Re: graywolf (TimberWolf) and licensing
Hi again,
It has been a while since I brought up this issue, but now
we've got a positive response from Yale. We're allowed to redistribute
it under GPL-2+ on a few conditions.
This is the text:
"""
This work is distributed in the hope that it will be useful; you can
redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the
GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
either version 2 of the License,
or any later version, on the following conditions:
(a) YALE MAKES NO, AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS
ALL, REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES THAT THE MANUFACTURE, USE, PRACTICE,
SALE OR
OTHER DISPOSAL OF THE SOFTWARE DOES NOT OR WILL NOT INFRINGE UPON ANY
PATENT OR
OTHER RIGHTS NOT VESTED IN YALE.
(b) YALE MAKES NO, AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL, REPRESENTATIONS AND
WARRANTIES
WHATSOEVER WITH RESPECT TO THE SOFTWARE, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING,
BUT NOT LIMITED TO, WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR
PURPOSE.
(c) LICENSEE SHALL MAKE NO STATEMENTS, REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTIES
WHATSOEVER TO
ANY THIRD PARTIES THAT ARE INCONSISTENT WITH THE DISCLAIMERS BY YALE IN
ARTICLE
(a) AND (b) above.
(d) IN NO EVENT SHALL YALE, OR ITS TRUSTEES, DIRECTORS, OFFICERS,
EMPLOYEES AND
AFFILIATES BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING ECONOMIC DAMAGE OR
INJURY TO PROPERTY AND LOST PROFITS, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER YALE SHALL BE
ADVISED, SHALL HAVE OTHER REASON TO KNOW, OR IN FACT SHALL KNOW OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF THE FOREGOING.
"""
I guess that we are all set to include graywolf in Debian now?
Regards,
Ruben
2014-10-28 18:37 GMT+01:00 Ruben Undheim <ruben.undheim@gmail.com>:
> Hi everyone,
>
> There is this piece of software called TimberWolf which was developed
> in Yale University in the early 90's, and at that time was distributed
> as open source. Later on, it was made commercial closed source, but
> the latest open source code version has been maintained by Tim Edwards
> of http://opencircuitdesign.com in recent years.
>
> Timberwolf is one of the dependencies of qflow
> (http://opencircuitdesign.com/qflow/) which I'm working on packaging.
> In order to make the further development more tidy, we've forked
> Timberwolf, and now it's called graywolf
> (https://github.com/rubund/graywolf).
>
> However, there is no "Copyright" notice in the source code files. Tim
> was in contact with the "Director of Technology Licensing" on Yale and
> asked something like this:
>
> """
> If there is an appropriate Yale copyright license that covers this work, I
> would like to add it to the distribution, where it can continue to be
> developed under the terms of the license. If not, I would like to place the
> existing code under the standard Gnu Public License (GPL). I would
> appreciate it if I can get a legal opinion on this from somebody at Yale.
> """
>
> He then got this response:
>
> ""
> Your inquiry below was forwarded to me. Yale would appreciate it if you
> would simply state that the software was developed at Yale. That said, we
> don’t have any specific text that you should cite specifying copyright
> ownership, etc.
>
> Hope this helps,
> xxx
> ""
>
> My gut feeling tells me that we will need some more explicit open
> source statement from the developers for having it included in debian.
> But maybe it is enough to just refer to the email thread. They have
> not said that Tim cannot place it under the GPL when he said he will
> do it.
>
> What is your view on this? Can we simply refer to that email and make
> it GPL ourself?
>
>
> Best regards,
> Ruben
Reply to: