Bug#523093: undetermined copyright/license violation
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Robert Millan wrote: On Thu, Apr 09, 2009 at 10:27:19PM -0500, Adam Majer wrote: License and copyright are one and the same. GPL license relies on copyright law, just like almost any other open source license there is, be it BSD, Artistic or LGPL. Without copyright, the license is meaningless. Without license, you have no right to the source code. Thanks for the explanation; but I think what you mean is they're dependant on each other. This doesn't imply they're the same thing though. I think we all agree the Copyright lines, whenever they were present, need to be preserved. The license bits in general too, but what happens when the license terms explicitly give you permission to relicense? I gave this example in another mail (sorry if I sound redundant); my understanding is that in 2 or later terms in a GPLv2+ header the license version can be updated by recipients of the code, and that keeping the old license blob around is not a must; is this correct? Does section 12 of LGPL 2.1 work the same way? If not, where's the difference? No, and anyway, Debian should never do it. 2 or later mean that the recipient could *use* a later license, the derived works could be licensed with (maybe only) a later license, but no, the original code has own (old) license and cannot (should not) be changed. Maybe taking derived code (e.g. including new code), one could write only the license of aggregate work (thus one later license), but I think: 1- the old code is still 2 or later 2- it is better not to mix licenses in one file, so it is better to add new code or with the same license or in an extra file (no problem removing part of old file) 3- Debian should allow the more liberal license as possible, thus maintaining the option to use the old license terms. ciao cate -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAknlgYQACgkQ+ZNUJLHfmlfq9ACgltEdKfRp82yN9Xqwmpt86adG 2zkAn3PK/1V3O5UkLrcgH+2MuS9Hu760 =UOei -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-wnpp-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#523093: undetermined copyright/license violation
On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 08:41:08AM +0200, Giacomo Catenazzi wrote: Maybe taking derived code (e.g. including new code), one could write only the license of aggregate work (thus one later license), I think so. I agree it could be better to list them explicitly, but upstream doesn't want that. Then again, see what I said in: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=523093#38 but I think: 1- the old code is still 2 or later It is. Though, it is impractical to split it off the file that contains mixed licenses. But there's no need to either, people wanting the old code can take it from Tomboy (assuming patent liability is not a problem for them). 2- it is better not to mix licenses in one file, so it is better to add new code or with the same license or in an extra file (no problem removing part of old file) 3- Debian should allow the more liberal license as possible, thus maintaining the option to use the old license terms. We already discussed about whether it's good or not to upgrade licenses or to mix different GPL versions in the same file, in a separate thread in -legal. I gave my personal opinion there. Btw the license change comes from upstream, not Debian. It's obvious Hubert has his own reasons for doing it, but whichever they are they're off-topic here. -- Robert Millan The DRM opt-in fallacy: Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-wnpp-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#523093: undetermined copyright/license violation
Hi Frank, On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 12:08:30AM +0200, Frank Lichtenheld wrote: On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 11:40:02PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote: On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 10:19:38PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote: I'm going to upload the package in its current state: - When old file has no copyright/license information, only the new copyright/license header added by Hubert is present. After having a look at the issue I saw that those file actually have a reference to the AUTHORS file, which seems to be the place in TomBoy where the copyright for all those files is declared. This was added recently, see: http://gitorious.org/projects/gnote/repos/mainline/commits/3a41801b8672333b199ffb14c12367be952745e9 didn't make it to the package I uploaded, though. I personally would guess probably fulfills the letter of law and license (but it is really only a guess at this point). I'm a bit unsure though why it was chosen to refer to the AUTHORS file instead of just including the copyright statement in the file right next to the new one, which would probably have avoided this whole discussion. I think this is because for each given file, not every person listed in AUTHORS has participated in it, so one can only guess (or track down each contribution for each file). Asserting copyright for more people than actually wrote code is somewhat dangerous, so this looks like a way to err on the safe side. So pending a thorough review and without having seen the debian/copyright file, I currently see no reason not to allow this in Debian. I don't think that it contains any blatant lies about the copyright status of the work, even though I have the feeling it tries to avoid giving credit to the original authors any more than necessary. But that is a social issue and not a legal one. I arranged debian/copyright to make it clear authorship copyright are shared with the original authors. If you consider it necessary that this clarification extends to upstream code, just let me know. Although it can be a PITA because upstream doesn't want to be bothered about this. -- Robert Millan The DRM opt-in fallacy: Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-wnpp-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#523093: undetermined copyright/license violation
