gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal

Re: Intellectual disobedience

Florian Weimer — 2012-05-22T20:52:06

* Paul Wise:


Whatever this is, it is too mainstream:

| Unfortunately, this SME-music-content is not available in Germany
| because GEMA has not granted the respective music publishing rights.

Re: Sun Microsystems, Inc. Binary Code License Agreement

Joerg Jaspert — 2012-05-22T10:56:01




Leave alone that, can you guarantee that (ii) won't hit?
(iv) is also impossible to do.
(v) Oh sure.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. Binary Code License Agreement

Mathieu Malaterre — 2012-05-21T12:35:42

Hi,

  I recently received a report that jai-* packages may not be
compatible with debian non-free. Specifically I am looking at
jai-core's MEDIALIB FOR JAI/SUPPLEMENTAL LICENSE TERMS section 2:

...
2. License to Distribute Software.  In addition to the license granted
in Section 1 (Software Internal Use and Development License Grant) of
these Supplemental Terms, subject to the terms and conditions of this
Agreement, including but not limited to, Section 3 (Java Technology
Restrictions) of these Supplemental Terms, Sun grants you a
non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited license to reproduce and
distribute the Software in binary code form only, provided that you (i)
distribute the Software complete and unmodified and only bundled as part
of your Programs, (ii) do not distribute additional software intended to
replace any component(s) of the Software, (iii) do not remove or alter
any proprietary legends or notices contained in the Software, (iv) only
distribute the Software subject to a license agreement that protects
Sun's interests consistent with the terms contained in this Agreement,
(v) agree to defend and indemnify Sun and its licensors from and against
any damages, costs, liabilities, settlement amounts and/or expenses
(including attorneys' fees) incurred in connection with any claim,
lawsuit or action by any third party that arises or results from the use
or distribution of any and all Programs and/or Software, and (vi) bundle
the Software with the implementation of the Java Advanced Imaging and
the JAI Image I/O Open Source Project.
...

The issue here would be that the jai-* packages are libraries, and as
such not distributed "bundled as part of your Programs". Could we
consider that packages for debian (as as OS) are 'Programs' ?

ref:
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/non-free/j/jai-core/current/copyright

Thanks very much,
-M

Re: National Land Survey open data licence - version 1.0 - 1 May2012

Timo Juhani Lindfors — 2012-05-15T10:35:08

Hi Clark and Francesco,

Poli <invernomuto< at >paranoici.org> writes:

Thanks for the comments, I've tried to forward them to the people who
wrote the license. I hope they'll adjust the last paragraph of 2.2 but
I'm afraid they won't adopt an existing open source license.

Re: Figlet relicensed from AFL to BSD-3

Jonathan McCrohan — 2012-05-14T09:31:44

Yes, those files have now been relicenced too. See the full diff for
details [1].

Jon

[1] http://xi.dereenigne.org/figlet/figlet_2.2.2_2.2.3.diff

Re: Figlet relicensed from AFL to BSD-3

MJ Ray — 2012-05-14T09:10:38

Jonathan McCrohan <jmccrohan< at >gmail.com>

If all the files are now under that licence, I think it is OK.

(crc.c, crc.h, inflate.c, inflate.h, zipio.c, zipio.h had a licence
that compelled distribution, not AFL.  I have not checked that they
are new-BSD too.)

Hope that helps,

Figlet relicensed from AFL to BSD-3

Jonathan McCrohan — 2012-05-14T08:37:41

[Originally sent yesterday, but silently dropped due to over-size.
Resending modified version now.]

Hi -legal,

I am currently working on an updated figlet package (which currently in
non-free see #274950 and [1]).

During my work I discovered that the 2.2.3 release [2] re-licensed the
package as BSD-3 clause. This was agreed with the authors on the figlet
mailing list [3].

The main changes are in the LICENCE [4] file, and the copyright header
in figlet.c [5]. I have asked for clarification from the current
upstream figlet maintainer, and and received confirmation that the main
package along with the 'ours' fonts are all BSD-3 licensed [6].

