Package: xfree86 Version: 4.3.0.dfsg.1-10 Severity: minor Restore the Xprint PMF files to upstream .orig tarball, and update prune-non-free and the copyright file accordingly. It appears they're free after all.
Severity minor because:
A) Xprt isn't workable in XFree86 4.3.0 anyway (use xprt-xprintorg); and
B) We'll have to re-roll the orig tarball for this, bumping us to
4.3.0.dfsg.2.
----- Forwarded message from Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -----
From: Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: MozDev Xprint mailinglist <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
debian-x@lists.debian.org, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: Hamish Moffatt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: font metric file licensing issues (was: PMF license)
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 13:31:42 -0500
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[Hamish, there is some material that may be of interest to you about 35
lines down.]
On Tue, Oct 12, 2004 at 03:47:41PM +1000, Drew Parsons wrote:
> Someone raised the question of whether Xprint font files need to be
> removed, probably in 2002 as Roland said. I asked Roland about it and he
> replied they were under the same X11 licence as the other files. I
> accepted this and didn't pursue the question further.
> I can't find the discussion archived, it may have been a private
> correspondence with Roland. The guts of the argument were the same that
> Roland is presenting here. I hope his reply to you on Saturday has
> convinced you.
I'm sorry it has taken me a while to get back to this.
On Sat, Oct 09, 2004 at 09:33:58AM +0200, Roland Mainz wrote:
> Branden Robinson wrote:
> > Your reasoning seems to be grounded on a couple of problematic premises:
> > * That font metric information isn't copyrightable. This may be true in
> > the United States, but one of the big reasons Debian still has a non-free
> > section is because Adobe in Japan asserts copyright over just this sort
> > of thing.
>
> Again, this does not cover the PMF files. The original files have been
> commited by Hewlett-Packard under the MIT/X Consortium license many many
> years ago (and the files for the Postscript DDX were later refreshed by
> me to fix a minor bug - and I committed them under the same license:
> MIT/X.org). The so-called "copyright" notice in these files is just an
> attribute which informs the application that the attribute "COPYRIGHT"
> has a value. But this value does not relicense the file itself away from
> the MIT/X.org license. That would be the same as "relicesing" this email
> just because it references the string.
Okay, I'll take your word for it on this part.
> References or index data of this kind cannot be copyrighted, neither in
> the US nor in Japan nor elsewhere in the world.
I am afraid I'm not persuaded here, but I'm not really the person to argue
with about it. Hamish Moffatt, who maintains xpdf-chinese-simplified,
xpdf-chinese-traditional, xpdf-japanese, and xpdf-korean, is.
If you're right, that'd be great. If I understand correctly what is
keeping those packages in Debian non-free, then maybe we can move them to
Debian main.
In any case, if you're right about the blanket submission of the "original
files" under the MIT/X Consortium license, then the issue is surely void.
If they're not copyrightable, they're free for us. If they're
copyrightable and MIT/X licensed, they're also free for us.
> > I will try to find this discussion in Debian's list archives
> > if you're interested.
>
> Sure. It may be possible that Adobe Japan did some tricky stuff with CID
> fonts, but again this doesn't apply to something which has been
> explicitly commited under the MIT/X.org license by the authors.
I wish there were a historical record to refer to in this case, but as I
said, I'll take your word for it until I hear a persuasive case to the
contrary.
Thanks for the explanation!
--
G. Branden Robinson | Never underestimate the power of
Debian GNU/Linux | human stupidity.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- Robert Heinlein
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
----- End forwarded message -----
--
G. Branden Robinson | Of two competing theories or
Debian GNU/Linux | explanations, all other things
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | being equal, the simpler one is to
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | be preferred. -- Occam's Razor
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