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Re: Bug#248853: 3270: 5250 emulation code, all rights reserved



In case anyone was wondering, this is far from cleared up.  :-(


>Ahh, the horror continues.
>
>I would be happy to remove all of the Minolta-copyrighted code.
Perhaps the best choice.

Beat Rubischon has sent a nice message apparently granting permission to use his code under "any license" as long as his name is preserved (earlier in the bug trail) -- so for anything copyrighted by him, we're OK.

*UN*fortunately he apparently isn't the sole copyright holder of the 5250 code. Permission would be needed from Minolta, and I seriously doubt he has the right to speak for them, even though he's an employee. I doubt he wants to go to the trouble of clearing this with Minolta's legal department. :-(

>As for the "what this means" paragraph in the Lineage file, that was >written >by an idiot, and should be removed (in fact, I thought I had removed it >already).
Well, that's simple then.  :-)

>As for the Georgia Tech copyrighted code, I've been through this issue >with >them twice over the years, and the "public use" language was something >they >suggested. I don't know what it means, either. Shall I give it >another go >with them, to see if they will allow a different copyright notice? If >so,
>what kinds of notices would be acceptable?

Ideally, the MIT/X11-like license already used by most of the code; that would look like this:
> Copyright © 1989 by Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta, GA 30332.
> Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its >documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, >provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that >both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in >supporting documentation.

(It could also be consolidated with the other essentially identical notices.)

If they don't like that, perhaps change it to "hereby granted to all members of the public"? That's probably (hopefully) what they mean by "public use".

Alternately, the Georgia Institute of Technology license appears to be an acceptable and DFSG-free license (-legal, please verify -- I'm not 100% sure). That, changed for Georgia Tech Research, would look like this:
> Copyright © 1989 by Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta, GA 30332.
>All rights reserved except for those rights explicitly mentioned below.
>Permission is granted to distribute freely or to modify and distribute >freely any materials and information contained herein as long as the >above copyright and all terms associated with it remain intact.

This appears to be a free, all-permissive license. (Debian-legal should probably comment, of course; I am assuming that "freely" is not a no-fee restriction but simply intended to make the permission broad, and that "copy" is clearly implied by "distribute". Ideally the copyright holders would clarify that my interpretation is the same as theirs.) If Georgia Tech Research Corporation has some relationship with the Georgia Institute of Technology, it might be more amenable to using a "familiar" license statement.

If none of these options work for them, we really need to figure out what they *want*. If we know *why* they don't like the standard license used for the rest of 3270, debian-legal can probably recommend a license tailored to suit their needs.



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