Bug 10003 - Possible GPL license in xkeyboard-config-0.9/symbols/inet and .spec file.
Summary: Possible GPL license in xkeyboard-config-0.9/symbols/inet and .spec file.
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: xkeyboard-config
Classification: Unclassified
Component: General (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: xkb
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: licence
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2007-02-16 14:27 UTC by Dan McNichol
Modified: 2007-02-26 09:40 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
i915 platform:
i915 features:


Attachments

Description Dan McNichol 2007-02-16 14:27:11 UTC
This file indicates it is "Based on LinEAK Project:
xkeyboard-config-0.9/symbols/inet 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/lineak/

LinEAK looks to be GPL licensed, so this file may be contaminated.


Also though not as serious, but the file xkeyboard-config.spec.in file looks to be under the LGPL license.

Can these files be specifically relicensed under the MIT/X11 license?
Comment 1 Dan McNichol 2007-02-16 14:39:29 UTC
I ran across another suspect file that may have GPL contamination:

xkeyboard-config-0.9/symbols/il
// nikud patter based on Dekel Tsur's Hebrew mapping for LyX
http://www.lyx.org/about/license.php
Comment 2 Sergey V. Udaltsov 2007-02-16 14:49:51 UTC
The spec file is created by me - so I happily put X11 license on it.

Regarding the lineak heritage - I'll try to contact his authors and make some agreement.

Concerning that mapping for Lyx - there is no mentioning that it was ever included into lyx or put under same license. So I would not bother about this issue.
Comment 3 Sergey V. Udaltsov 2007-02-17 09:46:39 UTC
Regarding the LinEAK reference, the problem goes back to 2001, xfree86 epoch. See

http://cvsweb.xfree86.org/cvsweb/xc/programs/xkbcomp/symbols/inet?annotate=1.42

I will try to contact Eich and ask his opinion (since he was the person who committed that problematic code).
Comment 4 Egbert Eich 2007-02-18 05:42:50 UTC
I don't really see the issue here. This was added to support a project that happens to be under GPL. If we had left it out people who wanted to use it had to patch their files themselves. I don't think that adding support for another project that is under GPL will infect us.
I have been asked to include this stuff which I did with the understanding that those who provided it agreed to the MIT license. If they had a different understanding and want to get anal about it we can nuke this code. However I doubt that this will happen.
Neither back in the old XFree86 days nor today do we require a written agreement from people that they understand our license and agree to put their submissions under this license. Instead we rather assume this unless someone states otherwise in which case we refuse the submission.
I can get in touch with Stanislav Brabec about this. But at this point I don't think it is necessary.
Comment 5 Sergey V. Udaltsov 2007-02-18 06:15:56 UTC
Dan, are you happy with it? Can we close this bug?
Comment 6 Dan McNichol 2007-02-18 21:16:39 UTC
Egbert's comment seems to indicate this contribution was not "based on"
anything in LinEAK, but rather was added to XFree86 in order to enable LinEAK.

That should be ok.
Comment 7 Sergey V. Udaltsov 2007-02-19 00:42:39 UTC
So, everybody's happy 
Comment 8 Dan McNichol 2007-02-26 09:33:15 UTC
Just for posterity...

I was able to contact Dekel Tsur and he did confirm that the code
attributed to him (in file xkeyboard-config-0.9/symbols/il)
is available under the MIT/X11/license.
Comment 9 Sergey V. Udaltsov 2007-02-26 09:40:28 UTC
Thanks for the updated. We are clean then.


Use of freedesktop.org services, including Bugzilla, is subject to our Code of Conduct. How we collect and use information is described in our Privacy Policy.