legal January 2019

legal@lists.fedoraproject.org

8 participants
8 discussions

Sleepycat license with SaaS restriction
by Florian Weimer 08 Jul '25

08 Jul '25

cryptlib is licensed under the Sleepycat license with a SaaS restriction: “Note that decoupling the software from the user, for example by running in a SaaS configuration, does not exempt you from these requirements.” (Full text attached.) This was not part of the original Sleepycat license, so a new license tag is required. Maybe this license is not even free; this additional clause seems to be a restriction on use. But perhaps it is not so different from the AGPL. Thanks, Florian

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Henry Spencer's license
by Petr Šabata 06 Mar '23

06 Mar '23

Dear legal, While checking the contents of our `perl' package, I noticed the following: (...) /* NOTE: this is derived from Henry Spencer's regexp code, and should not * confused with the original package (see point 3 below). Thanks, Henry! */ /* Additional note: this code is very heavily munged from Henry's version * in places. In some spots I've traded clarity for efficiency, so don't * blame Henry for some of the lack of readability. */ /* The names of the functions have been changed from regcomp and * regexec to pregcomp and pregexec in order to avoid conflicts * with the POSIX routines of the same names. */ (...) * pregcomp and pregexec -- regsub and regerror are not used in perl * * Copyright (c) 1986 by University of Toronto. * Written by Henry Spencer. Not derived from licensed software. * * Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any * purpose on any computer system, and to redistribute it freely, * subject to the following restrictions: * * 1. The author is not responsible for the consequences of use of * this software, no matter how awful, even if they arise * from defects in it. * * 2. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented, either * by explicit claim or by omission. * * 3. Altered versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not * be misrepresented as being the original software. * **** Alterations to Henry's code are... **** **** Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, **** 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 **** by Larry Wall and others **** **** You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public **** License or the Artistic License, as specified in the README file. (...) You can see the whole file here: https://metacpan.org/source/SHAY/perl-5.20.1/regexec.c I looked but couldn't find any common name for this license of Henry's. Is it on our list? Is it free? What name should I use in the License tag? Thank you, Petr

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about openssl we may enable and build all elliptic curves on corp ?
by Sérgio Basto 05 Nov '22

05 Nov '22

Hello, I reopen or start thinking again on this question of enable elliptic curves of openssl [1] So going directly to the point, may I built all source of openssl in copr [2] ? or at least some other curves that fedora package don't ship? [1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1405843 [2] Version: 1.0.2k %global fips_version 2.0.14 I mean sources: http://ftp.o penssl.org/source/openssl-%{version}.tar.gz and http://ftp.openssl.org/s ource/openssl-fips-%{fips_version}.tar.gz Thanks , -- Sérgio M. B.

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transgrp license
by Jerry James 14 Feb '19

14 Feb '19

For many years now, the gap package has bundled 3 sets of data files describing mathematical structures (groups). I am working on updating the Fedora package to the latest release, version 4.10.0. In this version, those 3 sets of data files have been split out into separately distributed entities, with their own home pages and release schedules. They all grew new license terms, too. I am worried about the license on one of them, transgrp (see https://www.gap-system.org/Packages/transgrp.html) It reads: This library containing data and access functions, its parts are licensed in different ways. - In the belief that mathematical truth is universal and not owned or licenseable, the mathematical content can only be acknowledged: Groups of degree up to 15 are as described in Conway/Hulpke/McKay (LMS. Journal Comp. Math, Vol 1.) and the sources quoted therein. Groups of degree up to 30 were determined by Hulpke (J.Symb.Comp). Groups of degree 32 were determined by Cannon and Holt (Exp.Math.). Groups of degree 33-47 were determined by Holt. - The actual way of storing the groups and associated data, and the arrangement of the groups, is licensed under the artistic license 2.0: https://opensource.org/licenses/Artistic-2.0 If you distribute software that claims to use or include the GAP transitive groups library it must include the actual data lists verbatim. - The functions accessing the data files are licensed under GPL2 and under GPL3. I would call this license "Artistic 2.0 and (GPLv2 or GPLv3)", except that I am worried about the sentence that begins "If you distribute software...". That sentence refers to the data files. There is no code in them, just formal descriptions of mathematical structures. Is that sentence a problem? Thank you, -- Jerry James http://www.jamezone.org/

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Re: Can we please stop enforcing Signed-off-by commits?
by Miro Hrončok 21 Jan '19

21 Jan '19

On 17. 01. 19 12:59, Randy Barlow wrote: > On Thu, 2019-01-17 at 11:13 +0100, Miro Hrončok wrote: >> Why do Fedora upstreams enforce this? > > I enforce the DCO in Bodhi. I started doing it after attended a talk by > Richard Fontana where he suggested it as a way to be explicit about the > license of contributions (i.e., not just the license of the project). > My memory is now a bit hazy, but I think there was some discussion > about how many projects work under the assumption that the license of > contributions is equal to the license of the project (sometimes stated > as "license in, license out", but that most do not make this explicit. > The DCO explicitly states that the contribution itself is granted to > the project under the same license that the project uses. I'd be very interested to know how adding some random line to a commit message grants an explicit license according to something that is not even linked from the commit message :( CCing legal. -- Miro Hrončok -- Phone: +420777974800 IRC: mhroncok

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Mbrola voice files
by Tomáš Korbař 16 Jan '19

16 Jan '19

Hi, I'm currently packaging Mbrola speech synthetizer for Fedora and we ran into an issue. Is it legal to package Mbrola voice files which have this https://github.com/numediart/MBROLA-voices/blob/master/LICENSE.md license? If it is not, then is it legal to ask user if he/she wants to download them and with his/her consent install them? And then is it even allowed to package program into Fedora which is not useful without non-free files? Thanks for any help.

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Server Side Public License (SSPL) v1
by Tom Callaway 15 Jan '19

15 Jan '19

After review, Fedora has determined that the Server Side Public License v1 (SSPL) is not a Free Software License. It is the belief of Fedora that the SSPL is intentionally crafted to be aggressively discriminatory towards a specific class of users. Additionally, it seems clear that the intent of the license author is to cause Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt towards commercial users of software under that license. To consider the SSPL to be "Free" or "Open Source" causes that shadow to be cast across all other licenses in the FOSS ecosystem, even though none of them carry that risk. It is also worth nothing that while there is a draft for a "v2" of the SSPL: A) It is not final. B) It is not in use anywhere at this time (as far as we know). C) The intent of the v2 draft text is not changed from the v1 license currently in use. We have updated our "Bad License" list to include SSPLv1. No software under that license may be included in Fedora (including EPEL and COPRs). Thanks, Tom Callaway Fedora Legal

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Decompilers allowed
by jiri vanek 03 Jan '19

03 Jan '19

Hello! I recall decompilers were forbidden to be packed some long time ago, and in meantime this ban was lifted. Before packing few java decompilers (https://bitbucket.org/mstrobel/procyon/ and https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/tree/master/plugins/java-de…) I wish to verify allowness of decompilers. Thank you for confirmation J.

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legal January 2019