6:49 p.m.
Hi,
I posted the following recently to the Fedora legal list, but it was pointed out by Fabio
Valentini that the legal list is sort of obscure so I'm reposting it here in the hope
that it may reach more interested people:
CC0 has been listed by Fedora as a 'good' license for code and content
(corresponding to allowed and allowed-content under the new system).
We plan to classify CC0 as allowed-content only, so that CC0 would no
longer be allowed for code. This is a fairly unusual change and may
have an impact on a nontrivial number of Fedora packages (that is not
clear to me right now), and we may grant a carveout for existing
packages that include CC0-covered code. While we are moving towards a
process in which license approvals are going to be done primarily
through the Fedora license data repository on gitlab.com, I wanted to
note this on the mailing list because of the significance of the
change.
The reason for the change: Over a long period of time a consensus has
been building in FOSS that licenses that preclude any form of patent
licensing or patent forbearance cannot be considered FOSS. CC0 has a
clause that says: "No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are
waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this
document." (The trademark side of that clause is nonproblematic from a
FOSS licensing norms standpoint.) The regular Creative Commons
licenses have similar clauses.
A few months ago we approved ODbL as a content license; this license
contained its own "no patent license" clause. Up till this time, the
official informal policy of Fedora has been that 'content' licenses
must meet the standards for 'code' licenses except that they can
prohibit modification. The new Fedora legal documentation on the
license approval categories will note that allowed-content licenses
can also have a no-patent-license clause. In a FOSS development and
distribution context, the absence of patent licensing for non-software
material is of significantly less concern than the software case.
6:20 a.m.
Richard Fontana wrote:
We plan to classify CC0 as allowed-content only, so that CC0 would
no
longer be allowed for code. This is a fairly unusual change and may
have an impact on a nontrivial number of Fedora packages (that is not
clear to me right now), and we may grant a carveout for existing
packages that include CC0-covered code.
Sorry, but I have a hard time taking this seriously. Considering the history
(see below), it sounds absolutely ridiculous to me.
To give some historical context: There was and is still a lot of software
out there sloppily declaring itself as "public domain", which, in many
jurisdictions, is not even legally allowed. So Fedora has over the years
tried to approach those upstreams convincing them to adopt an all-permissive
license instead. And, there comes the point: Fedora has EXPLICITLY SUGGESTED
CC0 to those upstreams as a legally sound alternative to use!
So now, Fedora wants to ban software for using a license that Fedora itself
has been EXPLICITLY RECOMMENDING to use for years. This is going to hurt the
reputation of the Fedora Project big time, in addition to making us
potentially lose hundreds of packages (whose authors might not be willing to
relicense their code AGAIN, after Fedora tells them that the license they
recommended is suddenly no longer acceptable; after all, authors who put
their code under "public domain" or CC0 are authors who do not want to spend
time on licenses or even on their software at all, they just want to drop it
out there and let people do what they want with it).
This is going to be a huge fiasco.
And what do you suggest the software use instead? Hopefully not the vague
WTFPL? (I wonder whether the claim that the WTFPL implies a patent license
would stand in court.) MIT-0 sounds like the most reasonable to me:
https://spdx.org/licenses/MIT-0.html
The reason for the change: Over a long period of time a consensus
has
been building in FOSS that licenses that preclude any form of patent
licensing or patent forbearance cannot be considered FOSS. CC0 has a
clause that says: "No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are
waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this
document." (The trademark side of that clause is nonproblematic from a
FOSS licensing norms standpoint.)
It is unfortunate that this is only coming up now, after years of Fedora
itself recommending CC0.
But then fdk-aac-free is also not allowed in Fedora and should be removed:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/FDK-AAC
| 3. NO PATENT LICENSE
|
| NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED LICENSES TO ANY PATENT CLAIMS, including without
| limitation the patents of Fraunhofer, ARE GRANTED BY THIS SOFTWARE
| LICENSE. Fraunhofer provides no warranty of patent non-infringement with
| respect to this software.
|
| You may use this FDK AAC Codec software or modifications thereto only for
| purposes that are authorized by appropriate patent licenses.
(That is not the only clause whose freeness was disputed, but if that clause
is unacceptable for CC0, I do not see why it would be acceptable for FDK-
AAC.)
The regular Creative Commons licenses have similar clauses.
