amap license

[Michal Ambroz]

Hello dear list members,
I would like to ask whether the amap license and amap program itself would be eligible to
be included in the Fedora.
Tool is opensource with license based on GPLv2 with additional restrictions, but I am not
sure whether it is free enough
to create amap package for Fedora.
http://freeworld.thc.org/thc-amap/

Thank you
Michal Ambroz


------------------------- License ----------------------

                        LICENCE FOR AMAP (all version)
                     by van Hauser <vh(a)thc.org&gt;


1. This software comes with no warrenty or promised features. If it works
for you - fine. It just comes "AS-IS", which means as a bunch of bits and
bytes.

2. Anyone may use this software and pass it on to other persons or companies
as long as it is not charged for! (except for a small transfer/medium fee)

3. This tool may *NOT* be used for illegal purpose. Please check the law
which affects your doing. I will have got no liability for any damage etc.
done with this tool legally or illegaly.

4. If this tool is used while providing a commercial service (e.g. as part
of a penetration test) the report has to state the tools name and version,
and additionally the authors (van Hauser and Dj RevMoon) and the distribution
homepage (http://www.thc.org).

5. If this tool is used within a commercial tool (being called out of such a
tool or being incorporated), the report generated has to state the tools name
and version, and additionally the authors (van Hauser and Dj RevMoon) and the
distribution homepage (http://www.thc.org). A tool is "commercial" if it either
costs money to purchase it, has a license fee, and/or has costs for upgrades.
Additionally, a commercial version or license etc. must be made available to
the author free of charge.

6. In all other respects the GPL 2.0 applies

[Tom Callaway]

On 01/06/2010 08:10 PM, Michal Ambroz wrote:
>  Hello dear list members,
>  I would like to ask whether the amap license and amap program itself would be eligible to
> be included in the Fedora.
>  Tool is opensource with license based on GPLv2 with additional restrictions, but I am not
> sure whether it is free enough
>  to create amap package for Fedora.
>  http://freeworld.thc.org/thc-amap/ 
Unfortunately, the amap license is non-free. The additional restrictions
make it non-free (not to mention that they clearly conflict with the GPLv2).

It is not acceptable for inclusion in Fedora under that license.

~spot

[Julius Davies]

Hi, Tom,

Limiting ourselves to copyright (ignoring patents and trademarks and
other IP), in general would you say a copyright license must either?

1.  Be "Free" according to FSF:  http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

or

2.  Be "Open Source" according to OSI:  http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd



If yes, I have three more questions:

a.  What is currently the most restrictive license in Fedora that
satisfies either of those definitions?

b.  What is currently the least restrictive license in Fedora that
satisfies either of those?

c.  Are there any examples of Fedora-acceptable licenses that do not
satisfy either of those definitions?


I'm curious to know the limits of open source licenses:  what might
theoretically be the maximum and minimum (in terms of restrictions and
conditions) that fall in the "open source" category of copyright
licenses.  Do these hypothetical boundary licenses already exist, e.g.
can we get more restrictive than some kind of GPLv2/Knuth hybrid, and
can we get less restrictive than 2-clause BSD-with-disclaimers?

I'm presuming those BSD disclaimers actually make it less restrictive
than public domain, since these disclaimers seem to remove some
possible default restrictions.


Very tired... saw the 10:30PM - 1:15AM avatar showing last night, and
I have kids (early mornings)!  So this email probably makes no sense.
I apologize for that.


yours,

Julius




On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 8:36 AM, Tom "spot" Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat.com&gt;
wrote:
>  On 01/06/2010 08:10 PM, Michal Ambroz wrote:
> > Hello dear list members,
> > I would like to ask whether the amap license and amap program itself would be
> eligible to be included in the Fedora.
> > Tool is opensource with license based on GPLv2 with additional restrictions, but I am
> not sure whether it is free enough
> > to create amap package for Fedora.
> > http://freeworld.thc.org/thc-amap/
>
>  Unfortunately, the amap license is non-free. The additional restrictions
>  make it non-free (not to mention that they clearly conflict with the GPLv2).
>
>  It is not acceptable for inclusion in Fedora under that license.
>
>  ~spot
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  Fedora-legal-list mailing list
>  Fedora-legal-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-legal-list
>  


-- 
yours,

Julius Davies
250-592-2284 (Home)
250-893-4579 (Mobile)
http://juliusdavies.ca/logging.html

[Tom Callaway]

On 01/07/2010 01:40 PM, Julius Davies wrote:
>  Hi, Tom,
>  
>  Limiting ourselves to copyright (ignoring patents and trademarks and
>  other IP), in general would you say a copyright license must either?
>  
>  1.  Be "Free" according to FSF:  http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
>  
>  or
>  
>  2.  Be "Open Source" according to OSI:  http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd
It depends upon what context you're asking that question.

If you mean "Does a copyright license have to be either "Free" according
to the FSF definition of "Free" or "Open Source" according to the OSI
definition of "Open Source" in order to be acceptable for Fedora", then
the answer is no.

In Fedora, a copyright license _MUST_ be considered "Free" according to
the FSF definition of "Free". Whether or not a license is considered
"Open Source" by the OSI is irrelevant to Fedora.

The reasoning for this is that while effectively all "Free" copyright
licenses meet the criteria to be considered "Open Source", the inverse
is not true. Historically, some rather poorly worded licenses have been
OSI approved as "Open Source", most notably, the Artistic 1.0 license.

***

Now, if you're asking that in the larger realm of the known universe,
and mean: Aren't all copyright licenses either "Free" or "Open
Source",
the answer is obviously no. :)

I will assume you meant the former rather than the latter, and answer
your additional questions.

