9:30 a.m.
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/
9:42 a.m.
Gotta love fun academic wording. I think this is what they mean.
If software claims to use or include the GAP transitive groups library,
you cannot modify the datasets. If you modify the datasets, you can
no longer claim that software to be using or including the GAP
transitive groups library.
Can you reach out to that upstream and confirm this interpretation? If that
is correct, there is no issue with us including the library. This is
equivalent (albeit confusingly worded) to clauses in other FOSS licenses
which restrict use of trademarks in modified works.
I suspect my interpretation is correct, because of their wording around
"claims to use or include", but if they intend for this to be a more
general restriction on modification if their software is incorporated into
other applications or software compilations (e.g. Fedora), that would make
it non-free.
~tom
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 10:31 AM Jerry James <loganjerry(a)gmail.com> wrote:
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/
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9:59 a.m.
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 8:42 AM Tom Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat.com> wrote:
Gotta love fun academic wording. I think this is what they mean.
That seems like a plausible interpretation.
Can you reach out to that upstream and confirm this interpretation?
If that is correct, there is no issue with us including the library. This is equivalent
(albeit confusingly worded) to clauses in other FOSS licenses which restrict use of
trademarks in modified works.
I suspect my interpretation is correct, because of their wording around "claims to
use or include", but if they intend for this to be a more general restriction on
modification if their software is incorporated into other applications or software
compilations (e.g. Fedora), that would make it non-free.
I have sent a query upstream. I will report back when I get a reply.
Thank you, Tom!
--
Jerry James
http://www.jamezone.org/
11:30 a.m.
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 8:59 AM Jerry James <loganjerry(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I have sent a query upstream. I will report back when I get a reply.
I used your wording, Tom, to ask if this was the intended meaning:
"If software claims to use or include the GAP transitive groups
library, you cannot modify the datasets. If you modify the datasets,
you can no longer claim that software to be using or including the GAP
transitive groups library.”
Upstream replied:
Yes. You may compress (if lossless) but you may not devise a different
storage format, renumber points, rearrange groups, rename files,
reformat the lines, etc. (I do not care about changing CRLF or
character encoding.)
I hope this does not cause problems for packagers, as (I think) after
all you take the existing files.
I am taking the "Yes" to mean that we are good to go. Regards,
--
Jerry James
http://www.jamezone.org/
12:41 p.m.
Ugh. If they had stopped at Yes, we'd be fine, but this additional
information makes it seem like they do not permit modification of the
dataset at all, outside of compression, CRLF, or character encoding.
Can you ask them this, so that we don't have ambiguity here?
Do you grant permission to modify the datasets within the GAP transitive
group library (as permitted by the Artistic 2.0 License)? We do not
have any immediate need to do this, but a library without the permission
to modify is not considered a Free Software component. You can
require that modified versions do not refer to themselves by the name
given to the unmodified original work, this would not make the library
non-Free Software.
If they need to talk to me, I'm happy to engage.
~tom
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 12:31 PM Jerry James <loganjerry(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 8:59 AM Jerry James
<loganjerry(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I have sent a query upstream. I will report back when I get a reply.
I used your wording, Tom, to ask if this was the intended meaning:
> "If software claims to use or include the GAP transitive groups
> library, you cannot modify the datasets. If you modify the datasets,
> you can no longer claim that software to be using or including the GAP
> transitive groups library.”
Upstream replied:
Yes. You may compress (if lossless) but you may not devise a different
storage format, renumber points, rearrange groups, rename files,
reformat the lines, etc. (I do not care about changing CRLF or
character encoding.)
I hope this does not cause problems for packagers, as (I think) after
all you take the existing files.
I am taking the "Yes" to mean that we are good to go. Regards,
--
Jerry James
http://www.jamezone.org/
8:54 a.m.
Did you ever get a follow-up answer from them?
~tom
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 1:41 PM Tom Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat.com wrote:
Ugh. If they had stopped at Yes, we'd be fine, but this
additional
information makes it seem like they do not permit modification of the
dataset at all, outside of compression, CRLF, or character encoding.
