Licensing problems, solution strategy

Toshio Kuratomi a.badger at gmail.com
Wed Jul 29 16:00:08 UTC 2009


On 07/29/2009 08:18 AM, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> On 07/29/2009 11:13 AM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
>> I propose that we simply make the rollout a first priority.  If there
>> are licensing concerns which must be fixed to install the application
>> somewhere, then module owners must fix the licensing problems
>> themselves (or find someone to commit to doing it within a specific
>> time frame).  If we're able to wait for packaging until some later
>> time, then we install now, set a date where we will have all those
>> problems solved, and start the process of fixing them.
> 
> Paul, in most cases, this simply isn't possible. We cannot relicense
> bits that we are not the copyright holder for, and it usually isn't
> trivial to simply remove bits under an unclear or bad license. When it
> is, we're already just removing those bits.
> 
> We can't carry bits under bad licenses while we wait for someone to
> resolve the issue. That's simply a showstopper, sorry.
> 

In a few cases, the incompatibly licensed bits may, in fact be optional.
 (scribite had several choices of editors of which some were compatibly
licensed and some were incompatible).  In those cases we cansimply
remove the bits instead of waiting for upstream to do it for us.

In a few cases we may be able to replace the bits with bits that are
licensed appropriately.  That could be the case with the lightboxXL and
jquery.popeye code... I haven't looked at the replacement or the
original, though, so I don't know if they make any attempt at drop in
compatibility.

In the remaining cases, we'll need to get commitment from some php or
javascript programmers to do some work.  A cattlecall might work (we
have a lot of php and javascript developers using Fedora) but I've found
that those are most effective when there's specific tasks that you can
slot people into.  This would be an example of a good request for help:
"Fedora Docs needs a php-javascript programmer to port
zikula-module-mediaattach from using lightboxXL to jquery.popeye:
http://herr-schuessler.de/blog/jquerypopeye-an-inline-lightbox-alternative/"

In cases like this, it's also good to confirm with upstream that the
work you are proposing is acceptable to them... it's just that they
don't have the time to do it themselves.

-Toshio

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