To me, this means that the main figlet package is now DFSG-compliant.
Would someone else be able to confirm for me that this package is ok to
move back from non-free to main?

Note: I am only concerned about the core package at the moment. (Though
I may be back to discuss a possible figlet-contrib-fonts package at a
later date.)

Thanks,
Jon

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/10/msg00232.html
[2] ftp://ftp.figlet.org/pub/figlet/program/unix/figlet-2.2.3.tar.gz
[3] http://www.plig.net/mailman/private/figlet/2011-January/000216.html

[4]
jmccrohan< at >lambda:~/src/pkg-figlet$ cat LICENSE
Copyright (C) 1991, 1993, 1994 Glenn Chappell and Ian Chai
Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 John Cowan
Copyright (C) 2002 Christiaan Keet
Copyright (C) 2011 Claudio Matsuoka
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
   documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
3. Neither the name of the copyright holders nor the names of their
   contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived
   from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
COPYRIGHT HOLDERS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT,
INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING,
BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS
OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR
TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE
USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

[5]
jmccrohan< at >lambda:~/src/pkg-figlet$ head -12 figlet.c
/****************************************************************************

  FIGlet Copyright 1991, 1993, 1994 Glenn Chappell and Ian Chai
  FIGlet Copyright 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 John Cowan
  FIGlet Copyright 2002 Christiaan Keet
  FIGlet Copyright 2011 Claudio Matsuoka
  Portions written by Paul Burton and Christiaan Keet
  Internet: <info< at >figlet.org>
  FIGlet, along with the various FIGlet fonts and documentation, is
    copyrighted under the provisions of the New BSD License (3-clause)
    (as listed in the file "LICENSE" which is included in this package)
****************************************************************************/

[6] http://www.plig.net/mailman/private/figlet/2012-May/000274.html

Intellectual disobedience

Paul Wise — 2012-05-13T02:36:02

http://blog.ninapaley.com/2012/05/12/intellectual-disobedience/
http://www.youtube.com/?v=dfGWQnj6RNA

Re: Possible compatibility issue custom license versus GPL(2) incacti

Francesco Poli — 2012-05-12T13:47:05


Hello!


Thanks a lot for taking this issue seriously.


If the license you quoted is really the one that applies to those two
files, then I think there are some issues to be fixed.

First of all, that license is GPL-incompatible.
It also fails to meet the DFSG and hence those two files are non-free.
That license has so many GPL-incompatible and/or non-free restrictions,
that I won't even go into a detailed analysis...
I expect that other debian-legal regulars agree with this conclusion.

[...]

I think you should get in touch with upstream and explain them that
including those two files in their project makes cacti non-free.

Possible solutions I can think of:

 (A) if cacti may work without the non-free files (possibly with
reduced functionality), those files should be dropped entirely

 (B) if cacti cannot work without those files, appropriate DFSG-free
and GPL-compatible replacements should be found (or clean-room
developed)

 (C) Gubusoft should be contacted and persuaded to re-license those
files under GPLv2-compatible terms

At least, this is what I think should be tried.
I hope this helps.



[...]

Possible compatibility issue custom license versus GPL(2) in cacti

Paul Gevers — 2012-05-12T09:19:51

Hi,

While working on the package cacti, I came across some files included in
that project where I am unsure of the distributability or compatibility
of the code, since the cacti project itself is under the GPL2 license.

The files in question are in the include/treeview folder which can be
viewed on-line at [1], i.e. ftiens4.js and ftiens4_export.js. As the
license for these files is not included in the project, but a link is
provided in the headers for these files, I took a look at the web-site
of the treeview project [2], where a link can be found to what I believe
are the two possible licenses for this source. I have copied the
Distributor's license below this e-mail. The part I am worried about is
this:
"""
    You are not authorized to download and/or use the TreeView source
code from this application for your own purposes.
"""

Could you please help me identifying if/what actions need to be taken?
If this license is incompatible with GPL2 I expect that I should at
least contact upstream about this license violation.