>  If yes, I have three more questions:
>  
>  a.  What is currently the most restrictive license in Fedora that
>  satisfies either of those definitions? 
Impossible to say, because different licenses place different
restrictions on different rights. There are a few licenses which are
considered free only because of the clairifed intent of the copyright
holder (the Sendmail license is a notable example where it is only
considered Free when the copyright holder is Eric Allman, Sendmail Inc.
or the University of California).

>  b.  What is currently the least restrictive license in Fedora that
>  satisfies either of those? 
Well, the obvious answer is Public Domain. But seeing as how Public
Domain is not a true copyright license (it is an abandonment of copyright).

There are many examples of very permissive licenses, which Fedora labels
as "Copyright only", see:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/CopyrightOnly

Alternately, the MIT license (and its many, many, many variants) are
considered to be extremely permissive.

>  c.  Are there any examples of Fedora-acceptable licenses that do not
>  satisfy either of those definitions? 
As stated above, all Fedora-acceptable software and font licenses must
be considered "Free" by the FSF definition. Our licensing requirements
for "content" and "firmware" are slightly different, documented here:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#CodeVsContent
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Content_Licenses
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Binary_Firmware

>  I'm curious to know the limits of open source licenses:  what
> might
>  theoretically be the maximum and minimum (in terms of restrictions and
>  conditions) that fall in the "open source" category of copyright
>  licenses.  Do these hypothetical boundary licenses already exist, e.g.
>  can we get more restrictive than some kind of GPLv2/Knuth hybrid, and
>  can we get less restrictive than 2-clause BSD-with-disclaimers? 
It is possible to be more restrictive than GPLv2, GPLv3 is in several
ways more restrictive. Again, it depends on which specific areas of
rights we are focusing on. Use is the only right automatically granted
(in the United States), so a license could be more/less restrictive in
the generic areas of:

* distribution
* modification
* patents
* sublicensing
* etc, etc, etc

I'm vastly generalizing when I say that "Use" is automatically granted,
there are additional narrowing factors there, although, most of them
make a license non-Free (but not necessarily, non-Open Source, although,
usually).

>  I'm presuming those BSD disclaimers actually make it less
> restrictive
>  than public domain, since these disclaimers seem to remove some
>  possible default restrictions. 
It is not possible to be less permissive than code in the public domain,
because that code is no longer copyrighted (in most jurisdictions). By
the very nature of public domain, all copyrighted code (regardless of
license) is more restrictive, because while you may be able to do
_ANYTHING_ in accordance with the terms of the copyright license, you
cannot claim copyright on the whole work with the first copyrightable
change, which you can do with public domain code.

Hope that helps. :)

~spot

[Richard Fontana]

On Thu, Jan 07, 2010 at 02:09:13PM -0500, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
>  On 01/07/2010 01:40 PM, Julius Davies wrote:
>  > Hi, Tom,
>  > 
>  > Limiting ourselves to copyright (ignoring patents and trademarks and
>  > other IP), in general would you say a copyright license must either?
>  > 
>  > 1.  Be "Free" according to FSF: 
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
>  > 
>  > or
>  > 
>  > 2.  Be "Open Source" according to OSI: 
> http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd
>  
>  It depends upon what context you're asking that question.
>  
>  If you mean "Does a copyright license have to be either "Free" according
>  to the FSF definition of "Free" or "Open Source" according to the
> OSI
>  definition of "Open Source" in order to be acceptable for Fedora", then
>  the answer is no.
>  
>  In Fedora, a copyright license _MUST_ be considered "Free" according to
>  the FSF definition of "Free". Whether or not a license is considered
>  "Open Source" by the OSI is irrelevant to Fedora.
>  
>  The reasoning for this is that while effectively all "Free" copyright
>  licenses meet the criteria to be considered "Open Source", the inverse
>  is not true. Historically, some rather poorly worded licenses have been
>  OSI approved as "Open Source", most notably, the Artistic 1.0 license. 
Interestingly, Artistic 1.0 was effectively grandfathered into the
Debian Free Software Guidelines, of which the Open Source Definition
is a derivative. 

As I recall, there are several OSI-approved licenses that we have
determined do not meet the free software definition. Others include
certain of the corporate 'vanity licenses' that were in vogue some
years ago.

There was one case where the OSI rejected a license as failing to meet
the OSD where we determined that it met the free software
definition. I forget which license that was.

- Richard

dnswalk license

[Michal Ambroz]

Hello dear list members,

I would like to ask whether the dnswalk license would be
eligible to be included in the Fedora.

sf.net site states it is Artistic License, but the artistic license is not included or
referenced in the tarball.

Tool is perl script with this text in a readme:
        This program may be freely distributed, as long as this notice
and documentation are distributed with the program.  This program is
released as-is, with no warranty expressed or implied.  Some assembly
required, contents may settle during shipment.  This program can be
found at http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~barr/dnswalk/

Thank you
Michal Ambroz

dnswalk license

[Tom Callaway]

On 01/14/2010 12:38 PM, Michal Ambroz wrote:
>  Hello dear list members,
>  
>  I would like to ask whether the dnswalk license would be
>  eligible to be included in the Fedora.
>  
>  sf.net site states it is Artistic License, but the artistic license is not included or
> referenced in the tarball.
>  
>  Tool is perl script with this text in a readme:
>          This program may be freely distributed, as long as this notice
>  and documentation are distributed with the program.  This program is
>  released as-is, with no warranty expressed or implied.  Some assembly
>  required, contents may settle during shipment.  This program can be
>  found at http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~barr/dnswalk/ 
That license is non-free, it does not give permission to modify. You
should contact the upstream and see if they will relicense it under a
Free license from our list: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing

~spot