On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 12:46:23PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote: I arranged debian/copyright to make it clear authorship copyright are shared with the original authors. [...] Ah, btw, it seems there's a bug in some script. The file http://ftp-master.debian.org/new/gnote_0.1.1-1.html presents as copyright is actually copyright.tomboy, a verbatim copy of tomboy's debian/copyright file. -- Robert Millan The DRM opt-in fallacy: Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-wnpp-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#523093: undetermined copyright/license violation
On Thu, Apr 09, 2009 at 10:27:19PM -0500, Adam Majer wrote: License and copyright are one and the same. GPL license relies on copyright law, just like almost any other open source license there is, be it BSD, Artistic or LGPL. Without copyright, the license is meaningless. Without license, you have no right to the source code. Thanks for the explanation; but I think what you mean is they're dependant on each other. This doesn't imply they're the same thing though. I think we all agree the Copyright lines, whenever they were present, need to be preserved. The license bits in general too, but what happens when the license terms explicitly give you permission to relicense? I gave this example in another mail (sorry if I sound redundant); my understanding is that in 2 or later terms in a GPLv2+ header the license version can be updated by recipients of the code, and that keeping the old license blob around is not a must; is this correct? Does section 12 of LGPL 2.1 work the same way? If not, where's the difference? -- Robert Millan The DRM opt-in fallacy: Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-wnpp-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#523093: undetermined copyright/license violation
On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 09:37:22AM +0100, Anthony W. Youngman wrote: I think you're wrong here! The GPL does NOT give you the right to change the terms on which the original author granted use of the code! What it does give you (if the author uses the or later wording) is the right to use a later licence to cover what YOU do. Let us say that I licence something under Version 2 or later. I have NOT given you the right to relicence my code! What you *can* do is say I prefer the terms of version 3, the licence grant gives me the right to claim version 3 as my permission to use this code, therefore I will modify/distribute/etc under version 3. It DOES NOT allow you to take away my grant of version 2. If you then distribute modified code and say modifications are v3 only the resulting file becomes distributable under v3 only. It still hasn't taken away my grant of version 2 to my code. Alright then. Thanks for the correction. So what we need it to keep the old license header around, whenever there was one. I'll make sure this applies before the package is uploaded. Thanks -- Robert Millan The DRM opt-in fallacy: Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-wnpp-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#523093: undetermined copyright/license violation
On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 04:00:26PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote: So what we need it to keep the old license header around, whenever there was one. I'll make sure this applies before the package is uploaded. It appears that upstream rejects this idea. Since I don't believe it's such a strong requirement (I'm pretty sure I could find many counter-examples), I'm going to upload the package in its current state: - When old file has no copyright/license information, only the new copyright/license header added by Hubert is present. - When old file has copyright/license information, the copyright line is preserved, and merged with Hubert's copyright line and license terms. Old license terms (LGPLv2.1) are discarded since they're compatible with GPLv3. and let the FTP team decide on that. If they rule that this needs to be fixed, I'll add the missing license headers from original code myself, diverging from upstream tree if necessary. -- Robert Millan The DRM opt-in fallacy: Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-wnpp-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#523093: undetermined copyright/license violation
On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 10:19:38PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote: I'm going to upload the package in its current state: - When old file has no copyright/license information, only the new copyright/license header added by Hubert is present. - When old file has copyright/license information, the copyright line is preserved, and merged with Hubert's copyright line and license terms. Old license terms (LGPLv2.1) are discarded since they're compatible with GPLv3. Actually, the latter situation doesn't exist. Upstream clarified: 23:23 hub none of the original files that where translated to C++ had copyright notice, but a few. these few, the (c) has been transfered 23:24 hub including the MIT license 23:24 hub in the new file Some old files *do* have LGPL license information, these are libtomboy/eggtrayicon.[ch] which are copied VERBATIM, and Tomboy/panelapplet/PanelAppletFactory.cs which hasn't been used at all. -- Robert Millan The DRM opt-in fallacy: Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-wnpp-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#523093: undetermined copyright/license violation