Paul

[1]
http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-cacti/cacti.git;a=tree;f=include/treeview
[2] http://www.treeview.net/
[3] http://www.treeview.net/tv/license.asp


TreeView License: Distributor's License

This License For Customer Use of GubuSoft TreeView Software ("LICENSE")
is the agreement which governs use of the TreeView software by GubuSoft
(“GUBUSOFT”) downloadable herefrom, including computer software and
associated documentation ("SOFTWARE"). By downloading, installing,
copying, or otherwise using the SOFTWARE, you agree to be bound by the
terms of this LICENSE. If you do not agree to the terms of this LICENSE,
do not use the SOFTWARE.

GUBUSOFT grants Customer a royalty-free, perpetual license to use
SOFTWARE with unlimited server CPUs and internet domains. An unlimited
number of end users may access and use the SOFTWARE. Customer may
redistribute SOFTWARE subject to limitations. GUBUSOFT grants Customer
rights to modify the source code, for use within their application.

1. DEFINITIONS

1.1 Customer. Customer means the entity or individual that downloads the
SOFTWARE.

2. GRANT OF LICENSE

2.1 GUBUSOFT hereby grants Customer the following non-exclusive,
non-transferable right to use the SOFTWARE.

2.1.3 LIMITATIONS

Customer may not rent, lease, or transfer the rights to the SOFTWARE to
someone else.

Customer may redistribute and use SOFTWARE in source code form provided
(a) Customer Applications of SOFTWARE add primary and substantial
functionality, and are not merely a set or subset of any of the
functionality of the SOFTWARE, or a set or subset of any of the code or
other files of the SOFTWARE; (b) the source code retains all source code
comments, including all copyright notices, without modification; (c)
Customer includes a valid copyright notice on their Application; and (d)
Customer agrees to indemnify, hold harmless, and defend GubuSoft from
and against any claims or lawsuits, including attorneys' fees, that
arise or result from the use or distribution of Customer's Application.

Customer may redistribute and use SOFTWARE in binary form provided (a)
Customer Applications of SOFTWARE add primary and substantial
functionality, and are not merely a set or subset of any of the
functionality of the SOFTWARE, or a set or subset of any of the code or
other files of the SOFTWARE; (b) Customer agrees to indemnify, hold
harmless, and defend GubuSoft from and against any claims or lawsuits,
including attorneys' fees, that arise or result from the use or
distribution of Customer's Application; and (c) the following notices
are included in the documentation and/or other materials provided with
the Customer's Application:

    Copyright (C) 2006 Conor O'Mahony (gubusoft< at >gubusoft.com)

    All rights reserved.

    This application includes the TreeView script.

    You are not authorized to download and/or use the TreeView source
code from this application for your own purposes. For your own FREE copy
of the TreeView script, please visit the http://www.treeview.net Web site.

    THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

If Customer is using the free version of SOFTWARE, Customer must ensure
that the "JavaScript Tree Menu" link at the top of the TreeView is
visible and readable in their Web page or application.

Customer may not harm the GUBUSOFT intellectual property rights using
any media or via any electronic or other method now known or later
discovered.

Customer may not use the GubuSoft name, the name of the TreeView author,
or the names of any source code contributors to endorse or promote
products derived from this SOFTWARE without specific prior written
permission.

Customer may not utilize the SOFTWARE in a manner which is disparaging
to GUBUSOFT.

3. TERMINATION

This LICENSE will automatically terminate if Customer fails to comply
with any of the terms and conditions hereof. In such event, Customer
must destroy all copies of the SOFTWARE and all of its component parts.

Defensive Suspension. If Customer commences or participates in any legal
proceeding against GUBUSOFT, then GUBUSOFT may, in its sole discretion,
suspend or terminate all license grants and any other rights provided
under this LICENSE during the pendency of such legal proceedings.

