[cl-debian] cl-rfc2109: requesting comments
Hello all! Please Cc: me, I'm not subscribed to the list. Moreover, please keep at least the bug entry cc:ed, so people don't need to search in other locations. I need some legal advices about one of my packages, rfc2109 [1][2]. The main problem is that rfc2109.lisp contains verbatim parts of RFC2109, RFC2068 and the Netscape cookie spec, documents that are not free per the DFSG. When I removed them [2], I forgot the parts in the function descriptions, thus the package was rejected. Soon after the rejection, upstream committed a sed script [3] to easily remove the same RFC parts I removed (thus not the ones in the function descriptions). I find upstream solution (which replaces the RFC parts with empty lines) better than mine because it doesn't change line numbers and avoids conflicts when pulling from upstream. The latter, however, means that every time I pull from upstream, I need to re-apply the sed script (just a minor annoyance). However as already written, upstream solution, as mine, suffers the RFC parts in the function descriptions. Back in October 2006, Pierre Thierry asked if these parts could be allowed even if not-free [4], but no one answered him. Since I'm not a license nor an RFC expert, here I am :-) Thx, bye, Gismo / Luca Footnotes: [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=359348 [2] http://cl-debian.alioth.debian.org/repository/lcapello/ [2] Thu Jul 20 23:04:07 CEST 2006 Luca Capello <luca@pca.it> * remove the non-DFSG documents from rfc2109.lisp 20060720210407-f6b0c-b84ff59374546e09173fadd6ec1b249db30b6fd2.gz [3] Wed Aug 9 21:58:18 CEST 2006 Alan Shields <patches@alan.shields.name> * easily strip RFC from rfc2109 for copyright concerns 20060809195818-df180-565dcf76a4cfffa29341ff033cbe3bb4362ab878.gz [4] http://common-lisp.net/pipermail/cl-debian/2006-October/001957.html
Scribit Luca Capello dies 25/11/2007 hora 19:33:
Back in October 2006, Pierre Thierry asked if these parts could be allowed even if not-free [4], but no one answered him. Since I'm not a license nor an RFC expert, here I am :-)
Now that I think of it, quoting a copyrighted material doesn't give you free material: you're not allowed to modify this quoted part, or you would denature the original work, which is in utter violation of the copyright, AFAIK. So it would still be better to remove those parts of the RFC. Quickly, Pierre -- nowhere.man@levallois.eu.org OpenPGP 0xD9D50D8A
On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 06:58:14PM +0100, Pierre THIERRY wrote:
Now that I think of it, quoting a copyrighted material doesn't give you free material: you're not allowed to modify this quoted part, or you would denature the original work, which is in utter violation of the copyright, AFAIK. So it would still be better to remove those parts of the RFC.
I'm still not sure that quoting such small parts of the RFC would infringe copyright, even if they are modified. Infringement of copyright requires either the whole or a "substantial part" of the copyright work to be copied, and I'm not convinced the headings would constitute a "substantial part". But that's the issue, rather than whether they are modified or not. (Incidentally, I suspect the question of modifying the quoted sections would become relevant when assessing "fair use", but I assume the policy is not to rely on "fair use" given that it is a US-centric concept.) However, as I said before the safest approach (while still retaining some usefulness) is to remove the text of the headings while retaining the paragraph numbering. So it sounds like we're agreed on the practical action (unless you think the paragraph numbers should be removed as well, which I think would be over-cautious). John (TINLA)
participants (3)
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John Halton -
Luca Capello -
Pierre THIERRY