Re: The copyright of a keyboard mapping and its implementation
On Mon, 16 Mar 2009, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> However, the Francis Leboutte mapping is now included in Debian.
> This means we should settle on this issue: if we consider it
> non-free, we must remove this layout (and all derivatives) from the
> distribution; if we don’t, there’s no barrier against including some
> variants. I’d tend to say we should opt for the conservative
> approach and remove them; despite the fact that I like the mapping,
> we shouldn’t include software with such an unclear copyright status.
Is there any hope of getting Leboutte to license this under CC without
the NC and ND clauses or retract his claims?
Alternatively, can someone generate a clean-room implementation of the
appropriate layout?
I'm of the opinion that if we are to distribute the layout, and we are
unable to do the two things above, we need to get legal advice, and
then specificially ignore the ND clause by distributing a derived
version. I'm slightly concerned about this layout hanging around and
then a small company who uses it because it was distributed in Debian
being sued.
Don Armstrong
--
The sheer ponderousness of the panel's opinion [...] refutes its
thesis far more convincingly than anything I might say. The panel's
labored effort to smother the Second Amendment by sheer body weight
has all the grace of a sumo wrestler trying to kill a rattlesnake by
sitting on it---and is just as likely to succeed.
-- Alex Kozinski, Dissenting in Silveira v. Lockyer
(CV-00-00411-WBS p5983-4)
http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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