Re: to Andrew Suffield
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 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? This, perhaps, from message [EMAIL PROTECTED], dated Fri, 5 Mar 2004 21:00:33 +: If we keep saying the MIT/X11 license is okay then some fuckhead will use the X-Oz license. If this was not the statement in question, you are still welcome to explain it. -- Måns Rullgård [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Debian Legal summary of the X-Oz License
On 2004-03-08 02:46:15 + selussos [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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. That's parenthetical, so hardly enough to prevent a comment on the substantial part: you cannot rely on US fair use doctrine combining with your licence to make it free software. From Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002) : AIUI As I Understand It (telecommunication-slang, Usenet, IRC) I suggest http://www.dict.org/ as a handy tool. -- 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 2004-03-08 05:59:31 + Ben Reser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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). I understood it as having only one condition, from comparison with the BSD licences, and the pluralisation of condition to be a copying error. Can someone tell us about how this licence has been interpreted or enforced in the past? Unfortunately X-Oz is being less than forthcoming with answering various questions. Which is making it difficult to resolve the problem. [...] Aye, the evasive replies from X-Oz so far do make them look like they are trying to leave the door open for changing their interpretation later. :-( -- 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
selussos wrote: 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 AIUI = As I Understand It HTH (hope to help), Massa
Adding modified autoconf macro to a QPLed tree
[Please Cc me on replies since I'm not subscribed to d-legal] Hi, I'm adopting the spamprobe package which is under the QPL (Qt public license). The package has a broken configure.in script that results in linking against libdb3.so even when libdb4.2-dev is installed. The previous maintainer solved this by build-depending on libdb3-dev, while I prefer to fix configure.in. IMHO the proper solution is to modify autoconf's AC_SEARCH_LIBS macro and put the result into acinclude.m4 in the source tree. Since autoconf macros are GPLed with a special exception for generated output, this holds for my modified version too. v special exception from /usr/share/autoconf/autoconf/libs.m4 v # As a special exception, the Free Software Foundation gives unlimited # permission to copy, distribute and modify the configure scripts that # are the output of Autoconf. You need not follow the terms of the GNU # General Public License when using or distributing such scripts, even # though portions of the text of Autoconf appear in them. The GNU # General Public License (GPL) does govern all other use of the material # that constitutes the Autoconf program. # # Certain portions of the Autoconf source text are designed to be copied # (in certain cases, depending on the input) into the output of # Autoconf. We call these the data portions. The rest of the Autoconf # source text consists of comments plus executable code that decides which # of the data portions to output in any given case. We call these # comments and executable code the non-data portions. Autoconf never # copies any of the non-data portions into its output. # # This special exception to the GPL applies to versions of Autoconf # released by the Free Software Foundation. When you make and # distribute a modified version of Autoconf, you may extend this special # exception to the GPL to apply to your modified version as well, *unless* # your modified version has the potential to copy into its output some # of the text that was the non-data portion of the version that you started # with. (In other words, unless your change moves or copies text from # the non-data portions to the data portions.) If your modification has # such potential, you must delete any notice of this special exception # to the GPL from your modified version. ^ special exception from /usr/share/autoconf/autoconf/libs.m4 ^ Now my question is: are there any legal problems in offering upstream the modified macro for inclusion in his source tree, which is QPLed? Thanks . Siggy signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Bug#227793: pgeasy has no copyright
[CC:ed to debian-legal, for sanity checking] On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 12:47:54PM +0100, Martin Pitt wrote: On 2004-03-06 22:20 -0600, Steve Langasek wrote: While the lack of a valid copyright statement within the package is an RC bug, I don't think there's any legal basis for claiming the upstream source needs to include a copy of the license before we can distribute it, so long as there is a clear statement from upstream that that's what the license is. The contents of /usr/share/doc/package/copyright can easily be fixed up to reflect this. Well, I can alter debian/copyright to say that the website contains a note that it is BSD, but I doubt that this had any legal impact. If the website is (temporarily or permenantly) down, then no sign of a copyright can be seen _anywhere_. So I think I must not close the RC bug if I altered debian/copyright, right? Also, Policy 2.3 forbids distribution of a software without a copyright statement. If the website is down, how would anyone be able to verify that your .orig.tar.gz is pristine source, either? My guess is that they would not. The legal difference between a copy of the license included in the tarball by upstream, and a copy of the license copied from the website into debian/copyright by the maintainer, is therefore nil in such a case; either the copyright holder acknowledges the validity of the license, and there is no problem, or the copyright holder claims they did not issue a license, in which case you have the same defense against claims of willful copyright infringement. Therefore, I strongly recommend that you