Re: Ada Community License - DFSG
Arvind Autar said on Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 09:41:36PM +0100,: library is licensed under the Ada Community License. I already found a thread which talks about whether it's allowed or not. That thread is not clear to me. The Ada Community License, taken from:- http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/debian-legal-200207/msg00744.html Seems to contradict itself in some aspects, and vague in others. Tha thread seems inconclusive. Walter Landry started off thinking it is DFSG free, but later agreed that some ambiguities are there. beginquote The Ada Community License Copyright(C) 1997 David G. Weller Permission to redistribute in unmodified form is granted, all other rights reserved. This is a modification of the Perl Artistic License, (c)1989-1991, Larry Wall Preamble The intent of this document is to state the conditions under which the Ada library may be copied, such that the Copyright Holder maintains some semblance of artistic control over its development, while giving Ada users the right to use and distribute the Ada library in a more-or-less customary fashion, plus the right to make reasonable modifications. Definitions: Refers to the collection of Ada source files distributed by the Library Copyright Holder, and derivatives of that collection of files created through textual modification. Refers to such a library if it has Standard Version not been modified, or has been modified as specified below. Copyright Holder Is whoever is named in the copyright or copyrights for the Ada library. You Is you, if you're thinking about copying or distributing this library. Is whatever you can justify on the basis of media cost, duplication charges, time of people involved, and Reasonable Copying so on. (You will not be required to Fee justify it to the Copyright Holder, but only to the computing community at large as a market that must bear the fee.) Means that no fee is charged for the item itself, though there may be fees Freely Available involved in handling the item. It also means that recipients of the item may redistribute it under the same conditions they received it. Provisions: 1 You may make and give away verbatim copies of the source form of the Standard Version of this Ada library without restriction, provided that you duplicate all of the original copyright notices and associated disclaimers. 2 You may apply bug fixes, portability fixes and other modifications derived from the Public Domain or from the Copyright Holder. A library modified in such a way shall still be considered the Standard Version. 3 You may otherwise modify your copy of this Ada library in any way, provided that you insert a prominent notice in each changed file stating how and when you changed that file, and provided that you do at least ONE of the following: a) Place your modifications in the Public Domain or otherwise make them Freely Available, such as by posting said modifications to Usenet or an equivalent medium, or placing the modifications on a major archive site such as The Public Ada Library, or by allowing the Copyright Holder to include your modifications in the Standard Version of the Ada library. b) Use the modified Ada library only within your corporation or organization. c) Rename any non-standard executables so the names do not conflict with standard executables, which must also be provided, and provide a separate manual page for each non-standard executable that clearly documents how it differs from the Standard Version. d) Make other distribution arrangements with the Copyright Holder.
Re: subversion in main?
On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 09:44:57AM +, Andrew Suffield wrote: On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 05:04:52PM -0600, Warren Turkal wrote: Subversion has some clauses in its license that seemed very questionable to me. Here they are for your convenience: 3. The end-user documentation included with the redistribution, if any, must include the following acknowledgment: This product includes software developed by CollabNet (http://www.Collab.Net/). Alternately, this acknowledgment may appear in the software itself, if and wherever such third-party acknowledgments normally appear. X-Oz all over again. It is DFSG-free and GPL-incompatible. Subversion inherited this idiocy from apache, I think. It does not, and can not, use any GPLed works. It's likely that we'll include the acknowledgement in the software itself, eliminating this as a concern for people packaging subversion. Additionally, collab.net has specified that they will not complain if someone were to relicense under the GPL (and thereby dropped this clause). See the thread here: http://www.contactor.se/~dast/svn/archive-2004-03/0001.shtml Later on in the thread I explicitly ask Brian if this is what he meant (my summary above) in the linked message and he says yes. -- Ben Reser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ben.reser.org Conscience is the inner voice which warns us somebody may be looking. - H.L. Mencken
Re: X-Oz Technologies
Sue, There is a principle in hermeneutics that says: there are no useless words. This means, basically: if you want to say the same thing, use the same words. If you don't use the same words, you don't want to say the same thing. Basically, if X-Oz wants the same disposition as Apache Foundation (license v.1.1) /or/ XFree (license v.1.0), it should use the same license; or else, the only real -- and /legal/ -- conclusion is that the disposition is not the same. Herr Heidegger's principle of hermeneutics is not widely accepted except outside of modern existentialism and as brilliantly postulated by the late Monsieur Satre. But, if I am to follow that very principle that you espouse, I would then also ask you to read the license in the spirit of the American philosopher-academian, Prof. Fish, in which case I can only say that your understanding must be different from mine and that all words are useless. Thus I can only ask that we can only argue from the basis of 'common understanding' and 'common application'. Anything else would be too relativistic to gain much headway and I do not have that type of time (unfortunately ;-( to partake in such a heady discussion. Best Regards, Sue
Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain. - Original Message - From: Ben Reser [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; debian-legal@lists.debian.org Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 10:41 PM Subject: Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 04:37:32PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: 3. The end-user documentation included with the redistribution, if any, must include the following acknowledgment: This product includes software developed by X-Oz Technologies (http://www.x-oz.com/). Alternately, this acknowledgment may appear in the software itself, if and wherever such third-party acknowledgments normally appear. We find this statement to be a bit confusing. Here are some questions that may make it less so for us. 1) Can this clause be satisfied simply by including the license text in end-user documentation, since the license text includes verbatim the required acknowledgement? 2) Is there an objective set of characteristics that distinguish end-user documentation from any other kind of documentation? 3) If the answer to 2) is no, or you if you are unable to think of any, would you strike the term end-user from the license text, and apply the amended license to all of the code copyrighted by X-Oz Technologies, Inc. that is currently in public circulation? 4) Is it the position of X-Oz Technologies, Inc., that this clause is binding upon the licensee even if end-user documentation included with the redistribution neither contains, nor is derived from, work copyrighted by X-Oz Technologies, Inc., and licensed under these terms? [ For example, if I am distributing Vim, the text editor, as well as its user manual, on a CD-ROM to someone, and include the source code to the XFree86 X server from the XFree86 CVS trunk as of November 2003 on that same CD-ROM as a convenience, am I required to modify the Vim documentation to include the statement This product includes software developed by X-Oz Technologies (http://www.x-oz.com/).? ] 5) If the answer to 4) is yes, am I relieved of the obligation of this clause of the license if the only end-user documentation I am distributing is not copyrighted by me, and I have no license from the copyright holder to modify that documentation? Susan, The above questions that Branden asks if answered would probably relieve the concern with this clause. Can you please reply specifically to them? 4. Except as contained in this notice, the name of X-Oz Technologies shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization from X-Oz Technologies. We have some concerns about this clause as well. All of you have stated, endlessly, that you are not lawyers, and that is obviously the case since many of your questions deal with 'fair use' under the U.S. Copyright law. I would ask that you familiarize with that definition and you will find that answers most, if not all, of your questions. Best Regards, Sue
Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain. - Original Message - From: MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: selussos [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: debian-legal@lists.debian.org Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 10:42 PM Subject: Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License On 2004-03-02 23:48:35 + selussos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why does this clause attempt to use a copyright licence forbid basic rights granted in most trademark law? [...] This clause is also in the X.org license and is found throughout X. We chose to be specific because we are the _only_ copyright holder, which is not the case, as you will notice, for X.org. Thanks for letting me clear that one up. I'm sorry to write that I don't think you answered my question above at all, but stated a case where the questionable term is in a different copyright licence. However, I think the use is significantly different. The copyright permissions granted by the X.org licence found at http://www.x.org/Downloads_terms.html do not seem to be conditional on that term. The permissions of the X-Oz licence are. Could you please look at the X.org and X-Oz licences again and notice this difference? If you want to mimic the X.org licence, then will you make that clause a notice in the footer instead, please? Copyright licence conditions are the wrong way to police trademarks. That possibly could be your own _personal_ prejudice which is understandable but I think that U.S. Copyright is fairly well deployed throughout this world and is internationally recognized. Best Regards, Sue
Re: X-Oz Technologies
We are cross purposes Branden. because of the virality of attachments, I do not open them. Best Regards, Sue The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but we will agree to meet them halfway. - Bernard Avishai - Original Message - From: Branden Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: selussos [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: debian-legal@lists.debian.org Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 9:48 PM Subject: Re: X-Oz Technologies
Re: X-Oz Technologies
Sue, There is a principle in hermeneutics that says: there are no useless words. This means, basically: if you want to say the same thing, use the same words. If you don't use the same words, you don't want to say the same thing. Basically, if X-Oz wants the same disposition as Apache Foundation (license v.1.1) /or/ XFree (license v.1.0), it should use the same license; or else, the only real -- and /legal/ -- conclusion is that the disposition is not the same. Herr Heidegger's principle of hermeneutics is not widely accepted except outside of modern existentialism and as brilliantly postulated by the late Monsieur Satre. But, if I am to follow that very principle that you espouse, I would then also ask you to read the license in the spirit of the American philosopher-academian, Prof. Fish, in which case I can only say that your understanding must be different from mine and that all words are useless. Thus I can only ask that we can only argue from the basis of 'common understanding' and 'common application'. Anything else would be too relativistic to gain much headway and I do not have that type of time (unfortunately ;-( to partake in such a heady discussion. Best Regards, Sue
to Andrew Suffield
Someone sent me a comment from you on our license. I am not subscribed to this list as I have already said, and so I can only paraphrase from the list and ask, was this comment, ontological, metaphysical, or are you so puerile as to be saying this literally? Best Regards Sue
Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
On 2004-03-08 00:59:06 + selussos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However, I think the use is significantly different. The copyright permissions granted by the X.org licence found at http://www.x.org/Downloads_terms.html do not seem to be conditional on that term. The permissions of the X-Oz licence are. Could you please look at the X.org and X-Oz licences again and notice this difference? If you want to mimic the X.org licence, then will you make that clause a notice in the footer instead, please? Copyright licence conditions are the wrong way to police trademarks. That possibly could be your own _personal_ prejudice which is understandable but I think that U.S. Copyright is fairly well deployed throughout this world and is internationally recognized. It's not prejudice, but understanding. It took some time to understand that copyright licences can easily become non-free if you try to use them to enforce trademarks. Most of my learning curve is in the -legal list archive. If you want to learn about it, I suggest the Jeff Licquia thread (good summary from Branden in July 2002 http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/debian-legal-200207/msg00256.html), the TEI Guidelines thread (recent, but a bit wordy and vague) and the various logo threads. Next, United States copyright law has the United States as its scope and I'm not sure that anywhere else recognises exactly the same words. If you want to look at the international agreements, the main one is the Berne Convention. You can find the text at http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html amongst others. Your copyright adviser should be able to tell you more about this. Nothing that I know makes a notice mean the same as a condition of a permission grant. Can you see why a condition of the permission grant (such as your condition clause 4) is different to a notice in the licence (such as the X.org phrase that you mentioned)? If you wish to achieve the same effect as the X.org licence, will you change condition clause 4 into a notice at the end, like the X.org licence, please? -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 01:56:49AM +, MJ Ray wrote: Nothing that I know makes a notice mean the same as a condition of a permission grant. Can you see why a condition of the permission grant (such as your condition clause 4) is different to a notice in the licence (such as the X.org phrase that you mentioned)? If you wish to achieve the same effect as the X.org licence, will you change condition clause 4 into a notice at the end, like the X.org licence, please? This is a good point. I can see how someone would view this clause different due to the placement. -- Ben Reser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ben.reser.org Conscience is the inner voice which warns us somebody may be looking. - H.L. Mencken
Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
On 2004-03-08 00:57:38 + selussos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All of you have stated, endlessly, that you are not lawyers, and that is obviously the case since many of your questions deal with 'fair use' under the U.S. Copyright law. I would ask that you familiarize with that definition and you will find that answers most, if not all, of your questions. I am not in the United States. Copyright law here has no fair use term in it, only a restricted fair dealing provision. We cannot rely on the US copyright law's fair use contradicting your licence terms in a way that makes it a free software licence. I ask that you familiarise yourself with this basic problem of copyright and free software. Software that is free only for US residents isn't free software (or open source AIUI). -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
Re: Cryptlib licence
On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 02:15:27PM -0800, Ben Pfaff wrote: Humberto Massa [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [...license for cryptlib...] Except for proper names, this is identical to the license for the libdb4.0 package, which is already in Debian main. To which I'll add that the FSF considers this license free: The Berkeley Database License (aka the Sleepycat Software Product License). This is a free software license and is compatible with the GNU GPL. As found on: http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses Sleepycat his published the following clarifications to their license: http://www.sleepycat.com/download/licensinginfo.shtml If the cryptlib author would state that he agrees with sleepycat's clarifications then I don't think there are any problems with this license. -- Ben Reser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ben.reser.org Conscience is the inner voice which warns us somebody may be looking. - H.L. Mencken
Re: Cryptlib licence
