The CVC3 project [1] has a license [2] that is mostly New BSD (no advertising), but differs from it in a few ways. In particular, I am concerned about clause #3. Is this license acceptable for Fedora? Thank you.
[1] http://www.cs.nyu.edu/acsys/cvc3/ [2] http://www.cs.nyu.edu/acsys/cvc3/doc/LICENSE.html
On Wed, 2008-06-11 at 14:48 -0600, Jerry James wrote:
The CVC3 project [1] has a license [2] that is mostly New BSD (no advertising), but differs from it in a few ways. In particular, I am concerned about clause #3. Is this license acceptable for Fedora?
Hmm. I need to double check with the lawyers, but I suspect it is. Can you email Clark Barrett and see if he is willing to give you (assuming you'd be the Fedora maintainer) written permission to use the CVC3 "trademark" with Fedora's modifications, past/present/future, as needed, or if he would need to approve each modification before we could apply it, in order to use the "CVC3" name?
Thanks,
~spot
Tom "spot" Callaway:
Can you email Clark Barrett and see if he is willing to give you (assuming you'd be the Fedora maintainer) written permission to use the CVC3 "trademark" with Fedora's modifications, past/present/future, as needed, or if he would need to approve each modification before we could apply it, in order to use the "CVC3" name?
If he's not willing to grant such permission, perhaps it'd be acceptable to just rename the package (e.g., "cvc3mod"), and clearly stating in the description that it's a _derivative_ from CVC3 and thus _not_ necessarily the official "cvc3". If that's not enough, the executable program could be renamed, but then install a symlink from "cvc3" to it. That way, programs that expect its "old" name would keep working.
--- David A. Wheeler
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 7:38 PM, David A. Wheeler dwheeler@dwheeler.com wrote:
Tom "spot" Callaway:
Can you email Clark Barrett and see if he is willing to give you (assuming you'd be the Fedora maintainer) written permission to use the CVC3 "trademark" with Fedora's modifications, past/present/future, as needed, or if he would need to approve each modification before we could apply it, in order to use the "CVC3" name?
If he's not willing to grant such permission, perhaps it'd be acceptable to just rename the package (e.g., "cvc3mod"), and clearly stating in the description that it's a _derivative_ from CVC3 and thus _not_ necessarily the official "cvc3". If that's not enough, the executable program could be renamed, but then install a symlink from "cvc3" to it. That way, programs that expect its "old" name would keep working.
--- David A. Wheeler
Here is the response I got from Clark. I'm pasting it in rather than attaching his email, because his email contained the MIME-encoded patches I sent to him, making the entire email rather large. I'll send the entire email to anyone who needs it. The "option 4" to which Clark refers is what David suggested, using a changed name in Fedora.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I had not thought about this particular problem when I used this license. I will have to think about whether to change the license, but for now, I think option 4 is most in the spirit of what we are trying to do.
I suggest you call it something that makes it clear you have only made minor changes, like cvc3+patches_for_fedora or something equally transparent. The idea is that anyone can take CVC3 and do whatever they like with it. But if you do change it, that change needs to be reflected somehow in the way you refer to it. You may use this email to justify including the name "cvc3" in what you choose to call it.
Long term, I think the best solution would be to invite you to help us synchronize your changes with the main source, acknowledge you as a developer, and then distribute the rpm from the cvc3 web site. Let me know if you would be interested in this. I am hoping to push out a new release by the end of the summer. That would be a good time to consider it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've got to think about what to call it, maybe cvc3-fedora, but given a suitable name, am I okay to proceed with submission of this package?
Incidentally, it is in fact necessary to patch this package. There are multiple causes of build failures on Fedora 9, including some GCC 4.3 issues and a doxygen-spawned "dot" process that consumes all memory and dies.
Thank you,
I've got to think about what to call it, maybe cvc3-fedora, but given a suitable name, am I okay to proceed with submission of this package?
I suggest not including "fedora" in the name. The changes aren't unique to fedora (gcc 4.3, doxygen crashing dot), and this is not a fedora-unique application program.
Good names are tricky to find. How about cvc3-mod or cvc3-patched?
--- David A. Wheeler
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 9:09 PM, David A. Wheeler dwheeler@dwheeler.com wrote:
I suggest not including "fedora" in the name. The changes aren't unique to fedora (gcc 4.3, doxygen crashing dot), and this is not a fedora-unique application program.
Good names are tricky to find. How about cvc3-mod or cvc3-patched?
Upstream doesn't seem to care. I think I like cvc3-patched a little better. Thanks for the suggestion.
So can I proceed? What do I put in the License field of the spec file?
On Wed, 2008-06-18 at 10:17 -0600, Jerry James wrote:
On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 9:09 PM, David A. Wheeler dwheeler@dwheeler.com wrote:
I suggest not including "fedora" in the name. The changes aren't unique to fedora (gcc 4.3, doxygen crashing dot), and this is not a fedora-unique application program.
Good names are tricky to find. How about cvc3-mod or cvc3-patched?
Upstream doesn't seem to care. I think I like cvc3-patched a little better. Thanks for the suggestion.
So can I proceed? What do I put in the License field of the spec file?
I hate to say this, but please hold off on this. I'm still discussing this one with RH Legal.
~spot
On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 3:01 PM, Tom spot Callaway tcallawa@redhat.com wrote:
Hmm. I need to double check with the lawyers, but I suspect it is. Can you email Clark Barrett and see if he is willing to give you (assuming you'd be the Fedora maintainer) written permission to use the CVC3 "trademark" with Fedora's modifications, past/present/future, as needed, or if he would need to approve each modification before we could apply it, in order to use the "CVC3" name?
I sent email to Clark last night asking this question, with no response so far. I'll let you know when I get an answer. Thank you!
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David A. Wheeler -
Jerry James -
Tom Callaway