[Fedora-legal-list] README.openfwwf license? -- [[PkgWrangler] Review b43-openfwwf-5.2-2.1.el6 (ON_REVIEW) got new comment]

[Michal Schmidt]

On Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:44:38 -0500 John W. Linville wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 06:31:03PM +0300, Peter Lemenkov wrote:
> > Hello John!
> > 
> > I'm sure, that GPL does NOT cover the text of the README, since it
> > simply a dump of web-page, and I didn't think they licensed their
> > site contents under GPL :)
> > 
> > > Perhaps README.openfwwf needs to be removed or revised?
> > 
> > Although, I almost absolutely think that nobody will sue Redhat for
> > inclusion of  this text, I think, that properly re-licensing a
> > README is a generally good idea. At least we should ask upstream for
> > clarification - could you ask someone, who skilled enough in solving
> > these boring legal issues? I could contact them by myself, but I'n
> > not sure, what should I ask them. To send us e-mail with license
> > clarification or to add README (listed below) to their tarball.
> > 
> > Just for the reference - here is a full text of README
> > 
> > http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewvc/rpms/b43-openfwwf/devel/README.openfwwf?view=co
> > 
> > -- 
> > With best regards, Peter Lemenkov.
> 
> Peter, thanks for the quick reply!
> 
> Perhaps fedora-legal can provide useful advice?


I asked upstream:
[...]
> To make sure Fedora is not doing anything wrong, I'd like to ask
> you kindly to either:
>  a) confirm that you are fine with the contents of the webpage being
>     distributed under the terms of the GPLv2 (i.e. the same license as
>     OpenFWWF itself).
>     (Optionally, you could put the README file into the tarball in
>     the next release of OpenFWWF - other Linux distributions would
>     surely welcome it too.); or
>  b) let me know that you do not wish the text from your webpage to be
>     copied and redistributed. In this case Fedora will remove
>     README.openfwwf from the package as soon as possible.


I received a reply from OpenFWWF developer Francesco Gringoli:
> no problem for the content. And thanks to your message I discovered
> only now that the copyright message that you report in your web page
> 
>    (c) 2008 My Website. Design by NodeThirtyThree + Free CSS
>    Templates.  Edited by Lorenzo Nava
> 
> has nothing to do with our project ! it was the original copyright
> message from the cms we used.
> 
> Please feel free to copy the web page, but please do remove the
> copyright message from the ascii text you will distribute.
> 
> Many thanks to you,
> cheers,
> -Francesco

So we have the permission. We just need to remove the mistaken
copyright attribution.

Michal