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legal archeology : ocaml bignum is non-free, is the licence enough to go into non-free ?



Hello,

[Please CC me, as i am not on debian-legal]

[Note, for people bored with the historical information provided here,
can go to the bottom and look at the incriminated licence directly, and
tell me if it can go into non-free or not]

Some time ago, a bit of non-free code was discovered in the ocaml
package i maintain (the nat/bignum libary). I investigated the issue,
and the following things ensued :

  1) the code is indeed non-free, and the copyright holder are the INRIA
  (which is willing to relicence it, no problem there), and Digital
  Equipment Corporation, Paris Research Lab (DEC PRL).

Here already you can sense coming problems.

  2) The DEC PRL was closed in 93, but supposedly the copyright now
  belongs DEC, which was bought by Compaq, which in turn was bought by
  HP (or whatever they call it).

Nice, i think HP is where Bdale works, so let's ask him about it.

  3) Bdale was willing to help me out, and investigated. He got some
  hints on how where the legalese paperwork had landed, but i fear had
  no time to really pursue this matter, nor found anyone at HP willing to
  pursue it either.

Well, it was to be expected. Finding decade old legalese papers like these,
which lived 3 lab closing or property transitions, is like searching for
the something (forgot the english name sorry) in the haystack. But in
the meantime ...

  4) Upstream, more exactly Xavier Leroy of the INRIA crystal project,
  was informed of the situation, and decided to reimplement the
  incriminated code cleanly. He did so in suprisingly short time, but
  then i always knew he was a very smart programmer.

So, cool you would say, let's use the new implementation and forget
about the rest. This is not that easy since :

  5) Ocaml 3.07 was released with the non-free version of the library,
  and the new version is currently in the ocaml CVS, not really
  released, altough regression tests and such were made, Xavier doesn't
  feel like it being available for general use. Also, the ocaml release
  schedule will probably mean a July 2004 ocaml 3.08 release.

  6) I made a new version of ocaml 3.07.2a, removed the incriminated
  code from the tarball and uploaded it.

Worked fine, we are now legal, but :

  7) Some people seem to use this library, among them some people
  wanting to create new packages, which naturally cannot go into debian
  main.

Now, my plan is to :

  a) package the old bignum library in non-free, if possible.

  b) package either the new bignum library and/or the whole ocaml cvs
  snapshot in experimental.

The second option is the right one, but more of a long term solution,
the first is not ideal, but better than having people use the older
snapshot.debian.net packages. BTW, what are the legal implications of
distributing it via snapshot.debian.net, and the older debian releases ?

Anyway, i append here the information i have on the licence to the old
bignum, and would like to know if this is ok for non-free or not. Notice
the free to distribute and reproduce for non-commercial usage which
makes it non-free. I guess i can have any disclaimer from the INRIA
people that may be needed, but the situation for the other copyright
holder is more problematic.

All in all, an interesting legal problem i think, sad i can't go myself
shuffle in the HP paperstack myself or something.

Thanks for your help, and don't forget to CC me, as i am not on
debian-legal.

Friendly,

Sven Luther

--------------------------------------------------

                   The "BigNum" library

This is a small C (and asm) library for arbitrary-precision integer
arithmetic.  It was developed in the late 80's at the following two
institutions:

  - INRIA (French public research institute in computer science
    and control), Rocquencourt site.
  - Digital Equipment Corporation, Paris Research Lab (DEC PRL).
    (This lab was closed in 1993.)

The main authors are:

    Bernard Serpette (INRIA)
    Jean Vuillemin (DEC PRL)
    Jean-Claude Hervé (DEC PRL)

The sources and the documentation are marked
"Copyright Digital Equipment Corporation & INRIA 1989".
They were distributed at no charge.  The documentation contains the
following license:

  This documentation, and the source code of the BigNum package may
  be reproduced and distributed freely to non commercial usage provided
  that the following conditions are respected:

     - Digital PRL or INRIA should be notified of the copy.

     - The original Copyright notice should not be removed from the
     documentation or from the source code under any circumstances.

     - Any work using the BigNum package should state explicitly the use
     of such package, and its origin by including the following sentence:
     "This work uses the BigNum package developed jointly by INRIA and
     Digital PRL."

     - If any modification is applied to the BigNum package,
     explicit statements should identify the fact that such modifications
     have been made, by whom, and where. These statements should not be
     removed in any further distribution.

     - Any work using extensively the BigNum package should be freely
     distributed under conditions similar to the distribution of the
     BigNum package.

  INRIA and Digital Equipment Corporation make no representations,
  express or implicit, with respect to this documentation or the software
  it describes, including without limitations, any implied warranties
  of merchandability or fitness for a particular purpose, all of which
  are expressly disclaimed. INRIA and Digital Equipment Corporation or
  subsequent distributors shall in no event be liable for any indirect,
  incidental or consequential damages. 

As was pointed to us, this license is not free.  Thus, there is
interest in re-licensing the code under a standard, OSI- and
Debian-approved license.  This requires approval from the two
copyright holders.

On the INRIA side, this is unproblematic: INRIA releases a lot of its
research software as free software, and it is relatively clear to me
(Xavier Leroy, working at INRIA) whom to contact.

On the DEC PRL side, the first problem is that DEC PRL no longer exists:
the PRL lab closed in 1993, then DEC was acquired by Compaq, then
Compaq was acquired by HP.  Hence, it seems that HP is now the other
copyright holder for the BigNum library.  However, it might be hard
for HP to track down its copyrights on this code through the two
acquisitions.  It then remains to see whether HP is favorable to
re-license the BigNum code as free software.

Feel free to contact me (Xavier.Leroy@inria.fr) for any further
information.



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