On Fri, 18 Dec 2015 23:36:59 +0100 Christian Hofstaedtler wrote: > * Francesco Poli <[email protected]> [151218 23:17]: > > On Thu, 17 Dec 2015 01:15:50 +0100 Christian Hofstaedtler wrote: > > > > [...] > > > I don't really see how any of the quoted text makes generator.c > > > non-free; you certainly don't provide additional explanation. > > > > The quoted text in the original report seems to be the entire license > > grant for ruby-2.2.3/ext/json/generator/generator.c > > From the look of the placement of the grant, this certainly can't be > the entire grant for the given file.
Sorry, I was not clear. Please let me try again.
What I meant is that the quoted text seems to be the entire license
grant for some work copyrighted by Unicode, Inc. and that generator.c
seems to include or be derived from this Unicode work.
It seems that there are no additional permissions granted for this
Unicode work.
Actually, by looking at generator.c and the placement of the grant, it
really looks like the quoted license terms hold for some Unicode work
that was incorporated in generator.c; in order words, generator.c seems
to be derived, in part, from some work under the Unicode terms.
This is worrisome, since, as I said, the Unicode terms do *not*
grant any permission to modify the Unicode work.
>
> > If this is the case, then, at the very least, it lacks any permission
> > to modify the file (thus failing DFSG#3).
> > Moreover, the license grant seems to attempt to restrict use to
> > "products supporting the Unicode Standard" (thus possibly failing
> > DFSG#6).
>
> This is not how I read the grant. I understand "to make copies of
> this file in any form for internal or external distribution as long
> as this notice remains attached" to allow us to make copies in
> whatever form, possibly incomplete or with supplemental information.
> (It does not say anything about not modifying the contents.)
If it does not say anything about modifying or not modifying the
content, then, by default, we have no permission to modify.
That's how current copyright laws work in basically all jurisdictions
(unfortunately).
>
> I'd agree that the grant is not very clear.
Indeed, and, when in doubt, we cannot rely on an optimistic and
stretched interpretation that dreams about untold permissions...
We should seek clarification (if the copyright holders actually wanted
the work to be DFSG-free and just forgot to grant the right
permissions).
>
> > I hope this clarifies.
> >
> > I would say that the severity of this bug should be brought back
> > to "serious".
>
> AFAICT Debian ships various copies of the same code ("convertutf.c")
> in main, including in libantlr3c, open-vm-tools, mysql-workbench,
> ghostscript and possibly many others.
This just makes the situation worse.
>
> Whomever thinks that there's an actual license problem can take the
> issue to ftpmaster and see what they think.
FTP Masters are usually very busy and often lack the time to reply to
such queries. You could try to ask them about this issue, but please do
*not* assume that everything is OK in case you receive no response...
In the meanwhile, please investigate the issue and try to solve it.
The possible solutions I can think of are:
A) get in touch with generator.c upstream developers and ask them to
clarify the status of the material copyrighted by Unicode, Inc.; if
needed, get in touch with Unicode, Inc. (with the help of generator.c
upstream developers) and persuade them to re-license their material
under non-copyleft DFSG-free terms compatible with the license of Ruby
(2-clause BSD license)
B) find DFSG-free replacements for the troublesome material, possibly
with the collaboration of Ruby upstream developers
By the way, by looking at
https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/r/ruby2.2/copyright-2.2.3-2
I see that there are a number of files that include material
copyrighted by Unicode, Inc. and released under terms very similar to
the ones we are talking about.
The issue seems to be bigger than it looked like!
Please raise the severity of this bug report again and try to find a
solution.
Thanks for your time!
--
http://www.inventati.org/frx/
There's not a second to spare! To the laboratory!
..................................................... Francesco Poli .
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