Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Please define effective license (for the love of consistency)
On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:45:11 -0800, Julius wrote: ps. My email is more of a personal tangential thought I'm having and not really relevant to Orcan's original questions since it doesn't have any implications for what to put in the RPM license tag! Still, what to put in the License: tag has implications with regard to the compatibility of the programs. It is especially important for the A may use B relation which is relevant when linking program A with library B. And when _copying_ code from program A to program B, proper license conversion ought to be applied in the program's source code as explained in the appendix of the license files, and e.g. following the compatibility matrix and other QA in the FSF's GPL FAQ: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html You cannot hide GPLv2 only files in a GPLv2+ library, for example, and use this with a GPLv3 program. Once more, conversion of licenses is not implicit or automatic. Even if we say our License: tags are not legally binding, it is not us to override the actual licensing that is applied to a program in the source files and in accompanying documentation. GPLv2 only and LGPL files _may_ be converted to apply the GPLv2+, but somebody needs to do that. Explicitly. And as explained in the appendix to the license terms. Related to Orcan's initial post, the software developer has replied to me. The program is supposed to apply the GPLv2 only and any GPLv2+ and LGPL references are not supposed to be there. The author also pointed out that he doesn't like the or later clause in general. Whether and when the source code archive will be fixed, is another question. Here's my attempt at answering Orcan's question: 1. If source contains at least one GPL source code file (but let's ignore header files) That exception is inacceptable already. So-called header files are source code, too, particularly if they contain inline functions and/or define structures and other non-basic types. ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Please define effective license (for the love of consistency)
On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:29:57 -0800 Julius Davies juliusdav...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Maybe the overall master copyright license for the Fedora compilation causes every single GPL+ compatible file inside Fedora to be licensed as GPL+ ? So every LGPL, BSD, MIT file which *can* be relicensed in this way *is even if such a relicensing is unnecessary for license compliance? Take a look at this file on your Fedora CDROM: ftp://ftp.nrc.ca/pub/systems/linux/redhat/fedora/linux/releases/12/Everything/i386/os/GPL --- * The following copyright applies to the Fedora compilation and any portions of Fedora it does not conflict with. Whenever this policy does conflict with the copyright of any individual portion of Fedora, it does not apply. * GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 [Rest of file is verbatim copy of GPLv2 license.] --- I haven't been following this thread closely, but this reference to GPLv2 is a licensing bug - an erroneous holdover from the RHL era, and should not have been included. I can say categorically that any global copyright license for the Fedora compilation is intended to have no effect on the licensing of Fedora packages. - RF -- Richard E. Fontana Open Source Licensing and Patent Counsel Red Hat, Inc. ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Please define effective license (for the love of consistency)
ps. My email is more of a personal tangential thought I'm having and not really relevant to Orcan's original questions since it doesn't have any implications for what to put in the RPM license tag! Here's my attempt at answering Orcan's question: 1. If source contains at least one GPL source code file (but let's ignore header files) and this source code is compiled into a binary file, then the license of the binary file must be: a. If the binary is a single work derived from all the source code files, then that GPL code will take precendence, and the binary as a whole becomes GPL. b. If the binary is a compilation, then I don't know what happens! I'm curious if Java jar files are compilations. 2. As for header files, well they don't really end up in the binary file, do they? So does it matter? And I vaguely recall some notion that API's are not copyrightable, so couldn't someone always rewrite a header file to contain the minimum necessary for compilation and then release that version under any license they like? yours, Julius On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 8:29 PM, Julius Davies juliusdav...