On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 09:53:02AM +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote: Then we go deep into GPL territory. the source code for all modules [the executable] contains or uses, [barring anything shipped with the OS] is useless from Debian's POV, because we either ship everything or nothing as part of the OS, depending on which side of the operating system boundary you think Debian sits. Microsoft would love to have people extend the OS definition deep into application space. grin Keywords here: typically accompany the major components of the operating system on which the executable file runs. If you consider Debian the Operating System then it doesn't matter to Debian. If you consider Linux and the various Linux distributions the operating system then it depends on what you consider typically... In the end I don't think this really matters to Debian. It doesn't contaminate other licenses because it doesn't stipulate the terms under which the other software has to be made available (e.g. it's not viral), it just stipulates that the source code has to be available. Which Debian already requires. It appears that the author wants many of the protections of the GPL - down to the OS exemption - without actually using the GPL. My recommendation would be to relicence under the GPL and be done with it - it is a widely analysed licence whose effects are fairly well understood. My guess would be the author doesn't want the viral nature of the GPL. They want copyleft, but not copyleft that is as restrictive about the nature under which the source is made available. -- Ben Reser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ben.reser.org Conscience is the inner voice which warns us somebody may be looking. - H.L. Mencken
Re: Cryptlib licence
On 2004-03-08 02:17:12 + Ben Reser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To which I'll add that the FSF considers this license free: [...] I'm already waiting for a reply about the details of this. I'll report back when I get it. If the cryptlib author would state that he agrees with sleepycat's clarifications then I don't think there are any problems with this license. I think that is true, but was the Oct/Nov 2002 debate ever finished? If so, it would be best if the clarifications could be included with copies of the licence found in Debian. If they give other clarifications, I guess the FSF reply and some more analysis is useful. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. Please http://remember.to/edit_messages on lists to be sure I read http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ gopher://g.towers.org.uk/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
Re: Cryptlib licence
On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 06:17:12PM -0800, Ben Reser wrote: If the cryptlib author would state that he agrees with sleepycat's clarifications then I don't think there are any problems with this license. Upon further review looks like the author has done this basically on their website (http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/cryptlib/download.html) A good overview and background behind the Sleepycat license, which also applies for cryptlib, is also available. Which links to: http://www.winterspeak.com/columns/102901.html Which contains similar clarifications of the meaning of the Sleepycat license. So I think it's clear that the author intends to take the same interpretation of the license as Sleepycat does. -- Ben Reser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ben.reser.org Conscience is the inner voice which warns us somebody may be looking. - H.L. Mencken
Re: X-Oz Technologies
On Sun, 07 Mar 2004, selussos wrote: We are cross purposes Branden. because of the virality of attachments, I do not open them. You're actually looking at a piece of mail that has a pgp signature. May I suggest using an MUA that is standards compliant and can deal with pgp/mime (eg. not Outlook)? Don Armstrong -- Debian's not really about the users or the software at all. It's a large flame-generating engine that the cabal uses to heat their coffee -- Andrew Suffield (#debian-devel Fri, 14 Feb 2003 14:34 -0500) http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
- Original Message - From: MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: selussos [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: debian-legal@lists.debian.org Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 9:13 PM Subject: Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License On 2004-03-08 00:57:38 + selussos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All of you have stated, endlessly, that you are not lawyers, and that is obviously the case since many of your questions deal with 'fair use' under the U.S. Copyright law. I would ask that you familiarize with that definition and you will find that answers most, if not all, of your questions. I am not in the United States. Copyright law here has no fair use term in it, only a restricted fair dealing provision. We cannot rely on the US copyright law's fair use contradicting your licence terms in a way that makes it a free software licence. I ask that you familiarise yourself with this basic problem of copyright and free software. Software that is free only for US residents isn't free software (or open source AIUI). I am unaware of what AIUI means so I cannot comment on this at all. Sue
Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
