On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 03:31:02PM +0100, Ondřej Lysoněk wrote: > Hi, > > I'm packaging espeak-ng [1] and it includes a file which has a somewhat > problematic license [2]. The license header in the file itself doesn't > explicitly permit modification, however the file is reachable from a page > saying that all the code listed there can be modified, if you send the > improvements back to the author [3]. Can we use code like this in Fedora? I'd take the license at face value (including the appearance of having been granted by Apple around 1991, where Turkowski evidently was employed at that time) and I'd then apply the principle we've used for similar informal licenses dating from around that time, that grants of mere permission to "use" should be understood to cover (among other things) modification, since there's a lot of general evidence that this is what licensors from that time period meant. So that seems okay. I would also ignore the arguably contradictory statement on Turkowski's website, though I note the use of "should". The only thing that gives me a little pause is that it seems like all the code he has on his website has essentially the same license as the putative Apple license seen here, except that he changes 'Apple' to 'I'. That could simply mean that he took the old Apple license and for sentimental or other reasons used it with nonsubstantive alteration for code he wrote later on. It certainly looks plausible that it really was a bona fide Apple license, and the Apple license came first. So, seems okay to me. Richard > [1] https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/ > [2] > https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/blob/master/src/libespeak-ng/ieee80.c > taken from http://www.realitypixels.com/turk/opensource/ToFromIEEE.c.txt > [3] http://www.realitypixels.com/turk/opensource/ _______________________________________________ legal mailing list -- legal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