So, e.g., CC-BY-SA is also not acceptable for software? (I have seen that
used for code by some people who, I assume, liked the idea of copyleft, but
not the GNU project. I do not know whether any of that code has ever made it
into Fedora though.)
Kevin Kofler
8:56 a.m.
Kevin Kofler via devel wrote:
But then fdk-aac-free is also not allowed in Fedora and should be
removed:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/FDK-AAC
| 3. NO PATENT LICENSE
|
| NO EXPRESS OR IMPLIED LICENSES TO ANY PATENT CLAIMS, including without
| limitation the patents of Fraunhofer, ARE GRANTED BY THIS SOFTWARE
| LICENSE. Fraunhofer provides no warranty of patent non-infringement with
| respect to this software.
|
| You may use this FDK AAC Codec software or modifications thereto only
| for purposes that are authorized by appropriate patent licenses.
(That is not the only clause whose freeness was disputed, but if that
clause is unacceptable for CC0, I do not see why it would be acceptable
for FDK- AAC.)
https://gitlab.com/fedora/legal/fedora-license-data/-/issues/52
Kevin Kofler
10:40 a.m.
On Sat, Aug 6, 2022 at 11:21 AM Kevin Kofler via devel
<devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote:
But then fdk-aac-free is also not allowed in Fedora and should be
removed:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/FDK-AAC
I have this (very vague) recollection that the
fdk-aac-free package had the patented
algorithm sources stripped before import
into Fedora (some 3rd parties have the
full set of codecs in their package repos).
The original license has been maintained,
of course.
11:18 a.m.
On Sat, Aug 6, 2022 at 11:42 AM Gary Buhrmaster
<gary.buhrmaster(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Aug 6, 2022 at 11:21 AM Kevin Kofler via devel
<devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> But then fdk-aac-free is also not allowed in Fedora and should be removed:
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/FDK-AAC
I have this (very vague) recollection that the
fdk-aac-free package had the patented
algorithm sources stripped before import
into Fedora (some 3rd parties have the
full set of codecs in their package repos).
The original license has been maintained,
of course.
That is correct. The clause is considered a no-op and the license
isn't approved for use outside of this case.
--
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!
12:34 p.m.
New subject: CC0 reclassified as "not allowed" for code (reposted from legal
list)
[re FDK-AAC, which has a no-patent-licenses clause]
That is correct. The clause is considered a no-op and the license
isn't approved for use outside of this case.
I think it is correct to bring FDK-AAC up in this discussion. For consistency with
treatment of CC0, I believe we have to move it to 'not-allowed' formally, but we
can devise some sort of exception that will keep the specific current use case in place.
Richard
12:49 p.m.
On Sat, Aug 6, 2022, 10:35 AM Richard Fontana <rfontana(a)redhat.com> wrote:
[re FDK-AAC, which has a no-patent-licenses clause]
> That is correct. The clause is considered a no-op and the license
> isn't approved for use outside of this case.
I think it is correct to bring FDK-AAC up in this discussion.
I would agree that has some use as an example.
For consistency with treatment of CC0, I believe we have to move it to
'not-allowed' formally, but we can devise some sort of
exception that will
keep the specific current use case in place.
So, as I understand it, in the case of
fdk-aac-free, the packager
(with assistance of legal?) reviewed
the code and stripped the patented codecs.
Using that example, packagers wanting to
continue to use CC0 would need to perform
such a review, strip as needed, and need
legal review?
Is that what you are suggesting?
1:37 p.m.
New subject: CC0 reclassified as "not allowed" for code (reposted from legal
list)
Using that example, packagers wanting to
continue to use CC0 would need to perform
such a review, strip as needed, and need
legal review?
Is that what you are suggesting?
That solution probably wouldn't make sense in typical cases involving CC0 covering
code. However, I could imagine making package-specific determinations, possibly involving
legal review in some cases, that particular uses of CC0 were tolerable, based on the
nature of what is actually covered by CC0.
To give you a concrete example which is pretty clear: If I understand correctly, the REUSE
initiative currently recommends, questionably in my view, that files assumed to be
obviously noncopyrightable should be given a CC0 designation. [1] Given the kinds of files
they have in mind, I could imagine giving packages an exemption from the prohibition on
CC0 to the extent that such projects were merely attempting to be REUSE-conformant --
somewhat similar to Fedora's continued blanket tolerance of CC0 for nonsoftware
"content". An example of such a package, gi-docgen, was raised in the Fedora
legal gitlab issue thread on CC0. [2] That doesn't seem ideal to me. Of course a
better solution would be for REUSE to not insist on CC0 as the license to use in this
situation (or, even better, to drop the insistence on having a license notice on
trivial-content files at all) (see [3]).
