gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.legal

Re: [Fedora-legal-list] php-channel-* licence

Tom Callaway — 2012-05-21T13:49:05

I would not consider such a generated file that only contains a name and
location of a repository to be copyrightable in the United States. It is
my opinion, based on Feist v. Rural, that there is no real creative
expression here (especially since these files are generated).

So, you're fine to include these files and treat them as if they were in
the Public Domain in Fedora.

~tom

P.S. I'm not a lawyer. This shouldn't be considered legal advice.

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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] php-channel-* licence

Remi Collet — 2012-05-19T06:11:39

Le 18/05/2012 20:16, Tom Callaway a écrit :

No, and that's the problem. There is no explicit License on this file.

I think of "public" because this is not code, just a small configuration 
file, mainly the name and URL of a repository.

This file is generated by the pear server (often pirum[1])

Content is closed to one in a yum .repo file


Remi.


[1] http://pirum.sensiolabs.org/
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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] php-channel-* licence

Tom Callaway — 2012-05-18T18:16:27

I'm not sure I understand. Are these .xml files marked as being in the
Public Domain?

~tom

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[Fedora-legal-list] php-channel-* licence

Remi Collet — 2012-05-18T17:30:56

Hi,

php-channel-* packages only provides 1 repository configuration file 
which is available from web, ex:

http://pear.phpqatools.org/channel.xml

For now License is often taken from the packages provided.

Ex php-channel-phpunit is "BSD" because all packages provided in the 
phpunit channel are BSD.

Some are "Public Domain"
Ex : php-channel-horde, because provided packages are released  under 
various licenses (BSD, MIT, GPL, ...).

Shouldn't all the php-channel-* set as "Public Domain" ?
In this case, I will add a small note in the PHP Guildelines.


Thanks,
Remi.
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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Mixing BSD and Apache licenses for specific arch in jemalloc on EPEL5/ppc

Tom Callaway — 2012-05-18T13:15:48

The BSD license is extremely permissive, and is widely considered to be
universally compatible with other Free licenses.

Apache... not as much. So the only downside to this is that you might
end up making jemalloc less compatible with other things as a result,
but since this is only a fix for old RHEL 5, its probably safe to do.

hth,

~tom

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[Fedora-legal-list] Mixing BSD and Apache licenses for specific arch in jemalloc on EPEL5/ppc

Ingvar Hagelund — 2012-05-18T09:14:17

Hello, legal. I'd like some advice, please. 

I maintain the jemalloc package for Fedora and EPEL. To make it compile
on EPEL5/POWER, I need a patch for 32bit atomic operations on ppc. I
found one in the Boost library (Boost license), but some googling
discovers it actually originates from apr (Apache license). jemalloc is
distributed under the BSD license

I'm unsure on how compatible the BSD and Apache licenses are.

Could I just add the patch and a few extra lines to COPYING with %ifarch
ppc ppc64, %if 0{?rhel} == 5, mentioning the Apache license and the
patch for that platform?

Note that the patch is no longer needed in epel6 and fedora. I guess
modern versions of gcc provides the missing atomic stuff.

I have contacted jemalloc upstream. Their comments suggest that this is
a non-issue, that is, that the code in question is too specific to be
copyrighted with a license, since the number of ways to implement atomic
operations for a specified cpu are very limited, and all the sketched
implementation examples floating around use more or less the same
algorithm.

Patch and short discussion starts here:
http://www.canonware.com/pipermail/jemalloc-discuss/2012-March/000136.html

I also contacted apr upstream. The initial commit of the code was done
by Greg Ames, http://marc.info/?t=101356337500001&r=1&w=2 . He pointed
me to the latest version, and told me to use it while adding the Apache
License, and added "I think you'll find that the Apache license is very
compatible with the BSD license."

PS: Note that Greg's initial commit preceeds the one copy-pasted into
the Boost library, so if this actually is an issue, Boost (or the Boost
maintainer in Fedora?) should check out this as well.

