Hi Branden,
On 5/26/23 15:15, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> [mailing only the list, but CCing Alex as I know he doesn't mind]
>
> Hi Alex,
>
> Thanks for getting the ball rolling on this. I have some critiques of
> the existing variants and a suggestion for the forms we go back to SPDX
> with. I did also see your follow-ups which confused me a little, and I
> fear they might confuse others a bit. I suggest taking a few days to
> shake out some points (it's going to be a holiday weekend in the U.S.
> anyway, so some engineers may already be on PTO), and then re-announce
> the relicensing effort subsequently.
I'll go on trip around Europe for a couple of weeks starting this weekend,
so I'll be relatively quiet for some time. :)
>
> At 2023-05-26T00:56:47+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
>> We've got 4 derivatives of the "VERBATIM" (now one of them in SPDX
>> as Linux-man-pages-copyleft") license. I'll paste here the four.
>>
>> ===========
>>
>> $ cat LICENSES/Linux-man-pages-copyleft.txt
>> Copyright (c) <year> <owner> All rights reserved.
>>
>> Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
>> manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
>> preserved on all copies.
>>
>> Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of
>> this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that
>> the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of
>> a permission notice identical to this one.
>>
>> Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
>> manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume
>> no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting
>> from the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may
>> not have taken the same level of care in the production of this
>> manual, which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
>> professionally.
>>
>> Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
>> the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
>>
>> ===========
>
> The final paragraph may be nearly redundant/superfluous. (1) Copyright
> laws and international treaties forbid the effacement of (valid)
> copyright notices anyway, even under transformation ("formatt[ing]" or
> "process[ing]"). (2) Man pages are nearly always distributed and stored
> on systems in source form anyway. If systems ship "cat pages" without
> their man(7) (or mdoc(7)) sources, they are already in violation not
> only of this provision but the aforementioned laws and treaties.
>
> I agree with your point about how amateur work is not necessarily done
> more poorly than professional work. Striking that sentence leads to the
> following...
>
>> $ head -n21 man2/set_mempolicy.2
>> .\" Copyright 2003,2004 Andi Kleen, SuSE Labs.
>> .\" and Copyright 2007 Lee Schermerhorn, Hewlett Packard
>> .\"
>> .\" %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM_PROF)
>> .\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
>> .\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
>> .\" preserved on all copies.
>> .\"
>> .\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
>> .\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
>> .\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
>> .\" permission notice identical to this one.
>> .\"
>> .\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
>> .\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no
>> .\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
>> .\" the use of the information contained herein.
>> .\"
>> .\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
>> .\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
>> .\" %%%LICENSE_END
>
> With the next license, things get murkier.
>
>> ===========
>>
[...]
>
>> $ head -n13 man2/move_pages.2
>> .\" This manpage is Copyright (C) 2006 Silicon Graphics, Inc.
>> .\" Christoph Lameter
>> .\"
>> .\" %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM_TWO_PARA)
>> .\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
>> .\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
>> .\" preserved on all copies.
>> .\"
>> .\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
>> .\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
>> .\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
>> .\" permission notice identical to this one.
>> .\" %%%LICENSE_END
>
> This is the same as the first license we saw above with the last 2
> paragraphs removed--the one expressing a kind of disclaimer, and the one
> that I claimed is redundant/superfluous.
>
> I see from your follow-up email that _this_ is the one Fedora claimed to
> have a Freeness problem with. Can we scare up a cite for which one,
> exactly, they were referring to? The concern their determination causes
> me is that _none_ of the four license you present here explicitly grant
> permission to translate.
Sorry, I was already confused with so many threads. So, there's one more
license, not derived from these, but which seems related to GPL. It's
the LDP (v1) license. That's the one that was rejected by Fedora:
<https://gitlab.com/fedora/legal/fedora-license-data/-/issues/211>
The reason was the prohibition to recommend an info manual.
