Re: Non-free postscript code in EPS image
On 07/31/2012 09:51 PM, Bart Martens wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 12:25:32PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
>> Hi Michael,
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 09:03:52PM +0200, Michael Wild wrote:
>>
>>> I'm maintaining a package that contains an EPS image created with Adobe
>>> Illustrator and hence contains postscript library code that is
>>> copyrighted by Adobe, e.g.:
>>
>>> * Copyright(C)2000-2006 Adobe Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved
>>> * Copyright(C)1997-2007 Adobe Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
>>> * Copyright 1997-2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
>>> * Copyright 1987-2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated.
>>
>>> and so on.
>>
>>> Does this make the file non-redistributable and non-DFSG free? If not,
>>> would I need to list all these copyright statements into debian/copyright?
>>
>>> Strange thing is, most of it is simply boilerplate that is not even
>>> used. Running it through eps2eps (a ghostscript wrapper) brings the file
>>> down from 220K to 4K!
>>
>> A copyright statement does not, by itself, say anything about the license of
>> the work. Since Illustrator is frequently used for producing output files
>> that are expected to be distributed, it would be reasonable to assume that
>> the output is liberally licensed and that whatever license is listed in the
>> package is in fact the correct one, with no other license attaching to this
>> output.
>>
>> If you find an authoritative license statement to the contrary, *then* we
>> should worry about whether this is non-redistributable.
>
> The user of Adobe Illustrator may have had the intention to create files that
> can be freely redistributed. If parts of the files are copyrighted by Adobe
> (Michael wrote "contains postscript library code that is copyrighted by Adobe")
> without license from Adobe, then the files cannot be freely redistributed.
>
> Regards,
>
> Bart Martens
Well, the expectation is that if you purchase a license to use Adobe
Illustrator that then you are allowed to redistribute the produced files
under whatever conditions as you like.
Apart from the problem of whether the stripped image would be free of
the restrictions imposed by the Adobe copyright, I just noticed that the
ghostscript output also contains a block that is licensed as follows:
Copyright (C) 2010 Artifex Software, Inc. All rights reserved.
How would I ask the FTP-masters what they think about the Adobe
copyright statements?
I'll probably just remove the file as it is just a logo used in the
docs. I'll ask upstream whether he would be OK with that.
Michael
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