[Pkg-mono-devel] Moonlight Package Licensing

[saulgoode at flashingtwelve.brickfilms.com]

Quoting Jo Shields <directhex at apebox.org>:

> Why am I only hearing about licensing concerns regarding a package I
> maintain when reading about it on a personal attack website? I'd usually
> think that a package's maintainer should be included in such
> discussions, assuming you're interested in their input.
>
> Please remember that debian-legal is an advice forum, and in no way has
> a formal role regarding license compliance - that role belongs to
> ftp-master.

I was not aware that debian-legal was a personal attack website. :)

But seriously, I welcome your input and appreciate your response.  
You've addressed many of the concerns I raised and it would seem I had  
indeed garnered some misconceptions from the Debianwiki Project page.  
No animosity was intended in my pointing out inaccuracies on that  
page, nor did I consider them to be overly disconcerting. More than  
anything, the Project wiki was presented as the basis for my  
understanding of the codebase (but in time the page should be amended).

Regarding Cairo components and the Mozilla Public License:
> The license has zero role in the package - but rules state that licenses
> need to be disclosed in debian/copyright for ALL source in a given
> source tarball, whether that code is used in final binary packages or
> not. The embedded copies of cairo and pixman are NOT used in the binary
> packages. Nor is any Ms-PL source.
Apparently I have been misinformed on the components constituting the  
Debian binary package and much of my concern over that misapprehended.  
If one may ask, why is there code in the source tarball that does not  
get included in the binary? Is their exclusion handled by configure  
switches? The Project wiki provided an admirable description of the  
role FFMPEG played in the package; perhaps a similar description could  
be provided for code licensed under the MPL, LGPLv2.1, and Ms-PL.

>> As a final comment, and one more hypothetical in nature, the Ms-PL
>> makes no distinction between derived and collective works and offers no
>> exemption for "mere aggregation" (as does the General Public License).
>> In lieu of such an exception, we are left with relying upon the
>> interpretation of the courts as to what constitutes a derived or
>> collected work of joint authorship under copyright law. Should a
>> Ms-PL-licensed package be included with a Debian distribution, it may
>> very well be argued that the entire distribution (a collective work)
>> must be offered under licensing which "complies with" the Ms-PL -- any
>> inclusion of code for which there is no patent grant could be construed
>> as infringement of the copyrights of Ms-PLed code's author.
>
> How likely does that REALLY seem to you? codeplex.com contains a lot of
> Ms-PL source, and a lot of other licenses (including some non-Free
> licenses). How likely does it seem that a "mere aggregation" like a code
> website is actually licensing everything under one of its constituent
> licenses, by accident?

Let me clarify that when I stated my comment was "more hypothetical",  
it was precisely owing to the fact that the Moonlight packages are in  
a third-party repository and that "a code website" should probably not  
be considered under copyright law definitions as a ?joint work? ("...  
a work prepared by two or more authors with the intention that their  
contributions be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a  
unitary whole" - USC Title 17 § 101). The argument that a Debian  
distribution might be a "joint work", however, is not quite so  
tenuous. Even though one can separate out *copies* of the individual  
components, the distro itself is an instance of a "unitary whole".

> See also: Hanlon's Razor.

If by this you are suggesting that my concern is attributable to my  
considering the author of the Microsoft Public License to be  
"malicious", such is not the case. Whether a combination of code  
contributions under disparate licenses should be considered to result  
in a collective or derived work is not a matter to be decided by the  
license authors (unless there is language in the license explicitly  
addressing this), but by the holders of the code's copyrights (in that  
they may choose whether or not to pursue the matter) and, ultimately,  
by the courts.

The terms and conditions of the Ms-PL need to be examined for what  
they actually say; not what we want them to say, nor what we expect  
them to say. The lack of a "mere aggregation" exemption is, in my  
opinion, extremely problematic for Free Software providers -- imagine  
the ramifications to Linux-based distros if the GPL didn't provide  
such an exemption -- and the unorthodox requirement that one license  
"complies with" another places conditions on combining contributions  
far stricter than a requirement of "does not contradict" (as in the  
AFL 3.0). The intention of the license's author is of little  
significance once the license is written; what matters is how the  
courts will apply the code of law to the copyrights covered by the  
license.

Perhaps my interpretation on this is completely misguided, but that's  
why I posted on this discussion list. Hopefully, those more versed  
than myself will be able to point out where my reasoning may be  
flawed. If I am mistaken then it should be an easy matter to provide  
specifics beyond "look at all those people doing it, it must be OK".