[Fedora-legal-list] ii package license

[Petr Šabata]

On Fri, Feb 03, 2012 at 01:08:13PM +0000, Tristan Santore wrote:
> Petr and Josh,
> 
> Spot made the following change in the guidelines.
> 
> *****
> 
> Works which are clearly marked as being in the Public Domain, and for
> which no evidence is known to contradict this statement, are treated in
> Fedora as being in the Public Domain, on the grounds that the intentions
> of the original creator are reflected by such a use, even if due to
> regional issues, it may not have been possible for the original creator
> to fully abandon all of their their copyrights on the work and place it
> fully into the Public Domain. If you believe that a work in Fedora which
> is marked as being in the Public Domain is actually available under a
> copyright license, please inform us of this fact with details, and we
> will immediately investigate the claim.
> 
> *****
> 
> #!/bin/sh
> 
>      2 # ----------------------------------------------------
> 
>      3 # Nico Golde <nico at ngolde.de>
> 
>      4 # License: do whatever you want with this code
> 
>      5 # Purpose: locate new queries for the ii irc client
> 
>      6 # ----------------------------------------------------
> 
> I interpret the above statement just as such. Technically, I assume you
> could even re-license it on the original copyright holders behalf, as
> the copyright holder invites you to do with it as you please.
> 
> Of course, Spot is the one who strangles the legal folks in his spare
> time. So, he should be able to choke out a more elaborate answer, as
> there is probably some US legal sillyness, which prevents people from
> using common sense.
> 
> I should add further, the above mentioned changes in the guidelines were
> made with the approval of the board and the legal geniuses.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Tristan

Tristan,

this sounds reasonable.

However, after a brief discussion with upstream, I decided not to
ship query.sh at the moment as it's just optional documentation.
The original author mentioned he might relicense it to WTFPL
in the future.

I'll re-add it if spot confirms it to be Public domain or if
we decide to include it as a special case in our licenses list
(like some other packages, e.g. diffmark).

Regards,
Petr
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