Ingvar


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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Android License for Gluster and Fedora Projec t (was Fwd: Change in glusterfs[master]: Provide missing basename_r and dirname_r)

Richard Fontana — 2012-05-15T13:17:09

Yes, as noted by Emmanuel Dreyfus this is the GPL-compatible 2-clause
BSD license.


The FreeBSD variant is listed 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/BSD#2ClauseBSD

It includes a sort of disclaimer of opinion at the end. Perhaps Fedora
should list a more generic version of the 2-clause BSD license as the
example, or should list one separately.

 - RF


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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Redistributing license text with binary RPMs

Tom Callaway — 2012-05-11T14:23:08

Not prohibited, just not required. There is a minimal possibility that a
maintainer may add a license text that is not accurate (or no longer
accurate, in the case of an upstream license change, for example) to a
package and thus incur some liability, so we do not require that they
add missing license texts. Instead, we advise maintainers to ask the
upstream to include proper license text.


In the example you've provided (BSD), 99% of the time the answer is no.
It says: "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"

Other materials provided with the distribution are the SRPMs, which
usually include the source, which usually includes the license. If we
were distributing binary-only, it would be a potential issue.

However, in the case you've pointed out (annox), they're not
distributing the license in the source tree at all, just a pointer to
the license on their website.

In the case of annox, I would recommend that the maintainer ask the
upstream to clarify if they consider distribution of their software in
binary and source form without any copy of the license text as a
violation of their license. If the answer is "no", then we're okay, as
that effectively acts as a waiver of that condition (and we should
include a copy of that email in the package to document this waiver). If
the answer is "yes", then, we should politely ask them again to add the
license text to the source tree. If they won't do that, I would say the
remaining options would be:

* The maintainer can make a copy of the license text from the website
and include it with the Fedora package, if they choose to do so.

or

* We do not permit this package into Fedora.

It is extremely rare that upstream chooses a license that requires
license text inclusion and does not provide license text in the source
tree.

~tom

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[Fedora-legal-list] Redistributing license text with binary RPMs

Mikolaj Izdebski — 2012-05-11T07:33:54

Hello,

Many Fedora-approved software licences require binary distributions to include the license text along with the software. For example the family of BSD licenses says that "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" and ASL 2.0 says that "You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a copy of this License". My understanding is that in case of Fedora redistributing a copy of the license along with RPM package is a prerequisite for redistributing it al all.

In some cases the upstream itself doesn't redistribute the copy of the license. From technical point of view it's fine because they are copyright holders and therefore they can do whatever they want with the software they have rights to. In some other cases the upstream is providing source code only and source distribution doesn't require including the text of the license.

Fedora Licensing Guidelines says: "if (and only if) the source package includes the text of the license(s) in its own file, then that file, containing the text of the license(s) for the package must be included in %doc". This can cause problems in some cases.


My questions are:

1. According to Fedora Licensing Guidelines, is it prohibited to include the text of the license within the binary RPM package if the source package does not include the text of the license?

2. Isn't redistributing binary RPMs without the license text included (in case the license requires that) considered as violation of the license?

3. What is the proper way of handling the case when upstream is rejecting requests to include the license text in their distribution, while they are requiring Fedora to include it?

(An example of an affected package is annox, which is currently in its review process: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=808768)

Thank you,
Mikolaj Izdebski
Red Hat
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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Trademarked items in a fedora package

Tom Callaway — 2012-05-07T14:53:17

Looks appropriate to me, thanks.

~tom

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[Fedora-legal-list] Trademarked items in a fedora package

Johannes Lips — 2012-05-07T13:59:11

Hello,

I am in the process of packaging up a JMapViewer [1], the
JMapViewer_src.jar inside of the release zip [2] file includes a little
bing.png which is used by some functions.
I already contacted upstream and there is no problem removing those
functions altogether, since it is fairly modular. I also already removed
the png and all relevant pieces of code in accordance to this guide [3],
since I thought it is appropriate in this case.
I just wanted to know if this is unnecessary and there is no problem in
shipping this picture or if the removal is right.