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Maybe the overall master copyright license for the Fedora compilation causes every single GPL+ compatible file inside Fedora to be licensed as GPL+ ? So every LGPL, BSD, MIT file which *can* be relicensed in this way *is even if such a relicensing is unnecessary for license compliance? Take a look at this file on your Fedora CDROM: ftp://ftp.nrc.ca/pub/systems/linux/redhat/fedora/linux/releases/12/Everything/i386/os/GPL --- * The following copyright applies to the Fedora compilation and any portions of Fedora it does not conflict with. Whenever this policy does conflict with the copyright of any individual portion of Fedora, it does not apply. * GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 [Rest of file is verbatim copy of GPLv2 license.] --- Notice I'm saying GPL+ and not GPLv2+ because of information on the Licensing:FAQ - FedoraProject wiki page: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/FAQ --- If neither the source, nor the upstream composed documentation says anything about the license version, then it could be under _ANY_ version of the GPL. The version listed in COPYING is irrelevant from this perspective. Technically it could be under any license, but if all we have to go by is COPYING, we'll use COPYING to imply that it is under the GPL, all versions (GPL+). --- yours, Julius On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 8:43 PM, Orcan Ogetbil oget.fed...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 9:03 PM, Rahul Sundaram wrote: On 12/12/2009 07:24 AM, Orcan Ogetbil wrote: On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 5:25 AM, Michael Schwendt wrote: Fedora's Licensing Guidelines don't use the term effective license anywhere. Not even in the section on dual licensing, which is the scenario where the packager may choose to pick either license for the whole program. There is no such thing as an effective license related to the Mixed Source Licensing Scenario [1], because re-licensing a program, such as converting from LGPL to GPL, is not done implicitly or automatically. Thanks but that doesn't answer my question. Are so many people just imagining things? Why does this inconsistency exist? I'd like to have this cleared up so we won't have to discuss the same issue over and over again. People are just confused. The issue has already been clarified. Is there still some specific confusion? Okay. Whenever someone says most restrictive license wins again, I will say no, and will refer to this thread. Thanks, Orcan ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list -- yours, Julius Davies 250-592-2284 (Home) 250-893-4579 (Mobile) http://juliusdavies.ca/logging.html -- yours, Julius Davies 250-592-2284 (Home) 250-893-4579 (Mobile) http://juliusdavies.ca/logging.html ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Please define effective license (for the love of consistency)
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 5:25 AM, Michael Schwendt wrote: Fedora's Licensing Guidelines don't use the term effective license anywhere. Not even in the section on dual licensing, which is the scenario where the packager may choose to pick either license for the whole program. There is no such thing as an effective license related to the Mixed Source Licensing Scenario [1], because re-licensing a program, such as converting from LGPL to GPL, is not done implicitly or automatically. Thanks but that doesn't answer my question. Are so many people just imagining things? Why does this inconsistency exist? I'd like to have this cleared up so we won't have to discuss the same issue over and over again. Orcan ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Please define effective license (for the love of consistency)
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 9:03 PM, Rahul Sundaram wrote: On 12/12/2009 07:24 AM, Orcan Ogetbil wrote: On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 5:25 AM, Michael Schwendt wrote: Fedora's Licensing Guidelines don't use the term effective license anywhere. Not even in the section on dual licensing, which is the scenario where the packager may choose to pick either license for the whole program. There is no such thing as an effective license related to the Mixed Source Licensing Scenario [1], because re-licensing a program, such as converting from LGPL to GPL, is not done implicitly or automatically. Thanks but that doesn't answer my question. Are so many people just imagining things? Why does this inconsistency exist? I'd like to have this cleared up so we won't have to discuss the same issue over and over again. People are just confused. The issue has already been clarified. Is there still some specific confusion? Okay. Whenever someone says most restrictive license wins again, I will say no, and will refer to this thread. Thanks, Orcan ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Please define effective license (for the love of consistency)
On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Ville Skyttä wrote: On Wednesday 09 December 2009, Orcan Ogetbil wrote: 1) I came across another review with the same license question. The source files have one of the GPLv2, GPLv2+ and LGPLv2+ headers each. They get compiled and produce 1 final binary executable. None of the headers (or other source code files) go to the final RPM. What goes to the license tag of the package? Ref: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=537325#c4 2) Hypothetical question (although happens rather frequently): What if there was a -devel subpackage and .h files with different licenses ended up in this -devel subpackage? Aren't both questions answered pretty well by https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/LicensingGuidelines ? Nope. I wouldn't ask if they were. Orcan ___ Fedora-legal-list mailing list Fedora-legal-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
