[Fedora-legal-list] Re: License of a file in espeak-ng
On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 02:36:59PM +0100, Ondřej Lysoněk wrote:
Great! So what shall I put to the License field in the spec file? It
says here [1] that the license should get a short name and be added to [2].
It might be appropriate to use the existing tag 'Copyright only' (see
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:CopyrightOnly?rd=Licensing/Copyr...) rather
than creating a new one. Maybe spot can comment.
Richard
>
> Thanks!
>
> [1]
>
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:LicensingGuidelines#Valid_Licens...
> [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main?rd=Licensing#Good_Licenses
>
> Ondřej Lysoněk
>
> On 12/21/2016 02:37 AM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 03:31:02PM +0100, Ondřej Lysoněk wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I'm packaging espeak-ng [1] and it includes a file which has a somewhat
> >> problematic license [2]. The license header in the file itself doesn't
> >> explicitly permit modification, however the file is reachable from a page
> >> saying that all the code listed there can be modified, if you send the
> >> improvements back to the author [3]. Can we use code like this in Fedora?
> >
> > I'd take the license at face value (including the appearance of having
> > been granted by Apple around 1991, where Turkowski evidently was
> > employed at that time) and I'd then apply the principle we've used for
> > similar informal licenses dating from around that time, that grants of
> > mere permission to "use" should be understood to cover (among other
> > things) modification, since there's a lot of general evidence that
> > this is what licensors from that time period meant. So that seems
> > okay.
> >
> > I would also ignore the arguably contradictory statement on
> > Turkowski's website, though I note the use of "should".
> >
> > The only thing that gives me a little pause is that it seems like all
> > the code he has on his website has essentially the same license as the
> > putative Apple license seen here, except that he changes 'Apple' to
> > 'I'. That could simply mean that he took the old Apple license and for
> > sentimental or other reasons used it with nonsubstantive alteration
> > for code he wrote later on. It certainly looks plausible that it
> > really was a bona fide Apple license, and the Apple license came
> > first.
> >
> > So, seems okay to me.
> >
> > Richard
> >
> >
> >> [1] https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/
> >> [2]
> >>
https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/blob/master/src/libespeak-ng/ieee80.c
> >> taken from
http://www.realitypixels.com/turk/opensource/ToFromIEEE.c.txt
> >> [3] http://www.realitypixels.com/turk/opensource/
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