- Original Message - From: MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: selussos [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: debian-legal@lists.debian.org Sent: Sunday, March 07, 2004 8:56 PM Subject: Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License On 2004-03-08 00:59:06 + selussos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However, I think the use is significantly different. The copyright permissions granted by the X.org licence found at http://www.x.org/Downloads_terms.html do not seem to be conditional on that term. The permissions of the X-Oz licence are. Could you please look at the X.org and X-Oz licences again and notice this difference? If you want to mimic the X.org licence, then will you make that clause a notice in the footer instead, please? Copyright licence conditions are the wrong way to police trademarks. That possibly could be your own _personal_ prejudice which is understandable but I think that U.S. Copyright is fairly well deployed throughout this world and is internationally recognized. It's not prejudice, but understanding. It took some time to understand that copyright licences can easily become non-free if you try to use them to enforce trademarks. Most of my learning curve is in the -legal list archive. If you want to learn about it, I suggest the Jeff Licquia thread (good summary from Branden in July 2002 http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/debian-legal-200207/msg00256.html), the TEI Guidelines thread (recent, but a bit wordy and vague) and the various logo threads. Next, United States copyright law has the United States as its scope and I'm not sure that anywhere else recognises exactly the same words. If you want to look at the international agreements, the main one is the Berne Convention. You can find the text at http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html amongst others. Your copyright adviser should be able to tell you more about this. Nothing that I know makes a notice mean the same as a condition of a permission grant. Can you see why a condition of the permission grant (such as your condition clause 4) is different to a notice in the licence (such as the X.org phrase that you mentioned)? If you wish to achieve the same effect as the X.org licence, will you change condition clause 4 into a notice at the end, like the X.org licence, please? I will be away for several days because of business requirements and such will not be able to familiarize myself with your concerns until I return. I can only state that if the 4th clause is indeed your concern there is a lot more software than ours that you should be worried about, and so I must ask, why aren't you? And why is debian distributing that, and by so doing so obviously acknowledging their validity but now ours? I would hate to think that something as provincial as prejudice against one our officers is the cause. At this point, and because of the great amount of time and effort this is taking, I must ask all of you to address this concern of mine. Sue
Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 07:57:38PM -0500, selussos wrote: All of you have stated, endlessly, that you are not lawyers, and that is obviously the case since many of your questions deal with 'fair use' under the U.S. Copyright law. I would ask that you familiarize with that definition and you will find that answers most, if not all, of your questions. US copyright law does not apply internationally. The Berne Convention states some basics, but even signatories to the Convention have, apparently, taken some liberties with some parts of it, so we can't even go with what the convention states as it's terms. So no, as it turns out, US copyright law's fair use provision doesn't answer our questions. - Matt
Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 09:52:36PM -0500, selussos wrote: I can only state that if the 4th clause is indeed your concern there is a lot more software than ours that you should be worried about, and so I must ask, why aren't you? And why is debian Who says we aren't? The job of debian-legal is to analyse, to the best of our limited abilities, the interaction between the Debian Free Software Guidelines and the licences which come to our attention. I'm worried about *any* software whose licence possibly does not conform to the DFSG, and I'm sure debian-legal will be dealing with all such software in due course. For now, however, we're dealing with your particular implementation of this clause, which several people have raised concerns about. So far, out of all the messages you've written that I've read, you've not managed to definitively answer any of the questions put to you. These questions are attempts, by people in debian-legal, to clarify your position on several issues of concern. Without such clarification, there is no way we can know that you do not intend to take a very strict reading of your terms (a la UWash and Pine) and proceed to sue many people. distributing that, and by so doing so obviously acknowledging their validity but now ours? I would hate to think that something as provincial as prejudice against one our officers is the cause. I know none of your officers. All I know is that you've written a great deal, and totally avoided the issue. That, to me, casts a shadow over any attempts at good faith dealing. You've skirted around the issues, not responded to some questions, and tried to invoke but he's doing it, so it must be OK as an argument in favour of your licence. To repeat: the only thing I have to go on to make an impression of you and your company (and, by extension, your company's interpretation of your licence) is by your own messages. So far, my impression is not positive. At this point, and because of the great amount of time and effort this is taking, I must ask all of you to address this concern of mine. Every single person who reads debian-legal? How will you ever know that everyone has responded? - Matt
Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 09:52:36PM -0500, selussos wrote: Next, United States copyright law has the United States as its scope and I'm not sure that anywhere else recognises exactly the same words. If you want to look at the international agreements, the main one is the Berne Convention. You can find the text at http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html amongst others. Your copyright adviser should be able to tell you more about this. Nothing that I know makes a notice mean the same as a condition of a permission grant. Can you see why a condition of the permission grant (such as your condition clause 4) is different to a notice in the licence (such as the X.org phrase that you mentioned)? If you wish to achieve the same effect as the X.org licence, will you change condition clause 4 into a notice at the end, like the X.org licence, please? I will be away for several