Is the Monkey's Audio license "good"?

[Neal Gompa]

Hello,

I recently read a thread about someone asking about adding the
Monkey's Audio codec to openSUSE and it having an odd license[1], and
I was thinking of bringing this to Fedora as well.

However, the license[2] is confusing, and I'm not sure if it
necessarily qualifies under Fedora's definition of good open source
software[3].

If it is, what kind of license tag should be used, or should a new one
be made for it? I'm leaning toward a new license tag, given that the
terms look "special".

Thanks in advance and best regards,
Neal

[1]: https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/[e-mail]/message/...
[2]: https://www.monkeysaudio.com/license.html
[3]: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/legal/license-approval/#_allowed_licens...

--
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!

[Kevin P. Fleming]

On 10/6/22 04:45, Neal Gompa wrote:
> If it is, what kind of license tag should be used, or should a new one
> be made for it? I'm leaning toward a new license tag, given that the
> terms look "special".

It's definitely 'special', including the last bit about removing copies 
of the code from your storage device(s) if you don't agree with the terms.

From an armchair-laywer's point of view, the rest of the terms look 
like MIT/BSD-style licensing. Free for use for any purpose, must 
acknowledge the usage of the software, no warranties.

[Peter Lemenkov]

Hello All!
I don't think it worths the efforts - to package original MAC sources.
I'd look at libdemac instead (clean-room developed decoder-only
library):

https://github.com/Rockbox/rockbox/tree/master/lib/rbcodec/codecs/demac

On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 11:46 AM Neal Gompa  wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I recently read a thread about someone asking about adding the
> Monkey's Audio codec to openSUSE and it having an odd license[1], and
> I was thinking of bringing this to Fedora as well.
>
> However, the license[2] is confusing, and I'm not sure if it
> necessarily qualifies under Fedora's definition of good open source
> software[3].
>
> If it is, what kind of license tag should be used, or should a new one
> be made for it? I'm leaning toward a new license tag, given that the
> terms look "special".
>
> Thanks in advance and best regards,
> Neal
>
> --
> 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!
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[Neal Gompa]

On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 2:51 PM Peter Lemenkov  wrote:
> Hello All!
> I don't think it worths the efforts - to package original MAC sources.
> I'd look at libdemac instead (clean-room developed decoder-only
> library):
>
> https://github.com/Rockbox/rockbox/tree/master/lib/rbcodec/codecs/demac

If at all possible, I'd like to have encoding too...

--
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!

[Richard Fontana]

(removing spdx-legal - this is off-topic for that list)

Hi Neal,

If it is foreseeable that this software would be proposed for
packaging in Fedora, our preference would be for you to submit an
issue to https://gitlab.com/fedora/legal/fedora-license-data .

Assuming this license was found to be acceptable for Fedora, under
current Fedora rules, you would need a new license tag to represent
this, normally by requesting inclusion in the SPDX license list.
However on an initial glance I am pretty skeptical that this license
meets Fedora licensing standards. In this case I might recommend
someone interested to try to get the upstream entity to switch to a
standard FOSS license.

Richard

On Thu, Oct 6, 2022 at 5:46 AM Neal Gompa  wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I recently read a thread about someone asking about adding the
> Monkey's Audio codec to openSUSE and it having an odd license[1], and
> I was thinking of bringing this to Fedora as well.
>
> However, the license[2] is confusing, and I'm not sure if it
> necessarily qualifies under Fedora's definition of good open source
> software[3].
>
> If it is, what kind of license tag should be used, or should a new one
> be made for it? I'm leaning toward a new license tag, given that the
> terms look "special".
>
> Thanks in advance and best regards,
> Neal