[Fedora-legal-list] jogl licensing

[Tom Callaway]

On 12/14/2010 09:57 AM, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
> So ages ago the jogl package was removed from the distribution due to
> licensing issues.  At the time the indicated reason was that jogl was
> under the SGI Free Software License B, which as we all know was finally
> cleaned up a couple of years ago.  However, it doesn't seem to be that
> simple, because the source contains the following:
> 
> ** NOTE:  The Original Code (as defined below) has been licensed to Sun
> ** Microsystems, Inc. ("Sun") under the SGI Free Software License B
> ** (Version 1.1), shown above ("SGI License").   Pursuant to Section
> ** 3.2(3) of the SGI License, Sun is distributing the Covered Code to
> ** you under an alternative license ("Alternative License").  This
> ** Alternative License includes all of the provisions of the SGI License
> ** except that Section 2.2 and 11 are omitted.  Any differences between
> ** the Alternative License and the SGI License are offered solely by Sun
> ** and not by SGI.
> 
> Which begs the question of whether this alternative license can still be
> upgraded to FreeB 2.0 (MIT) and thus be included in Fedora again.
> Section 8 still applies, which allows the license to be updated by SGI,
> but I don't know how that interacts with the removed sections.

The removed sections are the patent grant and the indemnity sections.
Section 8 is still intact, and the relicensing permission is reasonably
clear that anything not waived in the relicensing is still applicable
from SGI, so IMHO, it is safe to migrate this code to FreeB 2.0 (MIT).

I would strongly encourage jogl's upstream to make this change so that
this horrible horrible license can die.

~tom
==
Fedora Project