may not even have existed > at the time, On what to do with the particular aspell-en lists I have no explicit opinion. If it can be argued convincingly that we have proper permission to distribute them (and I have not checked the facts here, but I take your list to mean that you have), then of course we can. I just don't want the *reason* for doing so to be "there was never a problem in the first place". -- Henning Makholm "Det är alldeles för ansvarsfullt att skaffa en flickvän. Det är ju som att skaffa en hundvalp."
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
Kevin Atkinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, Brian Nelson wrote: > >> Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> >> > Scripsit Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> > >> >> Ugh, please respect the MFT header because the Aspell maintainer is not >> >> subscribed to d-l. >> > >> > Yeah. Other people complain vehemently unless I send my replies to >> > debian-legal and only debian-legal. I do try my best. >> >> As long as you always respect the MFT and MCT headers, no one should >> complain. > > What is the MFT and MCT headers? Mail-Followup-To and Mail-Copies-To. Most modern mailers (mutt, oort gnus, probably kmail...) support them. >> OK, then following this reasoning, the aspell-en maintainer can review >> each word in the DEC word list, decide that each one is acceptable for >> inclusion (maybe throw out one or two for good measure), and then >> declare the new list as an original work. He can copyright it as his >> own, license it under a DFSG-free license, and then everyone is happy. > > I believe, The DEC word list author has already done this. Attached is the > README of the DEC word list. However, this "license" contains the same questionable clause as the aspell-en license: Therefore, it is safe to assume that the wordlists in this package can also be freely copied, distributed, modified, and used for personal, educational, and research purposes. (Use of these files in commercial products may require written permission from DEC and/or the authors of the original lists.) which is in violation of this clause Debian Free Software Guidelines: No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research. Unfortunately, RMS's statement does not seem to address this. >> Can you do this, Kevin, and finally end this absurd discussion? > > NO, I simply do not have the time. Well, the idea was that you glance at the word list, maybe remove a word or two, and then copyright it for yourself. Should take no more than 5 minutes. -- People said I was dumb, but I proved them!
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
On Mon, 2002-11-04 at 13:54, Henning Makholm wrote: > Man, you're way out. Some people (not all developers) point out that > the Database Directive exists. Not a word has been said about it being > "supreme" in any way. It exists. That is all. It that so har to grasp? Since we acknowledge that it exists, what should we do about it? The problem seems to be centered around the DEC word lists. From my reading of the license, it seems that the original author of the DEC list make a serious good-faith effort to identify the contributors to the list. I doubt that tracking down the remaining authors would be practically possible, given that we are now removed by two additional layers of incorporation from them. In addition, it is worth noting that DEC was a US corporation, and remains US-owned. I also note from Kevin's site that he lives in the USA. Finally, Debian's main sites are located in the USA. The Database Directive of the EU, therefore, does not have the impact that, for example, the USA crypto laws have. Finally, I don't know how old the Database Directive is, and whether its terms are retroactive. This may have an effect on the status of the DEC list if it can be established that it was created before the Database Directive went into effect. So, given that we have: - a good-faith effort to respect rights that may not even have existed at the time, - no way of identifying additional authors besides those contacted by DEC, - a significant burden of proof on the part of any claimant, given that said claimant did not respond at the time of DEC's inquiry in addition to the ease which alphabetized word lists may be generated, - significant jurisdictional issues surrounding the applicability of the Database Directive to DEC, the upstream author, or Debian itself, - a significant likelihood that we would be joined in legal liability by Hewlett-Packard, the current owners of DEC's assets and a friendly ally of both free software and the Debian project, I vote that we treat the copyright to this list the same way we treat patents generally: wait for someone to complain before pulling the list. The situation is analogous; just as we cannot know which patents we currently infringe upon, given the volume of patents and the volume of code we distribute, so here we cannot know which copyrights we infringe upon, due to our disconnection from their original authors. At any rate, it seems unlikely to me that anyone will be able to hold us responsible for willful infringement given the circumstances surrounding any holder's disregard for his/her rights up to this point.
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, Brian Nelson wrote:
> Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > Scripsit Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >
> >> Ugh, please respect the MFT header because the Aspell maintainer is not
> >> subscribed to d-l.
> >
> > Yeah. Other people complain vehemently unless I send my replies to
> > debian-legal and only debian-legal. I do try my best.
>
> As long as you always respect the MFT and MCT headers, no one should
> complain.
What is the MFT and MCT headers?
> OK, then following this reasoning, the aspell-en maintainer can review
> each word in the DEC word list, decide that each one is acceptable for
> inclusion (maybe throw out one or two for good measure), and then
> declare the new list as an original work. He can copyright it as his
> own, license it under a DFSG-free license, and then everyone is happy.
I believe, The DEC word list author has already done this. Attached is the
README of the DEC word list.
> Can you do this, Kevin, and finally end this absurd discussion?
NO, I simply do not have the time.
