Henry Spencer's license
by Petr Šabata
Dear legal,
While checking the contents of our `perl' package, I noticed the following:
(...)
/* NOTE: this is derived from Henry Spencer's regexp code, and should not
* confused with the original package (see point 3 below). Thanks, Henry!
*/
/* Additional note: this code is very heavily munged from Henry's version
* in places. In some spots I've traded clarity for efficiency, so don't
* blame Henry for some of the lack of readability.
*/
/* The names of the functions have been changed from regcomp and
* regexec to pregcomp and pregexec in order to avoid conflicts
* with the POSIX routines of the same names.
*/
(...)
* pregcomp and pregexec -- regsub and regerror are not used in perl
*
* Copyright (c) 1986 by University of Toronto.
* Written by Henry Spencer. Not derived from licensed software.
*
* Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any
* purpose on any computer system, and to redistribute it freely,
* subject to the following restrictions:
*
* 1. The author is not responsible for the consequences of use of
* this software, no matter how awful, even if they arise
* from defects in it.
*
* 2. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented, either
* by explicit claim or by omission.
*
* 3. Altered versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not
* be misrepresented as being the original software.
*
**** Alterations to Henry's code are...
****
**** Copyright (C) 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
**** 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
**** by Larry Wall and others
****
**** You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public
**** License or the Artistic License, as specified in the README file.
(...)
You can see the whole file here:
https://metacpan.org/source/SHAY/perl-5.20.1/regexec.c
I looked but couldn't find any common name for this license
of Henry's. Is it on our list? Is it free? What name should
I use in the License tag?
Thank you,
Petr
1 year, 2 months
Expat
by Gwyn Ciesla
Hi! I recently submitted libsquash for review: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1701995
licensecheck calls the licensing of this code Expat, which is a more permissive MIT. I don't see Expat on the Licenses list. Should I use Expat for the license tag, and have that page updated, or should I use MIT?
Thanks!
--
Gwyn Ciesla
she/her/hers
------------------------------------------------
in your fear, seek only peace
in your fear, seek only love
-d. bowie
Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email.
5 years
MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 Video
by Tom Callaway
Effective immediately, MPEG-1 (H.261) and MPEG-2 (H.262) video
implementations are permitted in Fedora.
Please note that while MPEG-2 is the video format for DVD-Video, support
for encrypted DVD playback is not permitted in Fedora. See:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Forbidden_items#Encrypted_DVD_Playback
Support for MPEG Video formats later than MPEG-2 is not currently permitted
in Fedora. This includes, most notably, H.263, H.264 (MPEG-4), and H.265
(HEVC).
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me, or reply on
list.
Thanks,
Tom Callaway
Fedora Legal
5 years, 1 month
New OpenSSH with post-quantum NTRU algorithm
by Jakub Jelen
Hello,
This is a generic question for the legal, whether it is fine to bring
the new OpenSSH 8.0 (due to be released in coming weeks) to Fedora,
since it is implementing the following algorithm, which can be possibly
considered problematic from legal point of view. From release notes
[1]:
OpenSSH 8.0 adds experimental support for quantum-computing resistant
key exchange method, based on a combination of Streamlined NTRU
Prime 4591^761 and X25519.
Can you let me know, whether it is fine to bring this in Fedora and
later in RHEL?
[1]
https://lists.mindrot.org/pipermail/openssh-unix-dev/2019-March/037672.html
Regards,
--
Jakub Jelen
Senior Software Engineer
Security Technologies
Red Hat, Inc.
5 years, 1 month
Re: BSD-2-Clause
by J Lovejoy
regarding Tom’s comment on this topic:
So this is the difficulty. We know of an order of magnitude of different variants of BSD and MIT (many of which are unclassified by the OSI and SPDX). They're all functionally identical. Are you volunteering to audit all the Fedora packages to correct the license tags? I'm not. :)
I could be possible to come up with a correlation of the Fedora tags and SPDX ids (where Fedora groups licenses under one age, but SPDX uses different ones) and then automate updating the tags, no?
I have a summary of the work done thus far to align and a spreadsheet from a few years ago with the correlation. It would need updating on both sides, but it could provide a decent start.
https://wiki.spdx.org/view/Legal_Team/Fedora-comparison <https://wiki.spdx.org/view/Legal_Team/Fedora-comparison>
Jilayne
SPDX legal team
5 years, 1 month
