Curious why the absence of any kind of license grant isn't a non-starter ...
Pam
On Tue, Oct 27, 2020 at 4:19 PM Richard Fontana <rfontana@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, Oct 27, 2020 at 2:38 PM Mattia Verga
<mattia.verga@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> The libpasastro package is going to bundle the NAIF/Spice toolkit from Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
> The source code seems to be publicly available, no license file is included with the code, but in the headers there's this license text:
>
> THIS SOFTWARE AND ANY RELATED MATERIALS WERE CREATED BY THE
> CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (CALTECH) UNDER A U.S.
> GOVERNMENT CONTRACT WITH THE NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE
> ADMINISTRATION (NASA). THE SOFTWARE IS TECHNOLOGY AND SOFTWARE
> PUBLICLY AVAILABLE UNDER U.S. EXPORT LAWS AND IS PROVIDED "AS-IS"
> TO THE RECIPIENT WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING ANY
> WARRANTIES OF PERFORMANCE OR MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
> PARTICULAR USE OR PURPOSE (AS SET FORTH IN UNITED STATES UCC
> SECTIONS 2312-2313) OR FOR ANY PURPOSE WHATSOEVER, FOR THE
> SOFTWARE AND RELATED MATERIALS, HOWEVER USED.
>
> IN NO EVENT SHALL CALTECH, ITS JET PROPULSION LABORATORY, OR NASA
> BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES AND/OR COSTS, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
> LIMITED TO, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OF ANY KIND,
> INCLUDING ECONOMIC DAMAGE OR INJURY TO PROPERTY AND LOST PROFITS,
> REGARDLESS OF WHETHER CALTECH, JPL, OR NASA BE ADVISED, HAVE
> REASON TO KNOW, OR, IN FACT, SHALL KNOW OF THE POSSIBILITY.
>
> RECIPIENT BEARS ALL RISK RELATING TO QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF
> THE SOFTWARE AND ANY RELATED MATERIALS, AND AGREES TO INDEMNIFY
> CALTECH AND NASA FOR ALL THIRD-PARTY CLAIMS RESULTING FROM THE
> ACTIONS OF RECIPIENT IN THE USE OF THE SOFTWARE.
>
> Is this license acceptable for inclusion in Fedora? I have a doubt about the part "PUBLICLY AVAILABLE UNDER U.S. EXPORT LAWS"...
My concern would be the "agree to indemnify" clause at the end.
Historically, Fedora has rejected several FOSS-like licenses because
of overbroad requirements to indemnify upstream licensors (there are
narrower ones in certain commonly-encountered FOSS licenses -- Apache
License 2.0, various versions of the MPL, and IIRC various members of
the EPL family -- that are treated as acceptable, if only because
they've been grandparented in).
I'm open to being convinced that arbitrary indemnification obligations
should be acceptable in FOSS licenses, but I'm not aware that anyone
has yet made that argument.
Richard
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