4. COPYRIGHT

All title and copyrights in and to the SOFTWARE (including but not
limited to all images, photographs, animations, video, audio, music,
text, and other information incorporated into the SOFTWARE), the
accompanying printed materials, and any copies of the SOFTWARE, are
owned by GUBUSOFT. The SOFTWARE is protected by copyright laws and
international treaty provisions. Accordingly, Customer is required to
treat the SOFTWARE like any other copyrighted material, except as
otherwise allowed pursuant to this LICENSE and that it may make one copy
of the SOFTWARE solely for backup or archive purposes.

5. APPLICABLE LAW

This LICENSE shall be deemed to have been made in, and shall be
construed pursuant to, the laws of the State of California. The United
Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods is
specifically disclaimed.

6. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES AND LIMITATION ON LIABILITY

6.1 No Warranties. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW,
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND GUBUSOFT AND ITS SUPPLIERS DISCLAIM
ALL WARRANTIES, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE.

6.2 No Liability for Consequential Damages. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT
PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL GUBUSOFT BE LIABLE FOR
ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES WHATSOEVER
(INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS,
BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION, OR ANY OTHER
PECUNIARY LOSS) ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF GUBUSOFT HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGES.

7. MISCELLANEOUS

If any provision of this LICENSE is inconsistent with, or cannot be
fully enforced under, the law, such provision will be construed as
limited to the extent necessary to be consistent with and fully
enforceable under the law. This LICENSE is the final, complete and
exclusive agreement between the parties relating to the subject matter
hereof, and supersedes all prior or contemporaneous understandings and
agreements relating to such subject matter, whether oral or written.
This LICENSE may only be modified in writing signed by an authorized
officer of GUBUSOFT.

8. ASSIGNMENT

GUBUSOFT may assign or otherwise transfer any of its rights or
obligations under this LICENSE agreement.

Re: National Land Survey open data licence - version 1.0 - 1 May2012

Francesco Poli — 2012-05-11T20:39:33


Hi Timo, hi Clark,


I am convinced that a good Free Software license would be suitable for
releasing data.
Hence, I think that this license, even if it managed to meet the DFSG
(which it does *not*, in my own personal opinion!), would add nothing
useful to the already long list of existing licenses.
It just contributes to license proliferation, which is very bad.

[...]

I think it really depends on how it should be interpreted.

At best, this point could be seen as an attempt to implement a sort of
very weak copyleft-like mechanism. A really unclear attempt, though:
I don't know how effective it could be considered...

At worst, it could be seen as an attempt to make licensees responsible
for enforcing some clauses of the license, after redistributing the
work to other parties. I think this would be a non-free restriction.


In a very bad way: you *have* to comply, *when* the Licensor tells you
to do so. Even after your product or service has been initially
released.

I am personally convinced that such a requirement is non-free.

I think it's very similar to one of the clauses found in CC-v3.0
licenses. See for instance my analysis of CC-by-v3.0:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2007/07/msg00124.html

However, Debian FTP-masters disagree with me on the freeness of
works released under the terms of CC-v3.0 licenses:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2010/01/msg00084.html
Hence, it's *possible* (but not granted) that FTP-masters would consider
the above-discussed section 2.2 as acceptable, unfortunately.


I hope this may help.

Re: zlib specification license

Francesco Poli — 2012-05-11T20:03:25


Hi Simon!


To me it's really unclear whether this license really wants to grant
permission to make modifications and redistribute the result.

Do I understand correctly that the RFC documents you are referring to
are related to the zlib library?
I think the copyright holders for these RFC documents should really be
persuaded to re-license them under the terms of the zlib license [1].
It is always recommendable that the documentation for a program or
library is released under the same licensing terms as the program or
library itself.

[1] http://www.zlib.net/zlib_license.html

I hope this re-licensing may happen soon...

Re: National Land Survey open data licence - version 1.0 - 1 May2012

Clark C. Evans — 2012-05-10T13:07:23

Timo,

I'm not sure why a open source license wouldn't work?
In any case, here are some comments.


It seems that these are OK, since these notices could be placed
into an "About" box or similar structure?


