license for Life Lexicon included in golly

[Eric Smith]

On 14-DEC-2010, I wrote asking about the license for the Life Lexicon 
that is included in golly.  The license is:

This lexicon is copyright © Stephen Silver, 1997-2005. It may be 
freely copied
    and/or modified as long as due credit is given. This includes not 
just credit
    to those who have contributed in some way to the present version 
(see above),
    but also credit to those who have made any modifications.

It was pointed out that this license does not explicitly grant 
distribution rights.

I have been unable to contact Mr. Silver. However, I posted to the 
golly-test mailing list, and got the reply below from Tom Rokicki, one 
of the golly authors.  Is this satisfactory?  I suspect that it is not, 
but I'd like to have a semi-official opinion on it before I ask Tom to 
pester Mr. Silver about a license change.

Assuming that the email below isn't sufficient, and assuming that Mr. 
Silver is willing to change the license, would a chnage from "It may be 
freely copied and/or modified..." to "It may be freely copied, 
distributed, and/or modified..." result in the license being 
acceptable?  I'd prefer not to go through this process more than once.

Thanks!
Eric

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2011 09:52:11 -0800
Message-ID: 
Subject: Fwd: Strange entry in the lexicon!
From: Tom Rokicki 
To: [e-mail]
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Here's the original request and response. If this is insufficient,
I can ask Stephen for something, but I'm not sure what
exactly. Is there a standard form/request we use in such
cases?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stephen Silver 
Date: Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 3:00 PM
Subject: Re: Strange entry in the lexicon!
To: Tom Rokicki
> Now, Andrew T and I have got a new Life program coming out;
> would it be okay if we included the Lexicon (subject to all the
> conditions specified, such as giving appropriate credit etc.?)

Yes, sure.

--
Stephen Silver

[Tom Callaway]

On 02/07/2011 02:03 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
> I have been unable to contact Mr. Silver. However, I posted to the 
> golly-test mailing list, and got the reply below from Tom Rokicki, one 
> of the golly authors.  Is this satisfactory?  I suspect that it is not, 
> but I'd like to have a semi-official opinion on it before I ask Tom to 
> pester Mr. Silver about a license change.

It is not satisfactory, it merely confirms the existing terms. It is
worth noting that I also attempted to contact Mr. Silver via email in
December and have yet to receive a response.
> Assuming that the email below isn't sufficient, and assuming that Mr. 
> Silver is willing to change the license, would a chnage from "It may be 
> freely copied and/or modified..." to "It may be freely copied, 
> distributed, and/or modified..." result in the license being 
> acceptable?  I'd prefer not to go through this process more than once.

Yes, that would do the trick.

~tom

==
Fedora Project

[Eric Smith]

Tom Callaway wrote:
> It is not satisfactory, it merely confirms the existing terms.

It does a little more than that; it confims that the authors of golly 
have permission to distribute it with golly.  Unfortunately, it doesn't 
confirm that anyone else has distribution permission, or that anyone has 
permission to distribute it without golly.

Anyhow, I'll ask Tom to request that Mr. Silver either make the proposed 
change, or license under another acceptable content license, such as 
CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Thanks!
Eric