[Fedora-legal-list] License change from LGPL to BSD
Hello, From version 1.1.5 , ghc-hslogger will be under BSD license. Earlier it was under LGPLv2 license. Is this change acceptable for Fedora? -- Regards Lakshmi Narasimhan T V ___ legal mailing list legal@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/legal
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Documentation and header files seemingly without a license
Hello Peter, I am reviewing erlang-skerlhttps://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=652648and the issue I am facing is similar to what Ville-Pekka reports. In this case, some of the c source/header files and erlang source files are without license headers. Could you ask upstream to include license headers in the source code files of both packages / or confirm the licensing of those files? On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 11:48 PM, Tom Callaway tcall...@redhat.com wrote: On 01/13/2011 04:17 PM, Ville-Pekka Vainio wrote: 1. All other relevant source files have a license header except include/bitcask.hrl and c_src/erl_nif_compat.h. I'm not sure if they constitute a work in terms of copyright and should have licenses. What do you think? I think those files should have license headers. At a minimum, we should confirm the licensing with upstream. 2. This is, to me, the more important question. There is a .pdf file and some .png files in the doc directory. To me these seem like works which are under copyright, but I can't find a license for them anywhere in the source tree. Does this make them non-free and non-redistributable? If we don't know the license, we have to assume we have no license. However, we should make every effort to ask upstream about the license terms of those files. In cases where a general license statement is given somewhere, like in README, we can assume it applies to these sorts of files as well, but in this case where there is no license attribution, we either need to get it from upstream (aka the copyright holder) or assume we have no license. ~tom == Fedora Project ___ legal mailing list legal@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/legal -- Regards Lakshmi Narasimhan T V ___ legal mailing list legal@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/legal
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Regarding ghc-failure
Thanks Tom. On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 8:32 PM, Tom spot Callaway tcall...@redhat.comwrote: On 11/21/2010 10:21 AM, lakshminaras2...@gmail.com wrote: There is no explicit disclaimer in the source package. Please send the upstream copyright holder/author this message: --- Hi, I am working on packaging ghc-failure for Fedora (a popular Linux distribution), and have noticed that it is marked as being in the Public Domain. This is a tricky legal concept in many parts of the world. In Fedora, we try to ensure that we have legal permission to use everything within it, and that everything is under a Free Software License. Since the ability of a copyright holder to abandon their copyright on a work and place it into the Public Domain is only legally possible in certain jurisdictions, there are a few things you can do to help us out here. 1) If you just want anyone, anywhere, to have the ability to do whatever they would like with these software works, then please consider giving permission for them to be used under the Creative Commons Zero license. This license is structured to act as a practical Public Domain declaration wherever that is permitted by law, and an extremely permissive license everywhere else. An overview of the CC-0 license is here: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ The actual CC-0 legal text is here: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode If you choose to exercise this option, please reply to this email with the following: * A statement affirming that you are the author and copyright holder of the aforementioned software works. * A statement that you give permission for these works to be distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons 0 license, as described here: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ We will archive that email in the package (with your email address obscured, if you wish). 2) If you do not wish to relicense these works under CC-0, consider licensing them under the MIT license. This is a very permissive Free Software license. A copy of the MIT license can be found here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/MIT#Modern_Style_with_sublicense If you choose to exercise this option, please reply to this email with the following: * A statement affirming that you are the author and copyright holder of the aforementioned software works. * Permission to use and distribute the work under the MIT license terms 3) If neither of the two previous options is acceptable to you, and you really just want to put the work into the Public Domain, we need you to provide us with the following information: * A statement affirming that you are the author and copyright holder of the aforementioned software works. * A statement which indicates your citizenship and geographical location (country is sufficient) where these works were created. * A statement declaring that you are placing these works (explicitly by name) into the Public Domain, and are abandoning your copyright on them. For example: My name is John Doe, and I am the author and copyright holder of Foo. I am a United States citizen, and this code was written in the United States. I hereby place the Foo software into the public domain. You are free to modify the package, distribute modified versions, etc. * Please note: Individuals in most of Europe (with the notable exception of the UK) can almost NEVER fully abandon their copyright, thus any public domain declarations from those individuals are invalid, and we are left with no license on that work. This means that we will have no permission to use, modify, or distribute it. Specifically, this is known to be true for France, Germany, and Poland. If you are a citizen of one of these countries (or in Europe), or were located in one of these countries when you created this work, please consider using one of the previously described license options. Thanks in advance! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask. -- Regards Lakshmi Narasimhan T V ___ legal mailing list legal@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/legal
[Fedora-legal-list] Regarding ghc-failure
Hello, I am reviewing package request ghc-failure ( https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=630223 ). This is a haskell package. Each haskell package has a cabal file (similar to a Makefile say) that lists, among other things, the license of the sources. In case of ghc-failure, the license is PublicDomain (as mentioned in the cabal file). I looked at this page http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Good_Licenses and found Public Domain to be a *good* license. There reason for not having the space in the word PublicDomain (based on my assessment) is that the cabal program will not accept a license value with spaces. Given that the license field in the cabal file is not textually matching the license name that is listed in the webpage, is it ok to go ahead and use Public Domain in the spec file? Is it required that the author of the package be contacted to obtain a confirmation on PublicDomain -- Thanks and Regards Lakshmi Narasimhan T V ___ legal mailing list legal@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/legal
Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Regarding ghc-failure
There is no explicit disclaimer in the source package. On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 8:45 PM, Jason L Tibbitts III ti...@math.uh.eduwrote: lc == lakshminaras2...@gmail com lakshminaras2...@gmail.com writes: lc Given that the license field in the cabal file is not textually lc matching the license name that is listed in the webpage, is it ok to lc go ahead and use Public Domain in the spec file? That's taking things a bit literally, isn't it? I'd be more concerned about the other issues surrounding public domain works: Is the author in a jurisdiction where they are permitted to place works in the public domain. (For example, French citizens cannot do so.) Is there an explicit disclaimer of copyright somewhere in the work? I'm not sure that simply sticking either Public Domain or PublicDomain in a package's build infrastructure is sufficient to disclaim copyright. - J -- Regards Lakshmi Narasimhan T V ___ legal mailing list legal@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/legal
