Sun Microsystems, Inc. Binary Code License Agreement

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

Figlet relicensed from AFL to BSD-3

[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

Intellectual disobedience

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

--

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

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

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

zlib specification license

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

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.

E' arrivato

filebench: bison generated parser + CDDL

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,
--

-- 
Martin Steigerwald - teamix GmbH - http://www.teamix.de
gpg: 19E3 8D42 896F D004 08AC A0CA 1E10 C593 0399 AE90

filebench: bison generated parser + CDDL

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,
--

-- 
Martin Steigerwald - teamix GmbH - http://www.teamix.de
gpg: 19E3 8D42 896F D004 08AC A0CA 1E10 C593 0399 AE90

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

I have some gplv3 autoconf m4 files in my project.

These files exist solely to tell the compiler how to find the include files and 
what compiler options to use, and tell the linker how to find the libraries, 
and what linker options to use.

None of the code in these m4 files exists at runtime.

I wonder if inclusion of these files in my project forces  me to upgrade to 
gplv3+ from gplv2+, which I would rather not do unless necessary.

Can I say that since this code does not exist at runtime, the use of these m4 
files is like the use of a compiler or linker?

If I used a v3 compiler or linker in my project, that would not force me to 
make my project v3. Since all versions of the GPL allow "use" almost without 
restriction.

This is really saying that since these files are used at compile/link time my 
ultimate result is not a derived work, even partially of these files.

Also the author has placed a gplv3 special exception that allows "the output 
of autoconf" to be propagated. But by the argument above, perhaps this 
exception is not really necessary.

However, it would be the gplv3 that allows me to redistribute these files.

How does one say in a debian/copyright file that is gplv3+ that allows one to 
distribute the source package, but gplv2+ that allows the binary package to be 
distributed?

I am thinking about packaging these m4 files under gplv3 separately, so that my 
package would not have to distribute under gplv3.

--

-- 
Paul Elliott                               1(512)837-1096
pelliott <at> BlackPatchPanel.com               PMB 181, 11900 Metric Blvd Suite J
http://www.free.blackpatchpanel.com/pme/   Austin TX 78758-3117

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