legal February 2009

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

19 participants
27 discussions

xBill legal opinion required
by Andrea Musuruane 16 Feb '09

16 Feb '09

Hi all, I'd like to now if xBill is suitable for inclusion in Fedora: http://www.xbill.org/ License, as stated in the man entry, is GPL (no version specified). My concerns regard the use of various logos in the game. Also note that this game has been packaged until 2001 in Red Hat. Regards, Andrea Musuruane.

2 2

APSL 1.0
by Richard W.M. Jones 16 Feb '09

16 Feb '09

APSL 1.0 is listed in Bad Licenses. Is this because it is non-free, or because it was deprecated and replaced (latest version of the license is APSL 2.0) ? I had a look at the license text[1] and it seems like clause 2.1 would make it non-free. But I'm no expert on this stuff ... [1] http://www.opensource.apple.com/apsl/1.0.txt Rich. -- Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat http://et.redhat.com/~rjones virt-top is 'top' for virtual machines. Tiny program with many powerful monitoring features, net stats, disk stats, logging, etc. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top

2 2

package with data file from unicode.org
by Christian Krause 15 Feb '09

15 Feb '09

Hi, I'm currently preparing a package ("anki") for inclusion which has one file which falls under the "UNICODE, INC. LICENSE AGREEMENT - DATA FILES AND SOFTWARE" license available here: http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html#Exhibit1 . Otherwise the package contains only GPLv3+ source. I have two questions: 1. What would be the correct License: entry in the spec file? 2. Is it necessary to provide the full text of this license? The original source only mentions the URL above. If yes: in both src.rpm and the binary rpm? Best regards, Christian

2 2

libzdb - A small, fast, and easy to use database API
by Bernard Johnson 09 Feb '09

09 Feb '09

Can I get someone to chime in on the license questions raised here: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=474044

1 0

What are the implications of a license which is GPL incompatible?
by Richard W.M. Jones 08 Feb '09

08 Feb '09

I've read the FAQ https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/FAQ#What_does_it_mean_when_a_licen… but I'm unclear what it means if a license is *IN*compatible with the GPL. As an example, suppose I have a program which is GPLv2+, and it requires a library which is (for example) APSL2.0. Is the linking permitted? Can I distribute the result as a binary (with an offer of source) or do end-users have to link it themselves? Is there a difference between dynamic and static linking? More generally about the licenses with "NO" in the GPL* Compat columns here, what does that stop me from doing? http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Software_License_List Rich. -- Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat http://et.redhat.com/~rjones virt-p2v converts physical machines to virtual machines. Boot with a live CD or over the network (PXE) and turn machines into Xen guests. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-p2v

2 1

policy on shipping/using flags
by Roozbeh Pournader 07 Feb '09

07 Feb '09

I recently found that Deluge is using country flags to indicate the location of bittorrent peers. Flags are cute and nice of course (and a mental exercise), but are geopolitical hot spots. Upstream didn't like the concern, calling some people (including me?) "crazy ideologists". But the Fedora maintainer (Peter Gordon) fixed the bug in Rawhide (but we're still shipping flags in F9 and F10): https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=479265 But this is not why I'm writing. I'm writing because during the report, I found that we really don't have any official policy on flags. All I found in the wiki was what I had written myself a while ago, here, which is just based on my own experience as an i18n guy: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Languages#I_wish_to_use_my_country.27s_flag_t… But we really need a policy. And I thought this list is the best forum to get it into shape. The history is like this: With RHL 8.0, Red Hat decided to remove the Taiwan/Republic of China flag from KDE because of sensitivities/legal requirements of mainland/People's Rebublic of China. That created some public unease, including people stopping to use RHL because of that. Red Hat went a bit further of course, and removed all national flags in a later version. This is not restricted to Red Hat of course. Microsoft is usually in the spotlight for such geopolitical concerns: On geopolitical issues resulting in a worse user experience for timezone selection: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679.aspx On swastika symbols in Japanese fonts causing user outrage (the characters were in Unicode at U+534D and U+5350): http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/dec03/12-12FontLetter.mspx These questions remain. Sorry for being a bit forward looking, but I would hate to revisit the issue later: * What is the exact policy for Fedora? Why? Is it because of Red Hat's liability or is there other reasons too? * How serious is shipping flags? Should they be removed as soon as they are discovered? For example, should Deluge remove them from F9 and F10 as well? * Should country flags be avoided at all costs, or is it just the association of countries/territories/languages with flags that should be avoided? For example, is it OK to use an icon showing three flags (of say, US, Italy, and France) to indicate a locale/language selection application? * What about organization/regional/political/historical/religious/linguistic flags? Examples: UN's flag (presently used as the default icon for System > Administration > Language in F10), Mississippi's flag, the LGBT flag, Hezollah's flag, the Confederate flag, the Jain flag, the Nazi flag, the Tibet flag, and the Esperanto flag. All of these could be controversial. * What about political symbols (including the stuff you see in coats of arms or in the middle of flags)? For example, is it OK to use the lebanese cedar to refer to an input method for Lebanese Arabic or use the Tajikistani crown to refer to the Tajik language? * What about flags used for edutainment purposes? For example, is it OK to ship an educational game that teaches kids about country flags or historical flags? Is it OK to use a flag for country/language selection in a game UI to be used by kids who can't read yet (but may be able to recognize flags for their country/language)? * Presently, the Unicode consortium is considering a proposal to encode various symbols (called emoji) used in Japanese cellphones in the Unicode Standard. This very large set includes flags of a few countries, like the flag of the People's Republic of China: http://www.unicode.org/~scherer/emoji4unicode/snapshot/utc.html#e-4E5 [warning: hundreds of small icons on the page] >From what I can tell, the proposal has a very high chance of acceptance, and those flags will become Unicode characters. When fonts we ship start to include glyphs for such flags, what do we do? Do we remove them from the fonts when shipping them? Thanks for reading until here, Roozbeh

2 2

Does "X is completely free" cut it as acceptable for "Public Domain" ?
by Caolán McNamara 06 Feb '09

06 Feb '09

Well, actually the original Swedish text is "Synonymerna är helt fria" Source: http://lexin2.nada.kth.se/synpairs.xml (see top for that release notice) Project: http://lexin2.nada.kth.se/synlex.html English Paper about it: http://www.nada.kth.se/theory/projects/infomat/rapporter/kannrosell05.pdf C.

1 0

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

legal February 2009