Free emulators that run free games
by Damian Yerrick
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
13 years, 5 months
Can dock-style applications be packaged?
by Michel Alexandre Salim
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
13 years, 5 months
a java license puzzler (not a fedora package though)
by Julius Davies
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/
13 years, 5 months
Third Party Infringement ?
by Tristan Santore
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
13 years, 5 months
How to determine Chinese patent expire date?
by Ding Yi Chen
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&l...
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
13 years, 5 months
Verifying Fedora from unofficial remixes that have removed the Fedora trademarks
by Jóhann B. Guðmundsson
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
13 years, 5 months
FFMpeg and Fedora
by Christopher Svanefalk
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)
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13 years, 5 months
