Re: Policy change on emulators

[Andrew Lutomirski]

On May 3, 2016 12:07 PM, "Tom Callaway" <tcallawa(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  * Emulators which depend on firmware or ROM files to function may not be
>  included in Fedora, unless the copyright holder(s) for the firmware/ROM
>  files give clear permission for the firmware/ROM files to be distributed
>  (either under a Fedora permissible license or under the Fedora firmware
>  exception criteria). Note: This only covers the situation where an
>  emulator will not run at all without firmware/ROM files. For example,
>  emulators that compile and run, but ship with no game ROMs are not
>  covered by this rule.
>
>  * Emulators must not ship with any ROM files (e.g. games) unless those
>  ROM files are available under a Fedora permissible license and have been
>  built from source code in the Fedora buildsystem.
>
>  * Emulators must not point to any third-party sites which provide
>  firmware or ROM files that are distributed without the clear and
>  explicit permission of their copyright holders. 
Does this mean that, if we strip FreeDOS out of dosemu / dosemu2, we can
ship it and even point to a website with FreeDOS binaries?

AIUI the only problem with FreeDOS is that no one knows how to compile it
with a free software toolchain.  As far as I know, the binary is pretty
clearly redistributable.  (Hmm.  Could FreeDOS ship as a firmware blob?
That seems dubious to me.)

--Andy

Policy change on emulators

[Tom Callaway]

On 05/03/2016 03:14 PM, Andrew Lutomirski wrote:
>  Does this mean that, if we strip FreeDOS out of dosemu / dosemu2, we
> can
>  ship it and even point to a website with FreeDOS binaries?
>  
>  AIUI the only problem with FreeDOS is that no one knows how to compile
>  it with a free software toolchain.  As far as I know, the binary is
>  pretty clearly redistributable.  (Hmm.  Could FreeDOS ship as a firmware
>  blob?  That seems dubious to me.) 
Are the FreeDOS sources under a Fedora-acceptable license?

I would not consider FreeDOS to be firmware, thus, the firmware
exception would not apply.

~tom

==
Red Hat

Policy change on emulators

[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

On Tuesday, 03 May 2016 at 21:23, Tom Callaway wrote:
>  On 05/03/2016 03:14 PM, Andrew Lutomirski wrote:
>  > Does this mean that, if we strip FreeDOS out of dosemu / dosemu2, we can
>  > ship it and even point to a website with FreeDOS binaries?
>  > 
>  > AIUI the only problem with FreeDOS is that no one knows how to compile
>  > it with a free software toolchain.  As far as I know, the binary is
>  > pretty clearly redistributable.  (Hmm.  Could FreeDOS ship as a firmware
>  > blob?  That seems dubious to me.)
>  
>  Are the FreeDOS sources under a Fedora-acceptable license? 
A cursory look at their website suggests they're licensed under the GPL.
I haven't checked which version, exactly.

They say their reference C compiler is the Open Watcom C, which seems
to be distributed under this license:
ftp://ftp.openwatcom.org/pub/license.txt . The license seems complicated
and probably non-free in Fedora terms.

Regards,
Dominik
-- 
Fedora http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Rathann
RPMFusion http://rpmfusion.org
"Faith manages."
        -- Delenn to Lennier in Babylon 5:"Confessions and Lamentations"

Policy change on emulators

[Matthew Miller]

On Tue, May 03, 2016 at 03:23:45PM -0400, Tom Callaway wrote:
>  Are the FreeDOS sources under a Fedora-acceptable license? 
Probably needs review. It's mostly GPLv2, but some of the included
software has various other licenses. See
<http://www.freedos.org/software/?cat=util>;. I'm looking with the Fry
meme* at a couple that say "Source code available (open)".

* https://imgflip.com/s/meme/Futurama-Fry.jpg


-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;
Fedora Project Leader

Policy change on emulators

[Neal Gompa]

On Tue, May 3, 2016 at 5:17 PM, Matthew Miller <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>  On Tue, May 03, 2016 at 03:23:45PM -0400, Tom Callaway wrote:
> > Are the FreeDOS sources under a Fedora-acceptable license?
>
>  Probably needs review. It's mostly GPLv2, but some of the included
>  software has various other licenses. See
>  <http://www.freedos.org/software/?cat=util>;. I'm looking with the Fry
>  meme* at a couple that say "Source code available (open)".
>
>  * https://imgflip.com/s/meme/Futurama-Fry.jpg
>  
As far as I'm aware, all of the core of FreeDOS is GPLv2, but various
extra utilities may be under other licenses. Things that we can't
include are probably easy enough to remove.

The real problem is going to be building FreeDOS from source. As far
as I know, we don't have a FOSS compiler that can produce 16-bit
binaries. There is OpenWatcom, but its license is listed as one of the
bad ones. Anyone know anybody at Sybase/SAP would could fix this?
SAP appears to be the current copyright holder for the code, as they
acquired Sybase in 2012.





-- 
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!

Policy change on emulators

[Andrew Lutomirski]

On May 3, 2016 8:01 PM, "Neal Gompa" <ngompa13(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Tue, May 3, 2016 at 5:17 PM, Matthew Miller <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;
wrote:
>  > On Tue, May 03, 2016 at 03:23:45PM -0400, Tom Callaway wrote:
>  >> Are the FreeDOS sources under a Fedora-acceptable license?
>  >
>  > Probably needs review. It's mostly GPLv2, but some of the included
>  > software has various other licenses. See
>  > <http://www.freedos.org/software/?cat=util>;. I'm looking with the Fry
>  > meme* at a couple that say "Source code available (open)".
>  >
>  > * https://imgflip.com/s/meme/Futurama-Fry.jpg
>  >
>
>  As far as I'm aware, all of the core of FreeDOS is GPLv2, but various
>  extra utilities may be under other licenses. Things that we can't
>  include are probably easy enough to remove.
>
>  The real problem is going to be building FreeDOS from source. As far
>  as I know, we don't have a FOSS compiler that can produce 16-bit
>  binaries. There is OpenWatcom, but its license is listed as one of the
>  bad ones. Anyone know anybody at Sybase/SAP would could fix this?
>  SAP appears to be the current copyright holder for the code, as they
>  acquired Sybase in 2012.
>
>  
GCC and clang can both produce 16-bit binaries using a big hack.  The Linux
kernel does this for some early boot code.  I would be quite surprised if
it would work for dosemu.

I have a very very tenuous SAP contact, and I'll ask.  Don't hold your
breath.

--Andy

>  --
>  真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!
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