---
http://kevin.atkinson.dhs.org
FILE: english.words
VERSION: DEC-SRC-92-04-05
EDITOR
Jorge Stolfi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
DEC Systems Research Center
AUTHORS OF ORIGIONAL WORDLISTS
Andy Tanenbaum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Barry Brachman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Geoff Kuenning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Henk Smit <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Walt Buehring <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
DESCRIPTION
The file english.words is a list of over 104,000
English words compiled from several public domain wordlists.
The file has one word per line, and is sorted with sort(1)
in plain ASCII collating sequence.
The file is supposed to include all verb forms ("-s", "-ed",
"-ing"), noun plurals and possesives, and forms derived by various
prefixes and suffixes ("un-", "re-", "-ly", "-er", "-ation", etc.)
However, the list is still highly incomplete and inconsistent: not
all stems have all forms, and some forms (notably possesive
plural) are missing altogether.
The file is NOT supposed to contain any "proper" names, such as
the names of ordinary persons, corporations and organizations;
nations, countries and other geographical names; mythological
figures; biological genera; and trademarked products. It is also
not supposed to contain abbreviations, measurement symbols, and
acronyms. (Some of these are available in separate files; see
below).
The pronoun "I" and its contractions ("I'm", "I've") are
capitalized as usual; the other words are all in lowercase.
Besides the letters [a-zA-Z], the file uses only hyphen
apostrophe, and newline.
AUXILIARY LISTS
In the same directory as englis.words there are a few
complementary word lists, all derived from the same sources [1--8]
as the main list:
english.names
A list of common English proper names and their derivatives.
The list includes: person names ("John", "Abigail",
"Barrymore"); countries, nations, and cities ("Germany",
"Gypsies", "Moscow"); historical, biblical and mythological
figures ("Columbus", "Isaiah", "Ulysses"); important
trademarked products ("Xerox", "Teflon"); biological genera
("Aerobacter"); and some of their derivatives ("Germans",
"Xeroxed", "Newtonian").
misc.names
A list of foreign-sounding names of persons and places
("Antonio", "Albuquerque", "Balzac", "Stravinski"), extracted
from the lists [1--8]. (The distinction betweeen
"English-sounding" and "foreign-sounding" is of course rather
arbitrary).
org.names
A short lists names of corporations and other institutions
("Pepsico", "Amtrak", "Medicare"), and a few derivatives.
The file also includes some initialisms --- acronyms and
abbreviations that are generally pronounced as words rather
than spelled out ("NASA", "UNESCO").
english.abbrs
A list of common abbreviations ("etc.", "Dr.", "Wed."),
acronyms ("A&M", "CPU", "IEEE"), and measurement symbols
("ft", "cm", "ns", "kHz").
english.trash
A list of words from the original wordlists
that I decided were either wrong or unsuitable for inclusion
in the file english.words or any of the other auxiliary
lists. It includes
typos ("accupy", "aquariia", "automatontons")
spelling errors ("abcissa", "alleviater", "analagous")
bogus derived forms ("homeown", "unfavorablies", "catched")
uncapitalized proper names ("afghanistan", "algol", "decnet")
uncapitalized acronyms ("apl", "ccw", "ibm")
unpunctuated abbreviations ("amp", "approx", "etc")
British spellings ("advertize", "archaeology")
archaic words ("bedight")
rare variants ("babirousa")
unassimilated foreign words
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Scripsit Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >> Ugh, please respect the MFT header because the Aspell maintainer is not >> subscribed to d-l. > > Yeah. Other people complain vehemently unless I send my replies to > debian-legal and only debian-legal. I do try my best. As long as you always respect the MFT and MCT headers, no one should complain. >> Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: [snip] > Note that there is no protection on the mere idea of "the N most > common words in English", but that description leaves an awful amount > up to choice - each time it is implemented the result is going to be > different with a very high probablity. When do you count something as > a "word"? What do you recognize as legitimate alternative spellings > and what will you reject as spelling errors. When is a word more > common than another? When it occurs more frequently in some text > corpus? How do you select a corpus to begin with (*lots* of room for > choice here). Do you recognize personal names - sometimes they would > be likely to be spelling errors when they don't refer to the > appropriate person? Etc. etc. etc. For many of these problems it is > impossible to set down fixed rules in advance - you'll have to do a > judgement call in *many* concrete circumstances. I hold that the > exercise of such judgement calls is a sufficiently *creative* activity > that its result ought to receive copyright protection. OK, then following this reasoning, the aspell-en maintainer can review each word in the DEC word list, decide that each one is acceptable for inclusion (maybe throw out one or two for good measure), and then declare the new list as an original work. He can copyright it as his own, license it under a DFSG-free license, and then everyone is happy. Can you do this, Kevin, and finally end this absurd discussion? -- People said I was dumb, but I proved them!