days because of business requirements and such will not be able to familiarize myself with your concerns until I return. I can only state that if the 4th clause is indeed your concern there is a lot more software than ours that you should be worried about, and so I must ask, why aren't you? That is a very serious accusation. Please give specific examples of all other things in the Debian archive that you are aware of with a similar clause; we will investigate them all, and if they do indeed share the same problems, either get the upstream authors to clarify/change the license or remove the offending material from the archive. *To the best of my knowledge*, no such cases exist. The X.org, MIT, and various BSD licenses have similar clauses, but do not have the same issues - they are merely nebulous may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software statements, which is self-evident even if it weren't present in the license. But it's not unknown for variations like this to get missed; they're often subtle. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: to Andrew Suffield
On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 08:13:14PM -0500, selussos wrote: Someone sent me a comment from you on our license. I am not subscribed to this list as I have already said, and so I can only paraphrase from the list and ask, was this comment, ontological, metaphysical, or are you so puerile as to be saying this literally? Glancing through my folders of sent mail, I can't find any comments on the X-Oz license from before I received this message. What the heck are you talking about? -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 09:46:15PM -0500, selussos wrote: I am unaware of what AIUI means so I cannot comment on this at all. As I Understand It -- Ben Reser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ben.reser.org Conscience is the inner voice which warns us somebody may be looking. - H.L. Mencken
Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 05:00:04AM +, Andrew Suffield wrote: On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 09:52:36PM -0500, selussos wrote: I can only state that if the 4th clause is indeed your concern there is a lot more software than ours that you should be worried about, and so I must ask, why aren't you? That is a very serious accusation. Please give specific examples of all other things in the Debian archive that you are aware of with a similar clause; we will investigate them all, and if they do indeed share the same problems, either get the upstream authors to clarify/change the license or remove the offending material from the archive. Frankly, I think she has a point. The XFree86 1.0 and X.org license both share pretty much the same clause. X-Oz License version [1]: 4. Except as contained in this notice, the name of X-Oz Technologies shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization from X-Oz Technologies. XFree86 1.0 License version [2]: Except as contained in this notice, the name of the XFree86 Project shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization from the XFree86 Project. X.org License version [3]: Except as contained in this notice, the name of a copyright holder shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization of the copyright holder. So if we're saying that there is a problem with the language in the X-Oz license then there has to be a problem with the other X licenses. Note that the XFree86 1.0 license is the license applied to XFree86 4.3 and earlier versions, that Debian is currently shipping. *To the best of my knowledge*, no such cases exist. The X.org, MIT, and various BSD licenses have similar clauses, but do not have the same issues - they are merely nebulous may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software statements, which is self-evident even if it weren't present in the license. But it's not unknown for variations like this to get missed; they're often subtle. Actually as you can see above the various X license all have pretty much the same wording. MJ Ray has made the argument that the X-Oz license is different because it's more clear that the clause is a condition of the copyright license. This makes some sense to me. However, I think MJ Ray's argument is equally true of the XFree86 1.0 license, while not true of the X.org license. I don't think is argument is as clear on the XFree86 1.0 license, but I do think it is true. The XFree86 and the X-Oz licenses both have the phrase subject to the following conditions: included in them. X.org does not. Clause 4 is without a doubt a condition of the license of the X-Oz license. However, the same language (not numbered) in the XFree86 1.0 license probably is a condition on the copyright. It does say conditions and if you don't consider the warranty disclaimer and the sentence following it to be conditions then there would only be one condition. So I'd argue the advertising part of the XFree86 1.0 license is also a condition (though an oddly placed and out of order condition). We've seen arguments explaining why people think this language is too broad. I don't think any of the copyright holders are interpreting their license this way and X-Oz has said to me (in a message that I forwarded to the list) that they don't intend anything more than the BSD endorsement clause. Unfortunately X-Oz is being less than forthcoming with answering various questions. Which is making it difficult to resolve the problem. The ideal solution would be for X-Oz to remove the clause or replace it with the more nebulous (your term) BSD endorsement language. XFree86 has the same problem and if we really feel there is a problem with the X-Oz license, someone needs to deal with the XFree86 1.0 license as well. [1] http://www.x-oz.com/licenses.html [2] http://www.xfree86.org/legal/licenses [3] http://www.x.org/Downloads_terms.html -- Ben Reser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://ben.reser.org Conscience is the inner voice which warns us somebody may be looking. - H.L. Mencken