On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 11:40:02PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote: On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 10:19:38PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote: I'm going to upload the package in its current state: - When old file has no copyright/license information, only the new copyright/license header added by Hubert is present. After having a look at the issue I saw that those file actually have a reference to the AUTHORS file, which seems to be the place in TomBoy where the copyright for all those files is declared. I personally would guess probably fulfills the letter of law and license (but it is really only a guess at this point). I'm a bit unsure though why it was chosen to refer to the AUTHORS file instead of just including the copyright statement in the file right next to the new one, which would probably have avoided this whole discussion. So pending a thorough review and without having seen the debian/copyright file, I currently see no reason not to allow this in Debian. I don't think that it contains any blatant lies about the copyright status of the work, even though I have the feeling it tries to avoid giving credit to the original authors any more than necessary. But that is a social issue and not a legal one. Gruesse, -- Frank Lichtenheld dj...@debian.org www: http://www.djpig.de/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-wnpp-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#523093: undetermined copyright/license violation
Robert Millan wrote: And so on. * Copyright (C) 2009 Hubert Figuiere is simply false, Alright. So, I understand you mean option 1 (see my paragraph starting with The new file seems to be asserting... above). Unless there's a clear consensus in -legal that this is not a problem, I will assume it is. I'm fine with extra clarification, for the sake of correctness, it just means a bit more work. I'll speak with the gnote author about it. and a clear violation of Tomboy's license. Notice license and copyright statements are two separate issues. AFAIK LGPL doesn't explicitly require that a license notice is preserved mixing code with other licenses like the BSD license does, but I could be mistaken. Any advice on this from -legal? License and copyright are one and the same. GPL license relies on copyright law, just like almost any other open source license there is, be it BSD, Artistic or LGPL. Without copyright, the license is meaningless. Without license, you have no right to the source code. There is no contract or patent licenses here. Cheers, - Adam -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-wnpp-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#523093: undetermined copyright/license violation
Hi Jo, Nice to see your newly found interest in C++ packages (though, not completely unexpected) :-) On Wed, Apr 08, 2009 at 06:26:18PM +0100, Jo Shields wrote: Please note that this project in its current form contains swathes of major copyright violations and cannot be uploaded to Debian - almost all source files contain Tomboy source, with Copyright unilaterally changed. Compare, for an example, http://gitorious.org/projects/gnote/repos/mainline/blobs/master/src/preferencesdialog.cpp to http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/tomboy/trunk/Tomboy/PreferencesDialog.cs?revision=2349view=markup This kind of rewrite is completely permitted under Tomboy's license - changing the copyright without the author's permission is not. If there's a problem, we'll get it sorted out, but I need more specific info on your findings; the example you pasted shows a file with nor copyright statement neither license information (from tomboy) and one with both of them (in gnote). Please tell me which of these (in your judgement) apply: - The new file seems to be asserting copyright for the code as a whole, and it's not implicitly understood that it only applies to the originality added to it by rewriting in C++. (this is somewhat contentious, since there are examples of other programs doing the same, but it can be fixed by adding a clarification to each file) - The new license (GPL v3) is incompatible with LGPL v2.1 (it's not; see section 13 of the LGPL v2.1) - There are copyright/license statements being replaced, elsewhere in the code. (if this is so, please give some example) - Something else. (be my guest) Tomboy's upstream have been alerted, and are trying to contact the GNote author to resolve the issue Good to know. I'll speak with the gnote author too, but first you'll have to give some more information, or at least point me to it :-) Is there some description/summary of the problem elsewhere I can check? - until then, GNote cannot be considered suitable for Debian. Sure. Btw, I'm adding debian-legal to CC, perhaps they can provide some insight (as you know, when there are doubts about legal stuff it is considered good practice to discuss things in that list). Cheers -- Robert Millan The DRM opt-in fallacy: Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-wnpp-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#523093: undetermined copyright/license violation