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, Branden Robinson wrote: > On Sun, Nov 03, 2002 at 11:15:36PM -0500, Kevin Atkinson wrote: > > Thus I will repeat my argument once again. But, this time I would like I > > response to the points I made and by the end of our debate I would like a > > definite answer on what should be done, if anything, to resolve the > > problem. > > In a nutshell, there are two problems; one is Debian's and one might be > yours, if Aspell-en is an official GNU project. > > 1) Several European Debian Developers insist that an alphabetized list > of English words is inherently a copyrightable thing, and/or has > intellectual property protection under some other scheme, presumably > designed to ensure the marketability of collections of facts or other > databases. The question here is not if word list or copyrightable but if if it is OK to use aspell-en. I specially avoided this issue in my argument. > 2) As I understand it, Aspell is a GNU Project, and therefore falls > under the aegis of the Free Software Foundation. RMS is of the opinion > that "word lists are copyrightable"[1], but he also says that he is just > expression his opinion[2]. > > I don't know if Aspell-en is part of the Aspell project, or a discrete > thing. If the former, could you get an official opinion from the FSF's > legal eagles regarding this issue? Such an opinion would carry a lot of > weight with Debian, even if it wouldn't be determinative. Um, excuse me. As a said before RMS specifically said that in the case of Aspell-en there was not a problem: I think it is safe for us to use those wordlists. The person who avoided texts marked "copyright" was operating under an erroneous idea of how copyright law works, but if all he did with those texts was make word lists, this should not be a problem anyway. > > The point is that if I did not list my sources it will be virtually > > imposable for some one to prove in court that I violated a copyright of > > one of the word lists used in the DEC word list. Thus even if I did > > violate a copyright it will virtually be unenforceable due to the very > > indirect nature which I used the word lists. > > Well, intent is important in the law, and these words would be used > against you in the unlikely event that someone ever tried to take you to > court for infringing the copyright on the word list. What about Fair Use? Even if word lists or copyrightable all counties have a provision of fair use and I could argue that how I used the word list was within the bounds of fair use. > > Thus I will remove the DEC word list only if 1) Debian will refuse to > > include the English word list due to questionable copyright on some of the > > sources that DEC uses and 2) the wenglish package is also removed from > > future debian distributions since it also contains the same word lost. > > But If I remove the DEC word list I will make a note on the reason > > why it is removed which will include a statement by me which more or less > > states that I think Durban-legal is being completely anneal about the > > matter. > > I don't understand your last sentence; are "Debian" and "anal" not words > in the word lists you've used to spell check your message? Yes I do. Both of the misspelled words are in my word list. Is there a reason you felt the need to point this out. > Anyway, please don't tar the entire Debian Project with this brush. It > is a noisy few developers. ... If I have to do something I do not fell is necessary I have every right call Debian-legal anal. Or in other words I can and I will. I said I will only take action if Debian-legal comes to some sort of general consensus. Thus the actions I take will represent the will of Debian-legal. Even if not every single person agrees with the outcome. --- http://kevin.atkinson.dhs.org
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
Scripsit Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > It was a scenario to consider, which was completely possible. I didn't > suggest it would happen in this particular case. What if the offending > word list contained only the words "the, if, and". Then it would be every bit as copyrightable as the following novel, just authored seconds ago by yours truly: It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly the Sun went nova and everyone died. THE END. > > I wouldn't describe it as likely. The choice of words (do you add cwm? > > bakress? ye? luculent? cromulent? boxen? virii? f**k? The spelling > > without the astericks? I can see large debates on each of those words) > > and the large selection mean that any two wordlists are probably going > > to have significant differences in the set of words included. > Don't waste time with retarded suggestions that have absolutely nothing > to do with the issue at hand. Those questions, and thousands og others like them, are exactly what the issue at hand is about. -- Henning Makholm "Check the sprog."
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 12:34:50PM -0800, Brian Nelson wrote: > It was a scenario to consider, which was completely possible. I didn't > suggest it would happen in this particular case. What if the offending > word list contained only the words "the, if, and". Of course those > words would be immediately replaced. And they didn’t occur in any other list? If that was what the list included, then we wouldn’t be having this argument; there is no copyright covering wordlists including “the, if, and” simply because it’s not reasonable. > > Identical, no. But many hackneyed or strongly genre‐bound novels do turn > > out increadibly similar to each other. > > Word-for-word identical? Are you on fucking crack? Are you? I understand what “Identical, no” means. But close enough that if you produced a work that similar to one of Harlan Ellison’s, you would be hit by a copyright‐infringement suit before it got to your publisher. > > I wouldn’t describe it as likely. The choice of words (do you add cwm? > > bakress? ye? luculent? cromulent? boxen? virii? f**k? The spelling > > without the astericks? I can see large debates on each of those words) > > and the large selection mean that any two wordlists are probably going > > to have significant differences in the set of words included. > > Don't waste time with retarded suggestions that have absolutely nothing > to do with the issue at hand. This is the heart of the matter. Should ‘cromulent’ be part of the wordlist? Despite not having a well‐defined meaning, it has a well‐defined spelling and currently common usage among a reasonably large group of people. That’s a creative decision there. Is ‘virii’ an acceptable spelling? Is ‘bakress’? -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom-- A field where a thousand corpses lie. -- Stephen Crane, "War is Kind"
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
