[Fedora-legal-list] scid legal opinion required

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On Sat, 2009-01-10 at 22:26 +0300, Mikhail Kalenkov wrote:
> Hi all,
> I'd like to know if scid is suitable for inclusion in Fedora
> 
> http://scid.sourceforge.net/
> 
> License, as stated in the COPYNG file, is GPL. Tarball includes some
> nonGPL staff
> (opening books) that can be removed without great losses to package.
> 
> But also scid includes some nonfree (?) Nalimov code which is
> important for me. File COPING says about Nalimov code the following
> 
> ************************
> Please note: although there is no explicit copyright notice in the
> tablebase decoding code, all rights are reserved by its author
> Eugene Nalimov and you should ask for permission before using it.
> He has granted permission for its distribution in Scid, and out of
> courtesy I ask that if you make use of the tablebase code outside
> of Scid, please ask Eugene first. His email address is at the end of
> the file src/egtb/probe.txt.
> ************************
> 
> What do you think about Nalimov code? I am sure that this code is not
> accepted in Fedora, but RPMFusion guys asked me to clarify that
> question here.

Well, what I would do is to send Eugene Nalimov an email asking him for
the licensing terms for his tablebase decoding code. Specifically, we
want to know what the terms are for:

* use
* modification
* redistribution

For sanity sake, suggesting the GPL would also be a good idea.

~spot