On Wed, 2009-04-08 at 21:05 +0200, Robert Millan wrote: Hi Jo, Nice to see your newly found interest in C++ packages (though, not completely unexpected) :-) Nothing wrong with C++ in moderation. My last ITP was a C++ browser plugin. On Wed, Apr 08, 2009 at 06:26:18PM +0100, Jo Shields wrote: Please note that this project in its current form contains swathes of major copyright violations and cannot be uploaded to Debian - almost all source files contain Tomboy source, with Copyright unilaterally changed. Compare, for an example, http://gitorious.org/projects/gnote/repos/mainline/blobs/master/src/preferencesdialog.cpp to http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/tomboy/trunk/Tomboy/PreferencesDialog.cs?revision=2349view=markup This kind of rewrite is completely permitted under Tomboy's license - changing the copyright without the author's permission is not. If there's a problem, we'll get it sorted out, but I need more specific info on your findings; the example you pasted shows a file with nor copyright statement neither license information (from tomboy) and one with both of them (in gnote). Please tell me which of these (in your judgement) apply: - The new file seems to be asserting copyright for the code as a whole, and it's not implicitly understood that it only applies to the originality added to it by rewriting in C++. (this is somewhat contentious, since there are examples of other programs doing the same, but it can be fixed by adding a clarification to each file) - The new license (GPL v3) is incompatible with LGPL v2.1 (it's not; see section 13 of the LGPL v2.1) - There are copyright/license statements being replaced, elsewhere in the code. (if this is so, please give some example) - Something else. (be my guest) GNote's source (I gave an example, but examples cover pretty much the entire source tree) includes verbatim copies of Tomboy's source. This is a reasonable way to develop a port (i.e. keep the old code there to refer to when writing new code) - however, the copyright header in the file is clearly asserting that the file is 100% copyrighted by Hubert Figuiere when it's not. Continuing with PreferencesDialog.cs as the example, compare: preferencesdialog.cpp lines 68-73 - PreferencesDialog.cs lines 66-71 preferencesdialog.cpp lines 90-103 - PreferencesDialog.cs lines 88-100 preferencesdialog.cpp lines 385-396 - PreferencesDialog.cs lines 403-408 And so on. * Copyright (C) 2009 Hubert Figuiere is simply false, and a clear violation of Tomboy's license. Hubert's work is impressive, but is not his own work - it's the people in http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/tomboy/trunk/AUTHORS?revision=2210view=markup plus him. I'm not doing a detailed analysis on every file in Tomboy's source tree because frankly there's too much of it. Tomboy's upstream have been alerted, and are trying to contact the GNote author to resolve the issue Good to know. I'll speak with the gnote author too, but first you'll have to give some more information, or at least point me to it :-) Is there some description/summary of the problem elsewhere I can check? You'd need to speak to the Tomboy people for more detail. Try #tomboy on GIMPnet - until then, GNote cannot be considered suitable for Debian. Sure. Btw, I'm adding debian-legal to CC, perhaps they can provide some insight (as you know, when there are doubts about legal stuff it is considered good practice to discuss things in that list). Cheers signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Bug#523093: undetermined copyright/license violation
On Wed, Apr 08, 2009 at 08:30:30PM +0100, Jo Shields wrote: If there's a problem, we'll get it sorted out, but I need more specific info on your findings; the example you pasted shows a file with nor copyright statement neither license information (from tomboy) and one with both of them (in gnote). Please tell me which of these (in your judgement) apply: - The new file seems to be asserting copyright for the code as a whole, and it's not implicitly understood that it only applies to the originality added to it by rewriting in C++. (this is somewhat contentious, since there are examples of other programs doing the same, but it can be fixed by adding a clarification to each file) - The new license (GPL v3) is incompatible with LGPL v2.1 (it's not; see section 13 of the LGPL v2.1) - There are copyright/license statements being replaced, elsewhere in the code. (if this is so, please give some example) - Something else. (be my guest) [...] the copyright header in the file is clearly asserting that the file is 100% copyrighted by Hubert Figuiere when it's not. [...] And so on. * Copyright (C) 2009 Hubert Figuiere is simply false, Alright. So, I understand you mean option 1 (see my paragraph starting with The new file seems to be asserting... above). Unless there's a clear consensus in -legal that this is not a problem, I will assume it is. I'm fine with extra clarification, for the sake of correctness, it just means a bit more work. I'll speak with the gnote author about it. and a clear violation of Tomboy's license. Notice license and copyright statements are two separate issues. AFAIK LGPL doesn't explicitly require that a license notice is preserved mixing code with other licenses like the BSD license does, but I could be mistaken. Any advice on this from -legal? -- Robert Millan The DRM opt-in fallacy: Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-wnpp-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