This one seems problematic since it would require some sort of
license assent mechanism.  Perhaps this requirement could be 
softened to be a conditional, if you require acceptance of your
own license, you must require acceptance of this one?


How do you comply with this given the other requirements?


Best,

Clark

zlib specification license

Simon Josefsson — 2012-05-10T09:26:21

Hi,

Has this license been evaluated before?  RFC 1950-1952 contains:

   Copyright (c) 1996 L. Peter Deutsch and Jean-Loup Gailly

   Permission is granted to copy and distribute this document for any
   purpose and without charge, including translations into other
   languages and incorporation into compilations, provided that the
   copyright notice and this notice are preserved, and that any
   substantive changes or deletions from the original are clearly
   marked.

   A pointer to the latest version of this and related documentation in
   HTML format can be found at the URL
   <ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/png/documents/zlib/zdoc-index.html>.

The license initially doesn't give permissions to make modifications,
although it later require that any changes are clearly marked, which I
guess can be seen as the intention is to allow modifications.

Is the license DFSG-free?

/Simon

National Land Survey open data licence - version 1.0 - 1 May 2012

Timo Juhani Lindfors — 2012-05-10T09:27:41

Hello,

I realize that -legal is mainly for getting advice on what can be
included in Debian. However, if somebody has extra time I'd like to get
a second opinion on the license that the National Land Survey of Finland
is using for the dataset that they recently made public. This data might
get imported to OSM soon so eventually it might reach Debian in some
form (as an example map for a car navigation program for example). I
personally find the last bullet point of section 2.2 non-free. Can you
find anything else that is problematic?

Full license from
http://www.maanmittauslaitos.fi/en/NLS_open_data_licence_version1_20120501
follows:





       National Land Survey open data licence - version 1.0 - 1 May 2012

1. General information

The National Land Survey of Finland (hereinafter the Licensor), as the holder of
the immaterial rights to the data, has granted on the terms mentioned below the
right to use a copy (hereinafter data or dataset(s)) of the data (or a part of
it).

The Licensee is a natural or legal person who makes use of the data covered by
this licence. The Licensee accepts the terms of this licence by receiving the
dataset(s) covered by the licence.

This Licence agreement does not create a co-operation or business relationship
between the Licensee and the Licensor.

2. Terms of the licence

  2.1. Right of use

This licence grants a worldwide, free of charge and irrevocable parallel right
of use to open data. According to the terms of the licence, data received by the
Licensee can be freely:

  * copied, distributed and published,
  * modified and utilised commercially and non-commercially,
  * inserted into other products and
  * used as a part of a software application or service.

  2.2. Duties and responsibilities of the Licensee

Through reasonable means suitable to the distribution medium or method which is
used in conjunction with a product containing data or a service utilising data
covered by this licence or while distributing data, the Licensee shall:

  * mention the name of the Licensor, the name of the dataset(s) and the time
    when the National Land Survey has delivered the dataset(s) (e.g.: contains
    data from the National Land Survey of Finland Topographic Database 06/2012)
  * provide a copy of this licence or a link to it, as well as
  * require third parties to provide the same information when granting rights
    to copies of dataset(s) or products and services containing such data and
  * remove the name of the Licensor from the product or service, if required to
    do so by the Licensor.

The terms of this licence do not allow the Licensee to state in conjunction with
the use of dataset(s) that the Licensor supports or recommends such use.

  2.3. Duties and responsibilities of the Licensor

The Licensor shall ensure that

  * the Licensor has the right to grant rights to the dataset(s) in accordance
    with this licence.

The data has been licensed "as is" and the Licensor

  * shall not be held responsible for any errors or omissions in the data,
    disclaims any warranty for the validity or up to date status of the data and
    shall be free from liability for direct or consequential damages arising
    from the use of data provided by the Licensor,
  * and is not obligated to ensure the continuous availability of the data, nor
    to announce in advance the interruption or cessation of availability, and
    the Licensor shall be free from liability for direct or consequential
    damages arising from any such interruption or cessation.