update debian/copyright to reflect the actual license of this work, regardless of whether that license is currently included in the tarball, and close the RC bug accordingly. When the current postgresql finally goes into sarge (I will make an updated upload today or tomorrow), it will be possible to remove pgeasy. I pinged its upstream author (who promised to change that weeks ago) and will do it again, but in the light of the upcoming freeze I will ask for removing pgeasy if upstream does not release an update. Would you agree to this? I don't understand this. Currently, the pgeasy source package *only* exists in unstable. If you want to remove pgeasy, why would this need to wait for a new postgresql package in testing? And is this trivially-solvable RC bug your only reason for requesting removal? You are the maintainer, so it's your prerogative to request the package's removal, but from the bug log I can't see any legal reasons why that would be necessary. Regards, -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer 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: - Original Message - From: MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] [...] 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. On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 09:33:02PM -0800, Ben Reser wrote: 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 On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 10:41:30AM +, MJ Ray wrote: From Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002) : AIUI As I Understand It (telecommunication-slang, Usenet, IRC) I suggest http://www.dict.org/ as a handy tool. Now that you aware of what AIUI means, we look forward to your response. -- G. Branden Robinson| Never attribute to conspiracy that Debian GNU/Linux | which can be adequately explained [EMAIL PROTECTED] | by economics. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: X-Oz Technologies
On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 08:00:49PM -0500, selussos wrote: We are cross purposes Branden. because of the virality of attachments, I do not open them. You confuse me; you replied[1] to a previous message of mine[2] which contained an attachment of identical type (a PGP/MIME digital signature). Also note that not all attachments are viral, and you furthermore likely have little to fear if you run your mail program as a regular user on, for example, a FreeBSD or Linux system. [1] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/debian-legal-200403/msg00043.html [2] Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/debian-legal-200403/msg00042.html -- G. Branden Robinson| Software engineering: that part of Debian GNU/Linux | computer science which is too [EMAIL PROTECTED] | difficult for the computer http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | scientist. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: X-Oz Technologies
On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 07:54:38PM -0500, selussos wrote: 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. That's quite all right, we need not have a sophisticated understanding of philosophy to resolve the present understanding. * The Debian Project generally respects the copyright holder's interpretation of the copyright license the copyright holder places on a work; * It is reasonable to assume that X-Oz Technologies, Inc., would have used the Apache Software License 1.1 or the XFree86 1.0 license if either of those licenses were found to serve the desired purpose; * To our knowledge, X-Oz Technologies, Inc., is the author of the license it used in the XFree86 X server auto-configuration code committed to XFree86 CVS by David Dawes in October of last year; * It reasonable to assume that X-Oz Technologies, Inc., wrote this license with an understanding of what it meant. All we really ask is that you share some of the particulars of that understanding with us. A reply to the 8 questions I sent you in a previous mail[1] should rectify most or all of the ambiguity in the license that we are wrestling with. [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/debian-legal-200403/msg00032.html -- G. Branden Robinson|If you wish to strive for peace of Debian GNU/Linux |soul, then believe; if you wish to [EMAIL PROTECTED] |be a devotee of truth, then http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |inquire. -- Friedrich Nietzsche signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: nmap licensing claims
On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 09:05:43PM +0200, Birzan George Cristian wrote: Now, the reason I'm posting here is I've noticed the following claim made by nmap developers [1]: in accordance with section 4 of the GPL, we hereby terminate SCO's rights to redistribute any versions of Nmap in any of their products, including (without limitation) OpenLinux, Skunkware, OpenServer, and UNIXWare. First, note that they are terminating one licensee's license, that being SCO's (the SCO Group's). My understanding of that is that you're only allowed to use this program as long as you comply with the GPL, which does not limit its distribution or usage on certain platforms. Any such addendum would be a new licence. A copyright holder always has the right to revoke a license for noncompliance with the license's stated terms. Debian cannot do anything about that. By browsing the GPL FAQ, I came across two sections, which, in short, state that if you change the GPL, you must not use the name GPL [3] and that you are not allowed to distribute a program under a different licence than GPL, but have all modifications be GPL [4]. I am not sure if adding that claim means you've changed the GPL. If it doesn't, then what I've said above is irrelevant and should be ignored. :-) The NMAP developers are asserting that SCO has violated their (NMAP's) application of the GNU GPL to the NMAP software. -- G. Branden Robinson|Fair use is irrelevant and Debian GNU/Linux |improper. [EMAIL PROTECTED] |-- Asst. U.S. Attorney Scott http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |Frewing, explaining the DMCA signature.asc Description: Digital signature
