sct public domain
I am currently packaging the setcolortemperature program (sct) and I
have two licensing questions.
Firstly, the license of sct consists of one line:
/* public domain, do as you wish
Is this enough to consider this code to be in the public domain? I
maintain this code as upstream but did not write it so it's not like I
could get it changed easily if at all.
Secondly, sct.c contains these lines:
/* cribbed from redshift, but truncated with 500K steps */
static const struct { float r; float g; float b; } whitepoints[] = {
{ 1., 0.18172716, 0., }, /* 1000K */
redshift is a program that does the exact same thing but with more code.
This part is clearly copied and so does sct need to be GPL because it
borrows code from redshift? This is data and so it could be not
copyrightable but I don't know.
Thanks,
--
Jacob Adams
GPG Key: AF6B 1C26 E2D0 A988 432B 94F4 24C0 2B85 B59F E5A9
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Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: sct public domain
On 06/24/2016 04:00 AM, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Jacob Adams writes ("sct public domain"):
>> Firstly, the license of sct consists of one line:
>> /* public domain, do as you wish
>
> Seems like a clear enough intent to dedicate to the public domain,
> along with a permission to deal freely. So yes.
Ok that makes sense. Wasn't sure if public domain was more complicated
but clearly not.
>
>> Secondly, sct.c contains these lines:
>>
>> /* cribbed from redshift, but truncated with 500K steps */
>> static const struct { float r; float g; float b; } whitepoints[] = {
>> { 1., 0.18172716, 0., }, /* 1000K */
>>
>> redshift is a program that does the exact same thing but with more code.
>> This part is clearly copied and so does sct need to be GPL because it
>> borrows code from redshift? This is data and so it could be not
>> copyrightable but I don't know.
>
> Is the formatting from redshift too ? If not then I think the r and b
> values are probably fixed and the only thing remaining is the g value.
> Not sure if that's enough to make it copyright. It might depend on
> what exactly those values are. I don't know enough about colour
> spaces and whatnot to say for usre.
>
> You could always ask the relevant redshift copyrightholder and see
> what they think.
>
I emailed Ingo Thies (who is credited with creating the table in
redshift) and he said that the table was created "by following
mathematical rules of color integration and conversion from the CIE 1931
color space to sRGB" and doubted it was copyrightable at all. He also
said he would have no problem releasing it to the public domain even if
it was copyrightable.
It doesn't seem like a conversion like that is copyrightable though. Do
I still credit him or is this definitely not copyrightable?
Thanks for your help,
--
Jacob Adams
GPG Key: AF6B 1C26 E2D0 A988 432B 94F4 24C0 2B85 B59F E5A9
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Re: sct public domain
On 06/27/2016 08:22 PM, Ben Finney wrote: > Ian Jackson writes: >>> It doesn't seem like a conversion like that is copyrightable though. >>> Do I still credit him or is this definitely not copyrightable? >> >> We should credit people who have contributed, even if copyright law >> doesn't ncecessarily require it. So: I would state the facts, as you >> do here. > > Agreed. Since we can do as we wish, I would encourage that we record > attribution information when it's available, because it is surprisingly > common to need that information years later. > Ok. Got permission from Ingo to use his response in the copyright file and the relevant portion now looks like this: Files: sct.c Copyright: 2016 Ted Unangst whitepoints data copyright 2013 Ingo Thies License: public-domain-sct and public-domain-colorramp License: public-domain-sct public domain, do as you wish License: public-domain-colorramp I have calculated the table by following mathematical rules of color integration and conversion from the CIE 1931 color space to sRGB. . I doubt that a numerically computed color table is copyrightable at all (in contrast to the actual software implementation). However, if it is indeed copyrightable, I have no problem with releasing it into the public domain. Is there a better way to indicate copyright over a portion of a file? Is this clear enough? Thanks for your help, -- Jacob Adams GPG Key: AF6B 1C26 E2D0 A988 432B 94F4 24C0 2B85 B59F E5A9 signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Wily may be non-free
I was looking into the packages NMUed by reproducible builds and stumbled across wily. It is currently in debian main, but appears to be non-free. According to d/copyright it is covered by the Artistic license [1]. However, it includes two libraries that are compiled into the final executable, libframe and libXg. Both these libraries contain the following copyright notice at the top of each file [2]: /* Copyright (c) 1992 AT&T - All rights reserved. */ That seems pretty clearly non-free to be, but as it's currently in Debian, I figured I would ask here before filing an RM bug against wily. [1]: http://sources.debian.net/src/wily/0.13.41-7.2/debian/copyright/ [2]: http://sources.debian.net/src/wily/0.13.41-7.2/libXg/Gwin.h/ http://sources.debian.net/src/wily/0.13.41-7.2/libframe/frbox.c/ etc.
Re: Wily may be non-free
On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 05:50:34AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote: > > That seems pretty clearly non-free to be, but as it's currently in > > Debian, I figured I would ask here before filing an RM bug against > > wily. > > I think you can make a bug report to discuss the matter. Start it at > “important” severity because the ‘debian/copyright’ file is not > accurate. > > If the discussion does not reveal a good explanation for the source > files that makes the work clearly DFSG-free, then the severity should be > increased. I've now filed a bug (#872866) but, given the current state of the wily package, I decided to set the severity to serious. This is an orphaned package that had to be NMUed by reproducible builds. I think that no one will probably ever respond to the bug report and I can't find a free copy of these libraries anywhere. Several ports of the sam editor to X11 use these libraries[1], and they include a similar copyright notice: /* Copyright (c) 1998 Lucent Technologies - All rights reserved. */ Based on this it seems remarkably unlikely that we can redistribute these libraries at all. [1]: libframe and libXg: https://github.com/deadpixi/sam/blob/master/libXg/Gwin.h https://github.com/8l/sam2/blob/master/libXg/Gwin.h