3. Jurisdiction

Finnish law shall apply to this licence.

4. Changes to this licence

The Licensor may at any time change the terms of the licence or apply a
different licence to the data. The terms of this licence shall, however, still
apply to such data that has been received prior to the change of the terms of
the licence or the licence itself.

E' arrivato

dr.Alfieri — 2012-05-08T18:40:28

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Nuova formula ,ancora piu' efficace!

http://naturalmente.visit-page.com

Provalo;e' garantito!

Sono disponibili anche le ricariche.


Dr.Claudio Alfieri

Re: filebench: bison generated parser + CDDL

Mark Weyer — 2012-05-07T12:08:13


Just a quick note: If you are right about the incompatibility of CDDL-1 and
GPLv3 (others on this list will know if you are), then the combined work is
non-free: Its license terms discriminate against a field of endeavour, namely
developing a parser generator.

I am not a lawyer. Hope this helps,

  Mark Weyer

filebench: bison generated parser + CDDL

Martin Steigerwald — 2012-05-07T10:46:41

Also sent to ITP bug for documentation.


Hi!

Alex and I almost finished packaging filebench:

VCS is at:

Vcs-Git: git://git.debian.org/collab-maint/filebench.git
Vcs-Browser: http://git.debian.org/?p=collab-maint/filebench.git;a=summary

There is some licensing questions left:

1) Most files use:

 * CDDL HEADER START
 *
 * The contents of this file are subject to the terms of the
 * Common Development and Distribution License (the "License").
 * You may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 *
 * You can obtain a copy of the license at usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE
 * or http://www.opensolaris.org/os/licensing.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions
 * and limitations under the License.
 *
 * When distributing Covered Code, include this CDDL HEADER in each
 * file and include the License file at usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE.
 * If applicable, add the following below this CDDL HEADER, with the
 * fields enclosed by brackets "[]" replaced with your own identifying
 * information: Portions Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]
 *
 * CDDL HEADER END

template header.

Is it safe to assume that this refers to CDDL-1.0 as in:

http://opensource.org/licenses/CDDL-1.0

Well

http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/download/Main/licensing/cddllicense.txt

refers to that version of the license as well. So that seems to be the case.

Except for this notice:

NOTICE PURSUANT TO SECTION 9 OF THE COMMON DEVELOPMENT AND DISTRIBUTION
LICENSE (CDDL)

The OpenSolaris code released under the CDDL shall be governed by the laws
of the State of California (excluding conflict-of-law provisions). Any
litigation relating to this License shall be subject to the jurisdiction of
the Federal Courts of the Northern District of California and the state
courts of the State of California, with venue lying in Santa Clara County,
California.


2) It uses a bison generated parser from parser_gram.y and these generated 
files are:

Files: parser_gram.c parser_gram.h
Copyright: 1984, 1989, 1990, 2000-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  C LALR(1) parser skeleton written by Richard Stallman, by
  simplifying the original so-called "semantic" parser.
License: GPL-3+ with exception
 This package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
[…]
 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>
 .
 On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General
 Public License version 3 can be found in "/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-3".
 .
 As a special exception, you may create a larger work that contains
 part or all of the Bison parser skeleton and distribute that work
 under terms of your choice, so long as that work isn't itself a
 parser generator using the skeleton or a modified version thereof
 as a parser skeleton.  Alternatively, if you modify or redistribute
 the parser skeleton itself, you may (at your option) remove this
 special exception, which will cause the skeleton and the resulting
 Bison output files to be licensed under the GNU General Public
 License without this special exception.
 .
 This special exception was added by the Free Software Foundation in
 version 2.2 of Bison.


Is this compatible with CDDL-1?

As far as I understand CDDL-1 and GPL are not compatible, but when I read this 
special exception correctly, in the case that no new parser generator is done 
any terms, any license can be used for the resulting work.

Would it make sense to include an URL to the license in the copyright file? I 
did not see an extra field in the machine readable file format description, but 
I could always include it at the end of the license text if thats wanted.

