[Fedora-legal-list] Critical Mass Modula-3 license

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On 09/16/2009 02:49 PM, Jerry James wrote:
> I'm chasing down dependency chains for a program analysis tool that
> I'd like to see in Fedora.  At the bottom of one chain, I found a
> component that is written in Modula-3!  The documentation for that
> component states that program development and testing has been done
> with the Critical Mass Modula-3 compiler, which is distributed under 2
> licenses:
> 
> http://www.opencm3.com/COPYRIGHT-CMASS
> http://www.opencm3.com/COPYRIGHT-DEC
> 
> Are those licenses acceptable for Fedora?  (Not that I'm at all sure I
> want to try to maintain a Modula-3 package, but if the licenses are
> okay, I'll give it a shot.)

Same license, different copyright holders. The license is non-free. One
of the copyright holders (Critical Mass) now seems to be called IGEN
Corporation, so they might be reachable to resolve the licensing issue.
The other (Digital Electronics Corp) is now HP, but I wouldn't even know
where within HP to start asking them about relicensing that code.

The main problem is this clause:

    LICENSEE hereby grants to CRITICAL MASS a
    non-exclusive, non-transferable, royalty free right to use,
    modify, reproduce and distribute with the right to sublicense at
    any tier, any improvements, enhancements, extensions, or
    modifications that LICENSEE make to SOFTWARE, provided such are
    returned to CRITICAL MASS by LICENSEE.

It is unclear, but RH Legal feels that this means that in order to
use/modify/redistribute this code, you need to send all changes back to
the copyright holder (which is very murky, given that the copyright has
changed hands several times for both listed copyright holders).

If the requirement to "return" changes to the copyright holder was
waived, the license might be acceptable. Let me know if you want me to
reach out to IGEN and HP on this.

~spot