transgrp license
by Jerry James
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/
3 months, 1 week
Re: Can we please stop enforcing Signed-off-by commits?
by Miro Hrončok
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
4 months
Mbrola voice files
by Tomáš Korbař
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.
4 months, 1 week
Server Side Public License (SSPL) v1
by Tom Callaway
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
4 months, 1 week