Scripsit Brian Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Ugh, please respect the MFT header because the Aspell maintainer is not > subscribed to d-l. Yeah. Other people complain vehemently unless I send my replies to debian-legal and only debian-legal. I do try my best. However, my little flamewar with Branden is probably not of interest to the maintainer. > Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Several other people have tried to argue that a word list is not > > necessarily unoriginal. There are thousands to words that have to be > > judged either on the list or off the list; these thousands of > > choices are fully as much an intellectual expressive choice as the > > choice of which words to put in which order to form a novel. > Alright, then consider this. Since a word list in a dictionary has a > questionable copyright, it must be removed from a dictionary. Then, > people notice some common words no longer exist in the dictionary, so > they add them. Eventually, every missing word will be added back to the > dictionary, so that the end result is identical to the original. The fallacy of this argument is the assumption that the result will be identical to the original. It assumes that the decision whether or not a word is "common" is objective and can be reproduced with accuracy thousands of times. I hold that this assumption is obviously absurd, at least as long as we're talking about a natural language. In reality, long before (if ever) the last little arcane fringe word from the original list was added to the free dictionary, people would have started adding words that was *rejected* (or not thought of) for the list that was removed in the first place. Therefore, the identity you speak of is not going to arise in practise. The new list will be result of an independent *creative* choice of which words it should contain. And that is precisely the common cause of its non-identity to the original and my insistense that it can enjoy copyright protection. > Have you ever heard of two original novels independently written that > were identical to each other? No, that's inconceivable. Yes - just as inconceivable as two independently compiled word lists to be identical to each other. Note that there is no protection on the mere idea of "the N most common words in English", but that description leaves an awful amount up to choice - each time it is implemented the result is going to be different with a very high probablity. When do you count something as a "word"? What do you recognize as legitimate alternative spellings and what will you reject as spelling errors. When is a word more common than another? When it occurs more frequently in some text corpus? How do you select a corpus to begin with (*lots* of room for choice here). Do you recognize personal names - sometimes they would be likely to be spelling errors when they don't refer to the appropriate person? Etc. etc. etc. For many of these problems it is impossible to set down fixed rules in advance - you'll have to do a judgement call in *many* concrete circumstances. I hold that the exercise of such judgement calls is a sufficiently *creative* activity that its result ought to receive copyright protection. To go with the novel analogy (I'd though of formally institute a Silly Literature Analogies subthead, but you beat me to it), there can be no copyright on the abstract plot scheme A loves J and vice versa, but both are emotionally incapable of showing it properly. A almost marries R before everything is finally resolved. Meanwhile, A domesticates an orphaned puppy. However, the way that the author fleshes out this plot certainly *is* a creative process that entails a copyright. Your claim that "a list of common words in X-language" will always come out the same seems not much more likely that a claim that the above plot summary will always turn out to be _The Mammoth Hunters_ after passing through the hands of an author. > But it's completely conceivable for two independently compiled > dictionaries to be identical, or very nearly so. No, I think that's completely inconceivable, giving reasonable assumptions of the age of the universe and the number of dictionaries the average human produces. In cases that it was true (say, "a list of words that appear in the same spelling more than twice in the collected works of Shakespeare"), I would be willing to consider the possibility that independently compiled list could be identical. And in *that* case there would be no copyright such a list. -- Henning Makholm "Hi! I'm an Ellen Jamesian. Do you know what an Ellen Jamesian is?"
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
What a completely useless response. You completely missed the point of my post. David Starner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 11:40:06AM -0800, Brian Nelson wrote: >> Alright, then consider this. Since a word list in a dictionary has a >> questionable copyright, it must be removed from a dictionary. Then, >> people notice some common words no longer exist in the dictionary, so >> they add them. Eventually, every missing word will be added back to the >> dictionary, so that the end result is identical to the original. > > That’s quite an assumption; I seriously doubt it. Assuming that the > words removed were not in any of the other word lists used, then they > weren’t all that common. And assuming that words flow in at a steady > rate, a large number of new words will get added that weren’t in the > original, many of the words in the original won’t get suggested at all, > and I would expect that some of the words in the old word‐lists might > get suggested but turned down as unsuitable. It was a scenario to consider, which was completely possible. I didn't suggest it would happen in this particular case. What if the offending word list contained only the words "the, if, and". Of course those words would be immediately replaced. >> Have you ever heard of two original novels independently written that >> were identical to each other? No, that's inconceivable. > > Identical, no. But many hackneyed or strongly genre‐bound novels do turn > out increadibly similar to each other. Word-for-word identical? Are you on fucking crack? >> But it's >> completely conceivable for two independently compiled dictionaries to be >> identical, or very nearly so. > > I wouldn’t describe it as likely. The choice of words (do you add cwm? > bakress? ye? luculent? cromulent? boxen? virii? f**k? The spelling > without the astericks? I can see large debates on each of those words) > and the large selection mean that any two wordlists are probably going > to have significant differences in the set of words included. Don't waste time with retarded suggestions that have absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand. -- People said I was dumb, but I proved them!
Re: cupsys + libssl + libgnutls = confusion.