I confused that thread, with the one about VERBATIM_TWO_PARA, in which
you accused it of also being non-free.
<https://github.com/spdx/license-list-XML/issues/1947#issuecomment-1554695533>
>
> The LaTeX 2e/"traditional GNU documentation license", from which all of
> these license texts seem to be derived, solved the translation problem
> with an explicit grant of permission.
>
>>> Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this
>>> manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified
>>> versions.
>
> And in fact if you add the foregoing paragraph to "VERBATIM_TWO_PARA",
> you get _precisely_ what SPDX calls the "Latex2e license".
>
> https://spdx.org/licenses/Latex2e.html
[...]
>> Would you please relicense to either Linux-man-pages-copyleft or
>> VERBATIM_PROF?
>
> If you agree, I would add LaTeX 2e to the list of acceptable candidates.
>
>> Also, Linux-man-pages-copyleft seems to contain a sentence that
>> makes it differ from VERBATIM_PROF:
>>
>> """
>> The author(s) may
>> not have taken the same level of care in the production of this
>> manual, which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
>> professionally.
>> """
>>
>> I believe the quality of non-professional code and manuals to be
>> at least as high as the professional one. We have more freedom to
>> reject crap. I propose also deprecating Linux-man-pages-copyleft
>> and moving to VERBATIM_PROF as the single surviving license from
>> all four variants.
>
> I'd go farther and move to LaTeX 2e.
>
>> We're also discussing the names that each of these four should be
>> given in SPDX.
>
> Is that necessary, if you successfully migrate away from these to texts
> that are already in SPDX, like LaTeX 2e and the existing Linux man-pages
> copyleft? I realize SPDX wants to capture many licenses for SWBOM
> purposes, but if this transition is successful, the foregoing task will
> rapidly become a problem of history. And historical software
> distributions have far worse description problems, such as (1) unknown
> provenance, (2) missing copyright/licensing information, and (3)
> incorrect copyright/licensing information. (To an extent, all three of
> these problems will continue to arise from time to time.)
>
>> I suggest (in order of appearance in this email):
>>
>> - Linux-man-pages-copyleft to be renamed to the following, and
>> mark it as a deprecated license.
>>
>> Linux-man-pages-copyleft-nopro
>> Linux man-pages Copyleft (non-professional)
>
> I thought SPDX didn't support renames at all...?
They renamed GPL-2.0 to GPL-2.0-only, AFAIK.
>
> But if they do, I suggest disambiguation tags that are more descriptive
> rather than trying to capture catchwords that distinguish them.
>
> Linux-man-pages-copyleft-care-disclaimer
> Linux man-pages Copyleft (with care disclaimer)
Sounds good for VERBATIM_PROF.
[...]
> And I wouldn't put a term like "high quality" (or "low quality") in a
> license identifier under any circumstances.
Agree.
>
>> - VERBATIM_TWO_PARA to be SPDX'd as:
>>
>> Linux-man-pages-copyleft-notrans
>> Linux man-pages Copyleft (no translations)
>
> ...this, too, says nothing of Linux to distinguish it from LaTeX 2e.
>
> It is the LaTeX 2e license missing its latter two paragraphs.
>
>> - VERBATIM_ONE_PARA to be SPDX'd as:
>>
>> Linux-man-pages-copyleft-verbatim
>> Linux man-pages Copyleft (verbatim)
>
> This one doesn't mention "Linux" but is pretty idiosyncratically worded
> ("this page"). And Fedora had the aforementioned problem wherein they
> claimed to be unable to locate permission to translate here.
>
> You have already identified it as defective in its grant of permissions,
> and it affects only 2 documents in the Linux man-pages.
>
> Can we try to slate this one for the chopping block, and just not take
> it back to SPDX at all?
Sure. Hopefully we can remove some. I'll already relicense the ones
owned by Alan.
Cheers,
Alex
>
> Regards,
> Branden
--
<http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>
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