[1] https://reuse.software/faq/#uncopyrightable
[2] https://gitlab.com/fedora/legal/fedora-license-data/-/issues/32#note_1045...
[3 https://github.com/fsfe/reuse-docs/issues/62#issuecomment-1200305896
Richard
6:01 a.m.
New subject: CC0 reclassified as "not allowed" for code (reposted from legal
list)
Wait, getting a legal opinion on code is an option? Even if the code is
GPLv3 but fedora removes some part of it out of fear it *might* infringe
patent.
Cheers,
Marcus
On 8/6/22 19:49, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Aug 6, 2022, 10:35 AM Richard Fontana <rfontana(a)redhat.com> wrote:
>
> [re FDK-AAC, which has a no-patent-licenses clause]
>
> > That is correct. The clause is considered a no-op and the license
> > isn't approved for use outside of this case.
>
> I think it is correct to bring FDK-AAC up in this discussion.
>
>
> I would agree that has some use as an example.
>
> For consistency with treatment of CC0, I believe we have to move
> it to 'not-allowed' formally, but we can devise some sort of
> exception that will keep the specific current use case in place.
>
>
> So, as I understand it, in the case of
> fdk-aac-free, the packager
> (with assistance of legal?) reviewed
> the code and stripped the patented codecs.
>
> Using that example, packagers wanting to
> continue to use CC0 would need to perform
> such a review, strip as needed, and need
> legal review?
>
> Is that what you are suggesting?
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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2:10 p.m.
Neal Gompa wrote:
That is correct. The clause is considered a no-op and the license
isn't approved for use outside of this case.
I do not see how FDK-AAC minus known patented code (i.e., fdk-aac-free) is
any different there than some random CC0-covered software. In both cases,
there is a blanket disclaimer of patent grants, without any evidence that
there are actually any patents affected by the disclaimer.
Even if Fraunhofer gave you a specific list of patents, you can take their
word for it, but then by the same standard you should also trust a statement
like:
https://github.com/nemequ/hedley/issues/52#issuecomment-1035648021
I do not see why we need to give FDK-AAC a blanket pass just because a team
at Red Hat decided to work on it first and send the licence for legal review
afterwards (which is entirely the wrong order in which to do things).
(There are also other clauses of dubious freeness in that license, the
exclusion of patent grants is not even the worst IMHO.)
Kevin Kofler
2:20 p.m.
Kevin Kofler via devel wrote:
I do not see why we need to give FDK-AAC a blanket pass just because
a
team at Red Hat decided to work on it first and send the licence for legal
review afterwards (which is entirely the wrong order in which to do
things).
PS: Especially now that Fedora ships a stripped FFmpeg, there is really no
good reason to not do the stripping of encumbered parts of the AAC spec on
the LGPL-licensed built-in FFmpeg AAC codec instead. That would also make it
easier to switch to the unstripped FFmpeg AAC codec from RPM Fusion. (Right
now, things like GStreamer use fdk-aac-free directly, not through FFmpeg, so
switching to FFmpeg AAC is not a simple drop-in replacement.)
Kevin Kofler
3:42 p.m.
New subject: CC0 reclassified as "not allowed" for code (reposted from legal
list)
On Sat, Aug 6 2022 at 09:20:14 PM +0200, Kevin Kofler via devel
<devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote:
PS: Especially now that Fedora ships a stripped FFmpeg, there is
really no
good reason to not do the stripping of encumbered parts of the AAC
spec on
the LGPL-licensed built-in FFmpeg AAC codec instead. That would also
make it
easier to switch to the unstripped FFmpeg AAC codec from RPM Fusion.
(Right
now, things like GStreamer use fdk-aac-free directly, not through
FFmpeg, so
switching to FFmpeg AAC is not a simple drop-in replacement.)
Seems like a pretty good point? Maybe time for Fedora Legal to
reevaluate ffmpeg's AAC implementation?
12:30 p.m.
