I can't argue with your choices. They all seem perfectly reasonable to me. Without legal advice I'd make the same choices.
I'm not a lawyer either. I usually ask my lawyer friend for advice when I play with copyright or trademarks. Of course none of his advice would apply outside the U.S. and since I'm not actually his client I used to get either comments or pointers to textbooks on the particular laws like trademarks (which that law required me to "actively defend". Sigh.) I occasionally tell him how illogical a particular law seems. He just grins and ignores me. For example I asked him if it was ok to remove the copyright notices in many of the input files since the whole project already had a license file. He said to consult with NAG. NAG said they had to remain. I was very careful to include the license of any copyrighted foreign code that may have been used at some time and might be buried in the git clone. The copyrighted code would still be used if I were to "git reset" to an historical version. (Yes, I know the license would also appear but ...) Distributing code (aka "a github clone") that contains copyrighted code without every top-level license file seems reasonable but I suspect that a non-technical jury wouldn't understand the subtle distinction that "we no longer use that code" but still "distribute it". My weak understanding is that copyright covers "distribution" (aka "copy"), not use. I have absolutely no idea what German law may require but if it is anything like U.S. law, "reasonable" is not a valid defense. Also, don't take legal advice from a programmer / mathematician (me). Your University likely has a lawyer on staff. Tim On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 11:20:39 AM UTC-5 Waldek Hebisch wrote: > On Fri, Dec 01, 2023 at 07:03:23AM -0800, Tim Daly wrote: > > Please note that the NAG copyright license is not the only license > > that applies. There are quite a few others that need to be cited > > (per U.S. copyright law anyway). There are 12 in the license directory. > > https://github.com/daly/axiom/tree/master/license > > Well, extra things that were in Axiom are removed from FriCAS > and we did not add new ones. > > > These additional licenses should probably be cited if they were ever part > > of the github history since the code is available in the git download > > distribution. > > Well, if somebody is doing 'git clone' they will also get removed > licence as part of history. If they check out old version they > will get relevant licence as part of checkout. INAL, but in > may opinion that is fair: "location" of licence file is no more > obsure than "location" of files to which it applies. > > Concerning GCL and CLL: they were never part of FriCAS repository > (there was provision to add GCL to FriCAS distribution tarball, > but this was done outside of repository). > > -- > Waldek Hebisch > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "FriCAS - computer algebra system" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fricas-devel/d87ec71f-bac5-4491-849a-f8a6639bf225n%40googlegroups.com.
