severity 396646 normal retitle 396646 clarify and tidy up copyrights thanks
ciao On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 11:23:43PM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: > There seems to be still a licensing issue, though... :-( > According to its debian/copyright[1], mplayer includes a file named > mmx.h ..... > Where's the permission to redistribute (DFSG#1)? > Where's the permission to modify (DFSG#3)? that file is part of a library that was made public; unfortunately all the original web pages (as found by Google) http://min.ecn.purdue.edu/~rfisher/Career/vita.html http://shay.ecn.purdue.edu/~swar/libMMX/Index.html http://eetpc20.bd.psu.edu/~rfisher/ are currently unavailable; anyway you can get info from the Google cache. you may also download the library from http://fresh.t-systems-sfr.com/linux/src/libmmx-990416.tgz I read it all around: it is true that there is no place where the authors explicitely state "you can redistribute this code at wish"; but at the same time the authors -) put the .tar.gz in their web pages -) wrote a public-domain-like statement in the code -) wrote 'Copying-policy: PD' inside libmmx.lsm -) go to great length in explaining how to use their code in other applications I really do not think that they intended to give permission to use the code as public domain, but not permission to (re)distribute it. Moreover, according to http://www.google.com/codesearch?hl=en&lr=&q=Dietz+Fisher&btnG=Search code from that library is also part of xine, VLC, avidemux, mythtv, ffmpeg, gstreamer; since it is not considered a problem in any of those, then it must be OK in mplayer too. > BTW, there's another issue: the debian/copyright[1] file states: > > | Name: GSM 06.10 library ..... > The term "use" is vague and could be interpreted in a strict sense > as meaning only "to run" or "to execute" the library. > This license should be clarified: persuading upstream to change > the first line in > > ] Any reproduction and use of this software, with or without modification, > ] is permitted provided that this notice is > > would suffice to make it unambiguously DFSG-free. I will do that. a. ---- ps: when I wrote debian/copyright, I was overzealous: I included copyright statement of any bit of code and header around; but I then found this reference http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=199749&cid=16359141 that I summarize here as The GPL is only required (i.e., only applicable) when copyright is involved; i.e., making a derivative work. For there to be a derivative work, there has to be a copying within the ambit of the copyright act. If you look to the Altai test (adopted by pretty much every court), you'll see that code dictated by external requirements (i.e., pretty much every piece of software running on a UNIX/Linux system has to use malloc, etc., and thus must either call the system calls directly or via the C Library) is specifically filtered out of the copyright comparison. So any interface calls, even symbols brought in from include files, are [strongly] arguably not even copyrightable (a 'method of operation'; see, e.g., 17 U.S.C. 102, and Lotus v. Borland, 49 F.3d 807 (1st Cir. 1995)) and even if they are, would be stripped out of any comparison of code done in an infringement action. Absent an infringement, there's no need for GPL applicability... So it seems that small bits of header code is not copyrightable. (I do not know if this would apply to mmx.h , though : that contains some real function code) The Altai test is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Associates_Int._Inc._v._Altai_Inc. a. -- Andrea Mennucc
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