New subject: CC0 reclassified as "not allowed" for code (reposted from legal
list)
To give some historical context: There was and is still a lot of
software
out there sloppily declaring itself as "public domain", which, in many
jurisdictions, is not even legally allowed. So Fedora has over the years
tried to approach those upstreams convincing them to adopt an all-permissive
license instead. And, there comes the point: Fedora has EXPLICITLY SUGGESTED
CC0 to those upstreams as a legally sound alternative to use!
This (last part) is correct. Fedora (and also I, personally) advocated for the adoption of
CC0 in the past (for me, this was sometime prior to the past ten years I think). I think
that ought to be borne in mind in considering how the change of policy is implemented.
So, e.g., CC-BY-SA is also not acceptable for software?
That is currently the case: CC-BY-SA is classified as "allowed-documentation"
and "allowed-content". I think in the past Fedora (like a number of other orgs
in FOSS, I think) discouraged its use for software, but this was not really because of the
"no patent licenses" clause, which has mostly been overlooked.
Richard
10:43 a.m.
On Fri, Aug 5, 2022 at 7:49 PM Richard Fontana <rfontana(a)redhat.com> wrote:
Hi,
I posted the following recently to the Fedora legal list, but it was pointed out by Fabio
Valentini that the legal list is sort of obscure so I'm reposting it here in the hope
that it may reach more interested people:
CC0 has been listed by Fedora as a 'good' license for code and content
(corresponding to allowed and allowed-content under the new system).
We plan to classify CC0 as allowed-content only, so that CC0 would no
longer be allowed for code. This is a fairly unusual change and may
have an impact on a nontrivial number of Fedora packages (that is not
clear to me right now), and we may grant a carveout for existing
packages that include CC0-covered code. While we are moving towards a
process in which license approvals are going to be done primarily
through the Fedora license data repository on gitlab.com, I wanted to
note this on the mailing list because of the significance of the
change.
The reason for the change: Over a long period of time a consensus has
been building in FOSS that licenses that preclude any form of patent
licensing or patent forbearance cannot be considered FOSS. CC0 has a
clause that says: "No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are
waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this
document." (The trademark side of that clause is nonproblematic from a
FOSS licensing norms standpoint.) The regular Creative Commons
licenses have similar clauses.
A few months ago we approved ODbL as a content license; this license
contained its own "no patent license" clause. Up till this time, the
official informal policy of Fedora has been that 'content' licenses
must meet the standards for 'code' licenses except that they can
prohibit modification. The new Fedora legal documentation on the
license approval categories will note that allowed-content licenses
can also have a no-patent-license clause. In a FOSS development and
distribution context, the absence of patent licensing for non-software
material is of significantly less concern than the software case.
Have you considered reaching out to the Creative Commons group to
revise the license to drop that language from CC0? It seems silly to
drop acceptance of the license without at least engaging to correct
the problem.
--
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!
12:32 p.m.
New subject: CC0 reclassified as "not allowed" for code (reposted from legal
list)
Have you considered reaching out to the Creative Commons group to
revise the license to drop that language from CC0? It seems silly to
drop acceptance of the license without at least engaging to correct
the problem.
My understanding from something Kat Walsh said is that this is an issue Creative Commons
plans to look into later this year. Creative Commons has known about the issue (the notion
that there is a FOSS norms problem, that is) since at least ~2013, when it withdrew its
submission of CC0 for OSI approval due to objections voiced by many over the
no-patent-licenses feature.
Richard
1:22 a.m.
Youtube TWIL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGJlQPUmVoo&list=PLbFVcOQ-YH_LRP687N0...
Brodie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYOl20SCdr8
On 8/6/22, Richard Fontana <rfontana(a)redhat.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I posted the following recently to the Fedora legal list, but it was pointed
> out by Fabio Valentini that the legal list is sort of obscure so I'm
> reposting it here in the hope that it may reach more interested people:
>
> CC0 has been listed by Fedora as a 'good' license for code and content
> (corresponding to allowed and allowed-content under the new system).
> We plan to classify CC0 as allowed-content only, so that CC0 would no
> longer be allowed for code. This is a fairly unusual change and may
> have an impact on a nontrivial number of Fedora packages (that is not
> clear to me right now), and we may grant a carveout for existing
> packages that include CC0-covered code. While we are moving towards a
> process in which license approvals are going to be done primarily
> through the Fedora license data repository on gitlab.com, I wanted to
> note this on the mailing list because of the significance of the
> change.