Can you ask them this, so that we don't have ambiguity here?
Do you grant permission to modify the datasets within the GAP transitive
group library (as permitted by the Artistic 2.0 License)? We do not
have any immediate need to do this, but a library without the permission
to modify is not considered a Free Software component. You can
require that modified versions do not refer to themselves by the name
given to the unmodified original work, this would not make the library
non-Free Software.
If they need to talk to me, I'm happy to engage.
~tom
On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 12:31 PM Jerry James <loganjerry(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 8:59 AM Jerry James <loganjerry(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have sent a query upstream. I will report back when I get a reply.
>
> I used your wording, Tom, to ask if this was the intended meaning:
> > "If software claims to use or include the GAP transitive groups
> > library, you cannot modify the datasets. If you modify the datasets,
> > you can no longer claim that software to be using or including the GAP
> > transitive groups library.”
>
> Upstream replied:
>
> Yes. You may compress (if lossless) but you may not devise a different
> storage format, renumber points, rearrange groups, rename files,
> reformat the lines, etc. (I do not care about changing CRLF or
> character encoding.)
>
> I hope this does not cause problems for packagers, as (I think) after
> all you take the existing files.
>
>
> I am taking the "Yes" to mean that we are good to go. Regards,
> --
> Jerry James
> http://www.jamezone.org/
>
9:53 p.m.
On Tue, Jan 29, 2019 at 7:54 AM Tom Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat.com> wrote:
Did you ever get a follow-up answer from them?
Yes, I did. I'm terribly sorry for the delay. Other events overtook
me. Upstream's answer is:
Yes, of course. That is the reason for moving to the artistic license.
What I am licensing is not the mathematical data itself (which i
consider as unlicensable, as it is “truth”), but only the way how this
data is packed. Anyone may modify this data and distribute it, as long
as it does not claim to be the GAP transitive groups library.
(The modified library may claim to be compatible with the GAP library,
but then it is the modifiers duty to resolve this.)
That sounds to me like upstream is okay with the naming restriction
you suggested. I would be happier if upstream would simply strike the
confusing sentence from the license file, but I suppose this will have
to do.
--
Jerry James
http://www.jamezone.org/
9:46 p.m.
On Sun, Feb 3, 2019 at 8:53 PM Jerry James <loganjerry(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, I did. I'm terribly sorry for the delay. Other events
overtook
me. Upstream's answer is:
Yes, of course. That is the reason for moving to the artistic license.
What I am licensing is not the mathematical data itself (which i
consider as unlicensable, as it is “truth”), but only the way how this
data is packed. Anyone may modify this data and distribute it, as long
as it does not claim to be the GAP transitive groups library.
(The modified library may claim to be compatible with the GAP library,
but then it is the modifiers duty to resolve this.)
That sounds to me like upstream is okay with the naming restriction
you suggested. I would be happier if upstream would simply strike the
confusing sentence from the license file, but I suppose this will have
to do.
Are we okay to proceed with the transgrp review? Thank you,
--
Jerry James
http://www.jamezone.org/
5:11 a.m.
Yes. Their answer makes it clear they do not intend to restrict
modification in a way that would make it non free.
~tom
On Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 10:46 PM Jerry James <loganjerry(a)gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Feb 3, 2019 at 8:53 PM Jerry James
<loganjerry(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, I did. I'm terribly sorry for the delay. Other events overtook
> me. Upstream's answer is:
>
> Yes, of course. That is the reason for moving to the artistic license.
>
> What I am licensing is not the mathematical data itself (which i
> consider as unlicensable, as it is “truth”), but only the way how this
> data is packed. Anyone may modify this data and distribute it, as long
> as it does not claim to be the GAP transitive groups library.
> (The modified library may claim to be compatible with the GAP library,
> but then it is the modifiers duty to resolve this.)
>
>
>
> That sounds to me like upstream is okay with the naming restriction
> you suggested. I would be happier if upstream would simply strike the
> confusing sentence from the license file, but I suppose this will have
> to do.
Are we okay to proceed with the transgrp review? Thank you,
--
Jerry James
http://www.jamezone.org/
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