I hope I didn't forget anything,

Johannes


[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JMapViewer
[2]
http://svn.openstreetmap.org/applications/viewer/jmapviewer/releases/2011-02-19/JMapViewer.zip
[3]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:SourceURL#When_Upstream_uses_Prohibited_Code
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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] MP3

Tom Callaway — 2012-05-02T14:14:27

We'll revisit decoding in late 2015, barring sanity in US patent law
spontaneously appearing (or the Mayan apocalypse rendering the issue
irrelevant).

~tom

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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] hi Legal

2012-04-30T04:21:01

hi Legal make sure you take a look at this before you do anything else dont pussy out you can do it i know you can http://t.co/Cgj2ajdN

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[Fedora-legal-list] MP3

Orcan Ogetbil — 2012-04-29T02:40:19

What is the current situation with MP3 allowance in Fedora? I thought
2012 was the year when we could -at least- have not-patent-encumbered,
free MP3 _decoding_. Can you please update us on the latest status?

Thanks,
Orcan
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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Packaging oVirt generated source

Juan Hernandez — 2012-04-23T16:01:22

I think that all the code is marked LGPL, there is no other alternative.
Yaniv, can you confirm this?

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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Packaging oVirt generated source

Tom Callaway — 2012-04-23T15:20:03

Is _all_ code generated via Talend Open Studio automatically marked as
being LGPL, or is this a decision that the use generating the Java code
makes consciously?

~tom

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[Fedora-legal-list] Packaging oVirt generated source

Juan Hernandez — 2012-04-23T14:50:51

Hello,

We would like to package for fedora the Data Ware House component of
oVirt, which contains parts generated using Talend Open Studio (see [1]).

This tool allows the user to define graphically some data flows and
transformations and then generates Java code. The generated Java code
states in the header that the license is LGPL and the tool itself claims
to be open source using GPL v2 (see [2]).

Is it acceptable from the legal point of view to create a Fedora package
using the generated Java code as the source?

Thanks in advance,
Juan Hernandez

[1] http://www.talend.com
[2] http://www.talend.com/download.php
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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Making Infrastructure httpd logs public

Tom Callaway — 2012-04-17T17:57:37

As long as we're not somehow embedding any geo-ip information in those
hashes, I think we're okay.

~tom

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Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Making Infrastructure httpd logs public

Ian Weller — 2012-04-17T17:56:01

Assuming we treat the logs as described above:

Before example (private, on Fedora log servers):

66.391.22.111 - - [15/Apr/2012:04:02:56 +0000] "GET /static/css/fedora960-lang.css HTTP/1.0" 200 233 "http://start.fedoraproject.org/index.html.en" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:11.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0"

After example (available to public via statistics++ project):

c9326fa15a1d8a773386ddcdc16132f8 - - [15/Apr/2012:04:02:56 +0000] "GET /static/css/fedora960-lang.css HTTP/1.0" 200 233 "http://start.fedoraproject.org/index.html.en" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:11.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0"

Requests from the same IP address would have the same hash so that we
could run scripts that count unique visitors.

Re: [Fedora-legal-list] Making Infrastructure httpd logs public

Tom Callaway — 2012-04-17T17:36:50

Can you show me a hypothetical "before" and "after" example?

~tom

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[Fedora-legal-list] Making Infrastructure httpd logs public

Ian Weller — 2012-04-17T17:15:54

As part of the statistics++ project [1] it is Infrastructure's plan to
make data about visits to Fedora Project web servers public, in order to
automate the information made available on the Statistics wiki page.

The httpd logs currently contain personally-identifiable information:
the IP address the request originated from and the user agent header.

We think that at an absolute minimum we need to hash the IP address
(with a seed, obviously) and leave the user agent header as is. But we
wanted to make sure we got legal's opinion on this.

[1]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Ianweller/statistics_plus_plus