On Sun, 2002-11-03 at 01:02, Andrew Lau wrote: > I just looked at that > cupsys-1.1.15/config-scripts/cups-openssl.m4 and I find no mention of > GnuTLS in there at all. Then I took at look at debian/rules and > noticed that cupsys isn't even built with SSL or TLS enabled. > > ./configure --with-optim=$(DEB_OPTFLAGS) \ > --with-cups-group=lpadmin --mandir=/usr/share/man \ > --with-docdir=/usr/share/cups/doc-root --disable-ssl --enable-slp SSL support was added in the 1.1.15 series, removed almost immediately after, and re-added in 1.1.16-1 using the GNU TLS compatibility library. As of this moment, the SSL-using CUPS has not reached testing. > So this leaves me with a few problems. > > 1. I still don't know what steps are neccessary to convert an OpenSSL >program into one that uses GnuTLS for encryption. You can look at the cupsys packages in unstable, though I should point out that the support is still very flaky. It's actually not that difficult. You need to detect which SSL lib you're using, and include different headers based on that. Also, when you initialize a SSL connection, OpenSSL allows you to specify that a connection may be used for either client or server purposes, but GNU TLS forces you to choose. That's all I've experienced so far with it. > 2. Until #16748 - cupsys needs a "Build-Conflicts: libssl-dev" is >resolved, any cupsys-pt client will have no encrypted CUPS server >in Debian to talk to. That technically doesn't affect the presence or absence of SSL cupsd/libcups; it's more of a safety harness for preventing inadvertent license violations. I have actually fixed the bug in a slightly different way than the bug title implies. Essentially, the configure script can now be told to ignore installed OpenSSL libs, and debian/rules passes that flag unless told explicitly not to. > From my understanding of the above two clauses, cupsys can be > built with OpenSSL support enabled. So why is it explicitly disabled > at the moment? Why do you call for GnuTLS support for cupsys in > #167489? What is the official debian-legal position on this because > I'm really, really confused now... Debian-legal helped hash out the CUPS license text, so the official answer from the d-l POV is that it's legal to link OpenSSL to CUPS. However, this does not say anything about third-party GPLed software. As I understand it, Debian considers the OpenSSL and GPL licenses incompatible, despite the rather optimistic statement from the OpenSSL people. Specifically, check out the clause in the OpenSSL license that specifically mentions the GPL, as well as the old-BSD-style advertising clause. As an interesting side note, although the cupsys packages can be built against OpenSSL, they are pretty much useless without the gs-esp package, which provides the PostScript RIP used for non-PostScript printers. The gs-esp package is ESP's small fork of GNU GhostScript, which is under the traditional GPL and must link against CUPS to be useful. It's therefore my opinion that any distribution shipping a useful CUPS linked against OpenSSL is in a potentially interesting legal state. ESP has attempted to adjust to this situation, but I haven't been keeping up in their efforts to know if they've succeeded or not, so distributions shipping CUPS 1.1.15 or later and ESP GhostScript 7.05.5 or later might be OK. I'd rather not get into yet another OpenSSL license discussion, so I'll advise you to search the debian-legal archives for the last few months for more information.
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 11:40:06AM -0800, Brian Nelson wrote: > Alright, then consider this. Since a word list in a dictionary has a > questionable copyright, it must be removed from a dictionary. Then, > people notice some common words no longer exist in the dictionary, so > they add them. Eventually, every missing word will be added back to the > dictionary, so that the end result is identical to the original. That’s quite an assumption; I seriously doubt it. Assuming that the words removed were not in any of the other word lists used, then they weren’t all that common. And assuming that words flow in at a steady rate, a large number of new words will get added that weren’t in the original, many of the words in the original won’t get suggested at all, and I would expect that some of the words in the old word‐lists might get suggested but turned down as unsuitable. > Have you ever heard of two original novels independently written that > were identical to each other? No, that's inconceivable. Identical, no. But many hackneyed or strongly genre‐bound novels do turn out increadibly similar to each other. > But it's > completely conceivable for two independently compiled dictionaries to be > identical, or very nearly so. I wouldn’t describe it as likely. The choice of words (do you add cwm? bakress? ye? luculent? cromulent? boxen? virii? f**k? The spelling without the astericks? I can see large debates on each of those words) and the large selection mean that any two wordlists are probably going to have significant differences in the set of words included. -- David Starner - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom-- A field where a thousand corpses lie. -- Stephen Crane, "War is Kind"
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
Ugh, please respect the MFT header because the Aspell maintainer is not subscribed to d-l. Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Scripsit Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > [snip] >> Probably. I've tried to argue that it's impossible to plagiarize that >> which is unoriginal, > > Several other people have tried to argue that a word list is not > necessarily unoriginal. There are thousands to words that have to be > judged either on the list or off the list; these thousands of > choices are fully as much an intellectual expressive choice as the > choice of which words to put in which order to form a novel. Alright, then consider this. Since a word list in a dictionary has a questionable copyright, it must be removed from a dictionary. Then, people notice some common words no longer exist in the dictionary, so they add them. Eventually, every missing word will be added back to the dictionary, so that the end result is identical to the original. Thus, we'd have two identical dictionaries, one of which is "free" and one of which is "non-free". Yet, the free list did not in any way plagiarize the non-free one. Have you ever heard of two original novels independently written that were identical to each other? No, that's inconceivable. But it's completely conceivable for two independently compiled dictionaries to be identical, or very nearly so. Are those still original works? -- People said I was dumb, but I proved them!