Thanks,

filebench: bison generated parser + CDDL

Martin Steigerwald — 2012-05-07T10:43:01

Hi!

Alex and I almost finished packaging filebench:

VCS is at:

Vcs-Git: git://git.debian.org/collab-maint/filebench.git
Vcs-Browser: http://git.debian.org/?p=collab-maint/filebench.git;a=summary

There is some licensing questions left:

1) Most files use:

 * CDDL HEADER START
 *
 * The contents of this file are subject to the terms of the
 * Common Development and Distribution License (the "License").
 * You may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 *
 * You can obtain a copy of the license at usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE
 * or http://www.opensolaris.org/os/licensing.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions
 * and limitations under the License.
 *
 * When distributing Covered Code, include this CDDL HEADER in each
 * file and include the License file at usr/src/OPENSOLARIS.LICENSE.
 * If applicable, add the following below this CDDL HEADER, with the
 * fields enclosed by brackets "[]" replaced with your own identifying
 * information: Portions Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]
 *
 * CDDL HEADER END

template header.

Is it safe to assume that this refers to CDDL-1.0 as in:

http://opensource.org/licenses/CDDL-1.0

Well

http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/download/Main/licensing/cddllicense.txt

refers to that version of the license as well. So that seems to be the case.

Except for this notice:

NOTICE PURSUANT TO SECTION 9 OF THE COMMON DEVELOPMENT AND DISTRIBUTION
LICENSE (CDDL)

The OpenSolaris code released under the CDDL shall be governed by the laws
of the State of California (excluding conflict-of-law provisions). Any
litigation relating to this License shall be subject to the jurisdiction of
the Federal Courts of the Northern District of California and the state
courts of the State of California, with venue lying in Santa Clara County,
California.


2) It uses a bison generated parser from parser_gram.y and these generated 
files are:

Files: parser_gram.c parser_gram.h
Copyright: 1984, 1989, 1990, 2000-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  C LALR(1) parser skeleton written by Richard Stallman, by
  simplifying the original so-called "semantic" parser.
License: GPL-3+ with exception
 This package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
[…]
 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>
 .
 On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General
 Public License version 3 can be found in "/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-3".
 .
 As a special exception, you may create a larger work that contains
 part or all of the Bison parser skeleton and distribute that work
 under terms of your choice, so long as that work isn't itself a
 parser generator using the skeleton or a modified version thereof
 as a parser skeleton.  Alternatively, if you modify or redistribute
 the parser skeleton itself, you may (at your option) remove this
 special exception, which will cause the skeleton and the resulting
 Bison output files to be licensed under the GNU General Public
 License without this special exception.
 .
 This special exception was added by the Free Software Foundation in
 version 2.2 of Bison.


Is this compatible with CDDL-1?

As far as I understand CDDL-1 and GPL are not compatible, but when I read this 
special exception correctly, in the case that no new parser generator is done 
any terms, any license can be used for the resulting work.

Would it make sense to include an URL to the license in the copyright file? I 
did not see an extra field in the machine readable file format description, but 
I could always include it at the end of the license text if thats wanted.

Thanks,

Re: Is m4 autoconf code "like a compiler or linker"?

Ben Finney — 2012-05-06T01:03:31


If they are part of the work in Debian, then we must comply with the
terms of the license to distribute them. Source packages and binary
packages are works in Debian.


No, since the compiler or linker is not part of the same work; these m4
files are part of the same work.


These m4 files (going by your description only) are more like what the
GPL refers to as “scripts to control” building the program. GPLv3 §1:

      The "Corresponding Source" for a work in object code form means
    all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an
    executable work) run the object code and to modify the work,
    including scripts to control those activities.

So the m4 files are part of the “corresponding source” for the work.

Re: Is m4 autoconf code "like a compiler or linker"?

Paul Elliott — 2012-05-05T19:52:41

I found out these files have now been packaged. (They used not to be.) So there 
is no problem.

But I would still like to know as a matter of theory, if the use of these files 
would require that their license be used.