ADMIN - All contributions are being bounced to heder From:
Apologies for sending this on list, but attempts to communicate using a guessed list owner address failed but didn't bounce and the ISP that is the target of the relevant MX records says they are no longer customers and disclaims responsiblity. Ever since I subscribed to the list, every posting I make, and I assume every posting anyone else makes, receives a bounce like the following. Unfortunately something (probably Exchange here - not my choice) strips the headers from the bounced message, so I can't work out who is forwarding this. However, someone is using broken mailing software to forward contributions to the list to an invalid address. Some software in the chain is broken. The forwarding software should have set its own envelope address to catch bounces, and definitely not copied the header From: to the envelope. Jaring should bounce to the envelope address, and the list should set the list owner as the envelope address (Exchange/Outlook strips the envelope, so I can't tell whether there is a problem with the list, but, generally, Unix based list software gets it right). This has been happening since at least late September. -- --- DISCLAIMER - Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of BTS. -Original Message- From: Mail Delivery Subsystem [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2000 12:28 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Returned mail: Host unknown (Name server: deanna.my: host not found) The original message was received at Thu, 19 Oct 2000 07:27:41 +0800 (MYT) from root@localhost - The following addresses had permanent fatal errors - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Transcript of session follows - 550 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Host unknown (Name server: deanna.my: host not found) ATT17231.TXT RE: NASM Licence ATT17231.TXT From: Nelson Rush [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Julian Hall said that portions of code from NASM may be used in GPL'd code, but that the portions included remain under the NASM license and not the GPL. He pointed to Section VII for reference. [DJW:] That would appear to make the resulting licence to distribute void under clause 7 of the GPL; any redistribution would be a copyright violation for the GPLed parts. -- --- DISCLAIMER - Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of BTS.
Re: NASM Licence
Basically, the GPL-related info in the license is one big paradox. I think that is pretty clear. SamBC - Original Message - From: "Nelson Rush" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Dave J Woolley" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: "License-Discuss" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 6:23 PM Subject: RE: NASM Licence Right. -Original Message- From: Dave J Woolley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 10:45 AM To: License-Discuss Subject: RE: NASM Licence From: Nelson Rush [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Julian Hall said that portions of code from NASM may be used in GPL'd code, but that the portions included remain under the NASM license and not the GPL. He pointed to Section VII for reference. [DJW:] That would appear to make the resulting licence to distribute void under clause 7 of the GPL; any redistribution would be a copyright violation for the GPLed parts. -- --- DISCLAIMER - Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of BTS.
Re: NASM License
This is my first License-discuss post. Standard apologies preemptively applied. I am not an attorney, and am not speaking in any such capacity. Free advice is worth what you pay for it. You should talk to a real attorney about everything that might wind you up in court, especially this license. I am not acting as an agent of my employer. DISCLAIM! DISCLAIM! OK! A general observation about licenses and contracts: they should not be based on what well-intentioned folks will think of them, or how a right-thinking person should act. Rather, they should be crafted based on the assumption that unscrupulous persons will exploit any weakness in wording for their own advantage. I'm approaching this license with that in mind. NASM LICENCE AGREEMENT == Is this a British Commonwealth Licence or an American License? Standardize (or standardise) your spelling to suit your intended jurisdiction. (By the way, if you're going Anglican, "sublicence" is spelled "sublicense" in clause VII.) By "the Software" this licence refers to the complete contents of the NASM archive, excluding this licence document itself, and excluding the contents of the `test' directory. The Netwide Disassembler, NDISASM, is specifically included under this licence. Is the NASM archive ever likely to be modified, or is it an artifact that is set in stone? If it is to be modified, you should clearly designate which archive it is, where I can always find it, and how you will nominate the original and most recent iteration. Can I make a bogus archive based on your archive and call it "The NASM Archive" copyright the thing and confuse the whole works? You should have a definition for this, and a clause to the effect that "the NASM archive is whatever we say it is, within the following rules..." Same goes for the authors. Put a definition of who the authors are right up front, and refer to them ever after as the capital-A "Authors." By that do you mean any one of the authors? Or all of the authors? Imagine that your best hacker buddy who you've worked on this project with all last year turns into a devil-worshipping jerk, or gets dropped on his head and signs away the rights from his hospital bed. By securing that one author's permission (or indeed any subsequent author's permission), can my enormous software company take your product private? If one author cannot give away the farm, then can a majority do so? Or is there a "joint and several" construction, meaning 100% unanimity of authors (even down to late project contributors) have to sign off on decisions, and one obstreperous coder can hang up the works? It's worth thinking about. II. The Software, or parts thereof, may be incorporated into other freely redistributable software (by which we mean software that may be obtained free of charge) without requiring permission from the authors, as long as due credit is given to the authors of the Software in the resulting work, as long as the authors are informed of this action if possible, and as long as those parts of the Software that are used remain under this licence. If I distribute shareware or crippleware incorporating your software, without charging for the transfer of the software, I may be within your parenthetical definition of "freely redistributable." A user can obtain it free of charge, but may not be able to *use* it free of charge. This is bait for subsequent license traps. "If possible" is a bit weak. Let's say I was out to leave you in the dark about my intentions. And let's say we wound up in court because I didn't let you know my redistribution plans. What does "if possible" mean? There is a legal term of art in copyright permissions called "fair search", which essentially means that I made a good faith effort to find you. "Fair search" means I looked in a specifically set manner and documented each of X numbers of search steps in order to find you and get your permission (or in this case, clue you in). Under the present wording, I might try going into court and say that I tried to find you but it wasn't "possible" because I didn't have the staff or the time to track you down. Hey, don't laugh. This stuff happens. Also, you might want to ask yourself why you're trying to have people inform you of their plans--if there is to be any recourse for you, it had better be in a nice tight license, not in what you might have to say to them when/if they inform you of their plans. III. Modified forms of the Software may be created and distributed as long as the authors are informed of this action if possible, as long as the resulting work remains under this licence, as long as the modified form of the Software is distributed with documentation which still gives credit to the original authors of the Software, and as long as the modified form of the Software is distributed with a clear statement that it is not the original form of the Software in the form that it was distributed by the
Re: FW: NASM Licence
On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 11:44:54PM -0500, Nelson Rush ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Good points. -Original Message- From: David Johnson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2000 11:20 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: NASM Licence On Tue, 17 Oct 2000, you wrote: I think Julian agreed to dual licensing without knowing he was agreeing to it. Which leaves us at a strange impasse. Simon on the other hand has no problem with it being dual licensed. My first reading of it seemed to say that it only "declared" GPL compatibility, and if there were any problematic clauses or phrases, to be interpreted on the side of compatibility. But I can easily see the other side. I still think that Debian is wrong in relicensing it under the GPL. This brings up the question of what "GPL compatibility" is. If license A says that license B can be applied to software P, and License B says that License B requires all, and only, those terms which are part of License B, then does License A implicitly grant or authorize relicensing of code under License B if it states compatibility? This appears to be the reasoning applied by Debian, and would be an argument I'd make. The NASM license is unfortunately vague in this regard. It may be the legal equivalent of Epimedes' Paradox, which IMO is a Bad Thing®. Clauses VII and X appear to be mutually incompatible, unless VII implies that relicensing under GPL per X is specifically allowed. Copyright law does not grant the recipient the right to relicense. And neither does the NASM license grant that right, the opposite in fact according to clause VII. I would need something a little stronger than clause X before I assumed I had the right to alter the author's license. Considering that the authors are not in agreement, I'll gladly err on the side of caution. ObligLarryRosenPacifier: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. PGP signature