>
> The reason for the change: Over a long period of time a consensus has
> been building in FOSS that licenses that preclude any form of patent
> licensing or patent forbearance cannot be considered FOSS. CC0 has a
> clause that says: "No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are
> waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this
> document." (The trademark side of that clause is nonproblematic from a
> FOSS licensing norms standpoint.) The regular Creative Commons
> licenses have similar clauses.
>
> A few months ago we approved ODbL as a content license; this license
> contained its own "no patent license" clause. Up till this time, the
> official informal policy of Fedora has been that 'content' licenses
> must meet the standards for 'code' licenses except that they can
> prohibit modification. The new Fedora legal documentation on the
> license approval categories will note that allowed-content licenses
> can also have a no-patent-license clause. In a FOSS development and
> distribution context, the absence of patent licensing for non-software
> material is of significantly less concern than the software case.
> _______________________________________________
> devel mailing list -- devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
> To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
> Fedora Code of Conduct:
> https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> List Archives:
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>
4:44 a.m.
New subject: CC0 reclassified as "not allowed" for code (reposted from legal
list)
On 06/08/2022 01:49, Richard Fontana wrote:
CC0 has been listed by Fedora as a 'good' license for code
and content
(corresponding to allowed and allowed-content under the new system).
Fedora has enforced this CC0 for many years and now it is "not allowed".
This is so ridiculous.
This is a fairly unusual change and may
have an impact on a nontrivial number of Fedora packages (that is not
clear to me right now), and we may grant a carveout for existing
packages that include CC0-covered code.
Maybe the legal team should have done some investigation before banning
the CC0 license?
--
Sincerely,
Vitaly Zaitsev (vitaly(a)easycoding.org)
11:56 a.m.
On Sun, Aug 7, 2022 at 05:46 Vitaly Zaitsev via devel <
devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org> wrote:
On 06/08/2022 01:49, Richard Fontana wrote:
> CC0 has been listed by Fedora as a 'good' license for code and content
> (corresponding to allowed and allowed-content under the new system).
Fedora has enforced this CC0 for many years and now it is "not allowed".
This is so ridiculous.
> This is a fairly unusual change and may
> have an impact on a nontrivial number of Fedora packages (that is not
> clear to me right now), and we may grant a carveout for existing
> packages that include CC0-covered code.
Maybe the legal team should have done some investigation before banning
the CC0 license?
Here is the difference between what people think law is and what it really
means. In law you can have 30 lawyers look at a license and say we think
it’s ok. Then 10 years later they can look at the same license and say no
it won’t work in this case. The reasons being that law is not static. Court
cases in related or different fields will change how many things are seen.
Law is not computer code nor is it ruled by logic. It is ruled by the
hearts and wills of millions of different things and will change over time
constantly.
So saying oh you should have looked at it more doesn’t matter. At that time
many different groups said the same thing and all felt if something went to
court it would past muster. Now they don’t. Such is life
--
Sincerely,
Vitaly Zaitsev (vitaly(a)easycoding.org)
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Stephen Smoogen, Red Hat Automotive
Let us be kind to one another, for most of us are fighting a hard battle.
-- Ian MacClaren
4:06 p.m.
Richard Fontana wrote:
We plan to classify CC0 as allowed-content only, so that CC0 would
no
longer be allowed for code.
One more concern I see is that, since CC0 by design does not require
attribution, there is actually no way to know that the package does not
contain unattributed CC0 code that was unilaterally relicensed by a third
party.
Kevin Kofler
6:33 p.m.
New subject: CC0 reclassified as "not allowed" for code (reposted from legal
list)
Kevin Kofler wrote:
One more concern I see is that, since CC0 by design does not require
attribution, there is actually no way to know that the package does not
contain unattributed CC0 code that was unilaterally relicensed by a third
party.
That is true [1] although the point generalizes to noncompliant but undetected uses of
code under other licenses Fedora considers problematic (but which have attribution-like
provisions). I think this is probably a fairly small risk, and not a reason not to
reclassify CC0 from being fully "allowed".
[1] Although I think you can read the CC0 fallback license as not allowing such unilateral
relicensing.
Richard
617
days inactive
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19 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
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Gary Buhrmaster -
Kevin Kofler -
Luna Jernberg -
Marcus Müller -
Michael Catanzaro -
Neal Gompa -
Richard Fontana -
Stephen Smoogen -
Vitaly Zaitsev