Re: License question
Scripsit Michael Meskes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > I'm not really used to reading english language licences but I have been > asked if JasPer (http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams/jasper/) would be able > to make it into Debian. Since I'm sure someone of you knows much better > than I do, is this licence free enough or isn't it? There are a couple of "you may not sue us over patents that may be violated in the code" clauses that look fishy but could probably be argued around. However, this is a complete showstopper: | F. This software is for use only in hardware or software products | that are compliant with ISO/IEC 15444-1 (i.e., JPEG-2000 Part 1). | No license or right to this Software is granted for products that do | not comply with ISO/IEC 15444-1. The JPEG-2000 Part 1 standard can | be purchased from the ISO. This prevents modifying and distributing the code for experiments with other data formats. Thus non-free. -- Henning Makholm"I, madam, am the Archchancellor! And I happen to run this University!"
License question
Hi, I'm not really used to reading english language licences but I have been asked if JasPer (http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams/jasper/) would be able to make it into Debian. Since I'm sure someone of you knows much better than I do, is this licence free enough or isn't it? Thanks. Michael -- Michael Meskes Michael@Fam-Meskes.De Go SF 49ers! Go Rhein Fire! Use Debian GNU/Linux! Use PostgreSQL!
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
Scripsit Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Probably, yes. I have decried again and again the absurdity of some of > our European developers' opinion (and that of RMS) when it is logically > and consistently applied. They apparently don't want to hear any of it. You apparently don't want to listen to the real issues, but prefer to argue agains your own delusions about how the argument goes. > Anyway, please don't tar the entire Debian Project with this brush. It > is a noisy few developers, apparently convinced of the supremacy of > European law over the rest of the world[1], Man, you're way out. Some people (not all developers) point out that the Database Directive exists. Not a word has been said about it being "supreme" in any way. It exists. That is all. It that so har to grasp? > Probably. I've tried to argue that it's impossible to plagiarize that > which is unoriginal, Several other people have tried to argue that a word list is not necessarily unoriginal. There are thousands to words that have to be judged either on the list or off the list; these thousands of choices are fully as much an intellectual expressive choice as the choice of which words to put in which order to form a novel. > such as the enumeration of all the possible combinations that come > up when one tosses a pair of dice. But my opponents in this > argument will have none of it. Because a word list is vastly different form a list of all the possible combinations that come up when one tosses a pair of dice. There is only one way to list those combinations. The number of possible wordlists for spellchecking a particular language is astronomical. > Their conception of intellectual property is that you can declare > anything you want to be your intellectual property as long as no one > else has yet. That is bullshit. Quit fighting strawmen, or shut up. > They appear to have no concept of the public domain. More BS. -- Henning Makholm "Need facts -- *first*. Then the dialysis -- the *analysis*."
Re: ldp-es_20002103-7_i386.changes REJECTED
Scripsit Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 06:58:27PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: > > | (3) Translations, adaptations, arrangements of music and other > > | alterations of a literary or artistic work shall be protected as > > | original works without prejudice to the copyright in the > > | original work. > > Notice the last nine words. > That's your interpretation. What's my interpretation? It's the verbatim text of the convention. > The "without prejudice" (in my interpretation) does not mean that > the translation can hold and entirely different copyright from the > original. Yes, that's what the word "prejudice" means in English legalese. > I already knew this. I thought you were talking about other law. > As far as I see it it boils down to different interpretations (your's and > mine's) on the law. Better call it yours and the rest of the world's. Sigh, I don't even know why I bother to explain this to you. You obviously do not intend to listen to reason. My apologies to the list; I'll shut up now. -- Henning Makholm "Der er ingen der sigter på slottet. D'herrer konger agter at triumfere fra balkonen når de har slået hinanden ihjel."
