legal November 2010

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

21 participants
18 discussions

Free emulators that run free games
by Damian Yerrick 12 Nov '10

12 Nov '10

From http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/SoftwareTypes#Emulators > Most emulators (applications which emulate another platform) are > not permitted for inclusion in Fedora. The rule of thumb to follow > is: If it requires ROMs (or image files in any format) of > copyrighted or patented material to be useful (and the owners of > those copyrights and patents have not given their express written > permission), then it's not permitted. There exist emulators distributed under a free software license that run games designed for NES. There also exist games for NES that are free software and other games for NES that are proprietary yet licensed by the author for distribution over the Internet. So if the emulator is free, and the users have "express written permission" to make and distribute copies of the ROMs, would the emulators become acceptable for inclusion? If not, why not? The wiki page didn't link to any archived discussion on legal establishing the context behind this policy. In case you need specific examples to investigate, I'll provide some: FCEUX, an NES emulator under GPL <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCEUX> Concentration Room, an NES game under GPL <http://pineight.com/croom/> PDROMS.de, a collection of free software for NES and other redistributable NES ROM images <http://pdroms.de/files/nes/> -- Damian Yerrick

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Can dock-style applications be packaged?
by Michel Alexandre Salim 11 Nov '10

11 Nov '10

Dear legal team, Mamoru Tasaka raised a concern during the review of gnome-do-dockets that dock-style applications might be legally problematic: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=519009#c11 What is the current situation -- would it be alright to package gnome-do- docklets or should I cancel the review? Thanks, -- Michel Alexandre Salim Fedora Project Contributor: http://fedoraproject.org/ Email: salimma(a)fedoraproject.org | GPG key ID: 78884778 Jabber: hircus(a)jabber.ccc.de | IRC: hircus(a)irc.freenode.net () ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments

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a java license puzzler (not a fedora package though)
by Julius Davies 11 Nov '10

11 Nov '10

Cryptix32 is a very old java project. I think development stopped back in 2000. Nonetheless it's a real challenge for our license detection tools. I'm curious what you guys think, but don't waste time on it if you're busy. Here is the source file that's tripping up our tool. I've also included the project LICENSE.TXT for reference: http://juliusdavies.ca/cryptix-3.2.0/src/cryptix/provider/cipher/DES.java http://juliusdavies.ca/cryptix-3.2.0/LICENCE.TXT At the very bottom of the DES.java file I see a variation of BSD4 appearing for two different copyright holders (1995 and 1996), although it's missing the "non-endorsement" clause. Meanwhile interspersed in the code I see "Copyright 1997 All Rights Reserved" with no license and with again different copyright holders. Finally, the "LICENSE.TXT" that the project ships is BSD2 and shows yet again another copyright holder. If I go by Spot's "cascading licensing rules" tips on the wiki, I guess I would conclude it is the least open-source-compatible license possible, since 1997 is the latest date in the source file! 1997 - All Rights Reserved And yet all these mixed messages make me suspect the license is truly BSD2 as specified in LICENSE.TXT, just poorly specified. So I have three academic questions for the experts: 1. Without contacting the copyright holders, what would you conclude? BSD4 without non-endorsement? Or BSD2? Or just "All rights reserved" ? 2. Is this the kind of situation where contacting the copyright holders for clarification is necessary? 3. And, hypothetical question, what if contacting the copyright holders was impossible? -- yours, Julius Davies 250-592-2284 (Home) $ sudo apt-get install cowsay $ echo "Moo." | cowsay | cowsay -n | cowsay -n http://juliusdavies.ca/cowsay/

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Third Party Infringement ?
by Tristan Santore 08 Nov '10

08 Nov '10

Dear Legal Team + Spot, I seem to recall something about third party infringement, in the case of the wiki or other docs mentioning third party repositories, which contain codecs and such. Has anything changed in this respect ? Because I thought there was this legal issue in the US. I seem to recall much annoyance during FUDcon Berlin with regard to this topic, as the EU never had this problem. Would be nice if somebody could enlighten us all. Regards, Tristan -- Tristan Santore BSc MBCS TS4523-RIPE Network and Infrastructure Operations InterNexusConnect Mobile +44-78-55069812 Tristan.Santore(a)internexusconnect.net Former Thawte Notary (Please note: Thawte has closed its WoT programme down, and I am therefore no longer able to accredit trust) For Fedora related issues, please email me at: TSantore(a)fedoraproject.org

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How to determine Chinese patent expire date?
by Ding Yi Chen 05 Nov '10

05 Nov '10

Hi, I am currently doing ibus-table-chinese table License review. I am quite confuse when checking up PRC's Intellectual Property website. For example, Patent: 字根编码输入法及其设备 (also known as Zhengma 鄭碼) Applicant Id:891088512 http://211.157.104.87:8080/sipo/zljs/hyjs-yx-new.jsp?recid=CN89108851.2&lei… How do I tell whether the patent is granted, and, if yes, when will it expire? -- Ding-Yi Chen Software Engineer Internationalization Group Red Hat, Inc. Register now for Red Hat Virtual Experience, December 9. Enterprise Linux, virtualization, cloud, and more. http://www.redhat.com/virtualexperience

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Verifying Fedora from unofficial remixes that have removed the Fedora trademarks
by Jóhann B. Guðmundsson 02 Nov '10

02 Nov '10

Greetings. So I've been wondering how we can measure usage of Fedora vs unofficial remixes that have removed the Fedora Trademarks and while speaking with Seth regarding one of the ideas I had on how we could potentially implement this he pointed it out to me that we might be legally prohibited to gather this information with or without explicit user consent and forwarded me to you guys to straighten this out. So my question to you guys is. Is there anything legally prohibiting or restricting us on verifying and gather information if users are running Fedora or are running some unofficial remix that have removed the Fedora trademarks? If the answer is yes. What are we allowed to do? What are we not allowed to do? If we are not allowed to gather this data in anyway or form can the unofficial remix be legally bound to notify us of their existence and or provide us with that data so we could have some kind of an idea on how many remixes are out there which Fedora is "upstream" for? Regards JBG

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New Fedora website violates the logo usage guidelines(?)
by Christoph Wickert 01 Nov '10

01 Nov '10

Hello, I'm afraid that the the image with the tablet on the new Fedora website [1] violates the logo usage guidelines. As you can see the image is mirrored and so is the Fedora logo. But the Logo usage guidelines [2] clearly state "Never Stretch or Distort the Logo". Am I just picky or is it really a problem? Regards, Christoph P.S.: When you reply to this mail, please put my address CC as I'm not subscribed to the design or legal list. [1] https://fedoraproject.org/static/images/banners/tablet-banner.png [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Logo/UsageGuidelines

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FFMpeg and Fedora
by Christopher Svanefalk 01 Nov '10

01 Nov '10

Hello all, I have noticed that FFMpeg is not packaged with Fedora, but neither is it listed undert the Forbidden Items on the homepage. I just wanted to know if the Fedora devs have anything against it being packaged with Fedora, for example in use in conjunction with Gnash? I know that the project itself makes it clear that while they have not read any patents in the course of development, they openly admit that they do not know if they have been infringing anything, and issue a slight warning to commercial users of their software (http://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html) Kind regards, Christopher Svanefalk, Student, Univ. of Gothenburg (Dept. of Comp.Sci. and Engineering) _______________________________________________________________ Hitta kärleken med hjälp av vårt matchningstest - <a href="http://spray.matchaffinity.se/?mtcmk=614114">Klicka här!</a>

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legal November 2010