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Re: [RFS] cmarrows



Adam Borowski wrote:
> 
> However, the correct thing to do now is "mail upstream", not "drop the
> package".

I did that. And happily, Mr Ekola (the author) replied as follows:

<CITE>
------------------------------------------------------
>>(me)
>>Unfortunatelly, you do not specify any particular
>>license which applies to that software and thus,
>>by default, you hold "all rights reserved".
>>In such situation noone but you can legally spread your work.

(Mr Ekola)

My intent is for cmarrows to be free software (or even public domain).
The reason I haven't written an explicit licence is the following:
cmarrows includes metafont code from the computer modern fonts written
by Donald Knuth, which is not a problem since Knuth released his fonts
in the public domain, but it also includes metafont code from the ams
fonts (i.e. msam*.mf and msbm*.mf) and I have always been under the
impression that these fonts are also in the public domain, but when I
inspect, for example, msam10.mf is says

%%     copyright="Copyright (C) American Mathematical Society,
%%            all rights reserved.  Copying of this file is
%%            authorized only if either:
%%            (1) you make absolutely no changes to your copy
%%                including name; OR
%%            (2) if you do make changes, you first rename it to some
%%                other name.",

I am not a lawyer so I decided to remain blissfully ignorant of any
licencing issues and simply not give an explicit license just in case
I need to pull the code.

If you, or anyone else, can assure me that the ams fonts are indeed in
the publich domain (if that is what the copyright message above means)
then I will gladly release cmarrows with a free licence (you might
even suggest a suitable licence if you like).
------------------------------------------------------
</CITE>

So he can be contacted and is willing to reconsider the licensing of
`cmarrows'.

He used some code from Donald E. Knuth's CM fonts (METAFONT code) as
well as some code copyrighted (as noted above) by AMS (also METAFONT code).

He embedded a borrowed METAFONT code to its METAPOST programs. All
METAFONT programs have *.mf suffix. METAPOST programs have *.mp suffix.
So clearly, borrowed pieces of programs are distributed in files with
different names.

It seems quite clear to me that there are no reasons why Mr Tommy Ekola
couldn't attach any DFSG compliant license to the `cmarrows'. Am I right?

AFAIK options are: public domain, MIT, BSD, GPL.
--
Matej Kosik

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