Re: ldp-es_20002103-7_i386.changes REJECTED
On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 06:58:27PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: > > Show me where the international law says so. > > That has been pointed out several times: The Berne Convention (Paris > text 1971, English version), article 2, section 3: Yes. I did point it out. > > | (3) Translations, adaptations, arrangements of music and other > | alterations of a literary or artistic work shall be protected as > | original works without prejudice to the copyright in the > | original work. > > Notice the last nine words. That's your interpretation. The "without prejudice" (in my interpretation) does not mean that the translation can hold and entirely different copyright from the original. It means that changing to an altogether copyright for the translation does not change the original's (the original author maintains his rights *on the original* not on the translations'). > > http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html I already knew this. I thought you were talking about other law. As far as I see it it boils down to different interpretations (your's and mine's) on the law. However, as I see it, if Law X is an implementation of Law Y and gives the rights I talked about (different copyrights between original and translation) then either: 1.- Law Y implies the same things as Law X 2.- Law X is not proper and cannot be held in court. Y= Berne Convention X= Spanish law Being as it is, that Spanish law has been written by lawyers and not computer geeks, I would say that 2) should be discarded and then we're left with 1). So, if Spanish laws permits for different copyrights then you can imply that the Berne Convention does too. As a result your interpretation is flawed. Next one:-) Javi pgpLEdWT0bivU.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
On Sun, Nov 03, 2002 at 11:15:36PM -0500, Kevin Atkinson wrote: > Thus I will repeat my argument once again. But, this time I would like I > response to the points I made and by the end of our debate I would like a > definite answer on what should be done, if anything, to resolve the > problem. In a nutshell, there are two problems; one is Debian's and one might be yours, if Aspell-en is an official GNU project. 1) Several European Debian Developers insist that an alphabetized list of English words is inherently a copyrightable thing, and/or has intellectual property protection under some other scheme, presumably designed to ensure the marketability of collections of facts or other databases. 2) As I understand it, Aspell is a GNU Project, and therefore falls under the aegis of the Free Software Foundation. RMS is of the opinion that "word lists are copyrightable"[1], but he also says that he is just expression his opinion[2]. I don't know if Aspell-en is part of the Aspell project, or a discrete thing. If the former, could you get an official opinion from the FSF's legal eagles regarding this issue? Such an opinion would carry a lot of weight with Debian, even if it wouldn't be determinative. > I also have a felling that this is how many of the Ispell/Aspell > dictionaries are created for other languages. So you better remove > every single Ispell/Aspell dictionary from the Debian distribution > because you could be violating some one else's copyright. I mostly agree. Where the history is unclear, we would have to do so. The history is probably unclear for all ispell/aspell dictionaries in Debian because people have historically labored under the common-sense belief that alphabetized lists of common words in a language are not subject to any sort of legal encumbrances, at least in free societies. > The point is that if I did not list my sources it will be virtually > imposable for some one to prove in court that I violated a copyright of > one of the word lists used in the DEC word list. Thus even if I did > violate a copyright it will virtually be unenforceable due to the very > indirect nature which I used the word lists. Well, intent is important in the law, and these words would be used against you in the unlikely event that someone ever tried to take you to court for infringing the copyright on the word list. > Also note that the DEC Word List is used in the linux.words package which > the author claims is free of any copyright. This word list has been used > any many distributes including Debian's as "text/wenglish". So if you are > going to be anneal about Aspell word lists you should also remove this > package. Probably, yes. I have decried again and again the absurdity of some of our European developers' opinion (and that of RMS) when it is logically and consistently applied. They apparently don't want to hear any of it. > Thus I will remove the DEC word list only if 1) Debian will refuse to > include the English word list due to questionable copyright on some of the > sources that DEC uses and 2) the wenglish package is also removed from > future debian distributions since it also contains the same word lost. > But If I remove the DEC word list I will make a note on the reason > why it is removed which will include a statement by me which more or less > states that I think Durban-legal is being completely anneal about the > matter. I don't understand your last sentence; are "Debian" and "anal" not words in the word lists you've used to spell check your message? Anyway, please don't tar the entire Debian Project with this brush. It is a noisy few developers, apparently convinced of the supremacy of European law over the rest of the world[1], that is causing this problem. It doesn't help that Richard Stallman happens to agree with them. > If the DEC word list author was not so careful to list all of his sources > this issue would never have come up. Probably. I've tried to argue that it's impossible to plagiarize that which is unoriginal, such as the enumeration of all the possible combinations that come up when one tosses a pair of dice. But my opponents in this argument will have none of it. Their conception of intellectual property is that you can declare anything you want to be your intellectual property as long as no one else has yet. They appear to have no concept of the public domain. So, please; I share your frustration, but please don't ascribe the asinine attitudes of a few Debian developers to the whole Project. Please approach the FSF for their opinion on this subject. If they agree with the European People's Front for Propertization of Everything, then I suppose Debian can create a "non-eu" section to complement its "non-us" section, and European developers and users can perhaps be thus educated that it isn't just the United States that passes bad laws. [1] the same sort of unilaterialist hubris that George W. Bush is rightfully accused of --
Re: ldp-es_20002103-7_i386.changes REJECTED
Scripsit Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > On Fri, Nov 01, 2002 at 10:51:50AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > > I'm afraid you are quite wrong. A translated work is a product of both > > the original author and the translator, and both have an independent > > copyright. > Show me where the international law says so. That has been pointed out several times: The Berne Convention (Paris text 1971, English version), article 2, section 3: | (3) Translations, adaptations, arrangements of music and other | alterations of a literary or artistic work shall be protected as | original works without prejudice to the copyright in the | original work. Notice the last nine words. http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html -- Henning Makholm "Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit."
Re: off-topic discussion about permissions and promises
Scripsit Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > The way I read the GPL it is clearly a promise: I promise that *if* > > you agree to my conditions about, e.g., not demanding an NDA from > > people you distribute the code to, *then* - and not before - I will > > give you my permission to copy. > Yet another problem with your theory: what if the author is dead? You're right, that's a problem. I have no answer to that right at the moment. -- Henning Makholm "Det nytter ikke at flygte der er henna overalt"
debian cd-image mirrors and US export restrictions
Hi for several weeks now I am dealing with the different methods of downloading the official cd images of the debian distribution. The hundred of mirrors containing the debian packages are clearly separated into those, which are located in the US, and those, which are not, because of the non-us tree, they are containing packages from. In contrast to the package servers, the debian cd image mirrors are not separated according to this circumstances. Also the ones located in the US are containing the non-us variant of the first iso image. I dont understand why the US exports regulations seems to have no influence on the distributing of the cd images, which contain US sensitive software packages. If anyone has an idea on this topic, I would be gratefull for any remark. Regards, Harald Katzer PS.: Please indulge my possibly bad English and spelling mistakes!
Re: ldp-es_20002103-7_i386.changes REJECTED
On Fri, Nov 01, 2002 at 10:51:50AM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > No it doesn't. > > The original copyright applies to the original work. > > The translation's copyright applies to the translation. > > I'm afraid you are quite wrong. A translated work is a product of both > the original author and the translator, and both have an independent > copyright. Show me where the international law says so. Spanish law abides by international copyright laws and it does *not* say so at all. Which law are you referring to. Please: pointers and appropiate paragraphs should be helpful. Regards Javi pgpiIRYj0Ldgl.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Aspell-en license Once again.
For those that haven't read the license in question, here it is: This english word list is comes directly from SCOWL (up to level 65) (http://wordlist.sourceforge.net/) and is thus under the same copyright of SCOWL. The SCOWL copyright follows: The collective work is Copyright 2000 by Kevin Atkinson as well as any of the copyrights mentioned below: Copyright 2001 by Kevin Atkinson Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell these word lists, the associated scripts, the output created from the scripts, and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. Kevin Atkinson makes no representations about the suitability of this array for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty. Alan Beale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> also deserves special credit as he has, in addition to providing the 12Dicts package and being a major contributor to the ENABLE word list, given me an incredible amount of feedback and created a number of special lists (those found in the Supplement) in order to help improve the overall quality of SCOWL. The 10 level includes the 1000 most common English words (according to the Moby (TM) Words II [MWords] package), a subset of the 1000 most common words on the Internet (again, according to Moby Words II), and frequently class 16 from Brian Kelk's "UK English Wordlist with Frequency Classification". The MWords package was explicitly placed in the public domain: The Moby lexicon project is complete and has been place into the public domain. Use, sell, rework, excerpt and use in any way on any platform. Placing this material on internal or public servers is also encouraged. The compiler is not aware of any export restrictions so freely distribute world-wide. You can verify the public domain status by contacting Grady Ward 3449 Martha Ct. Arcata, CA 95521-4884 [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] The "UK English Wordlist With Frequency Classification" is also in the Public Domain: Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2000 20:27:21 +0100 From: Brian Kelk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > I was wondering what the copyright status of your "UK English > Wordlist With Frequency Classification" word list as it seems to > be lacking any copyright notice. There were many many sources in total, but any text marked "copyright" was avoided. Locally-written documentation was one source. An earlier version of the list resided in a filespace called PUBLIC on the University mainframe, because it was considered public domain. Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 19:31:34 +0100 > So are you saying your word list is also in the public domain? That is the intention. The 20 level includes frequency classes 7-15 from Brian's word list. The 35 level includes frequency classes 2-6 and words appearing in at least 11 of 12 dictionaries as indicated in the 12Dicts package. All words from the 12Dicts package have had likely inflections added via my inflection database. The 12Dicts package and Supplement is in the Public Domain. The WordNet database, which was used in the creation of the Inflections database, is under the following copyright: This software and database is being provided to you, the LICENSEE, by Princeton University under the following license. By obtaining, using and/or copying this software and database, you agree that you have read, understood, and will comply with these terms and conditions.: Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this software and database and its documentation for any purpose and without fee or royalty is hereby granted, provided that you agree to comply with the following copyright notice and statements, including the disclaimer, and that the same appear on ALL copies of the software, database and documentation, including modifications that you make for internal use or for distribution. WordNet 1.6 Copyright 1997 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. THIS SOFTWARE AND DATABASE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND PRINCETON UNIVERSITY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. BY WAY OF EXAMPLE, BUT NOT LIMITATION, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF MERCHANT- ABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR THAT THE USE OF THE LICENSED SOFTWARE, DATABASE OR DOCUMENTATION WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY THIRD PARTY PATENTS, COPYRIGHTS, TRADEMARKS OR OTHER RIGHTS. The name of Princeton University or Princeton may not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software and/or database. Title to copyright in this software, database and any associated documentation shall at all times remain with Princeton University and LICENSEE agrees to preserve same. The 50 level includes Brian's frequency cl
