99 lines
4.8 KiB
Plaintext
99 lines
4.8 KiB
Plaintext
===============================================
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Mar 9th, 2007
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Written by Mamoru Tasaka
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<mtasaka@ioa.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
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Clarification of the license of mecab-ipadic
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on Fedora
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===============================================
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The English version of the license of mecab-ipadic
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(which is included as "LICENSE.en" in this rpm )
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contains the part which came from ICOT Free software
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license, which contains the following paragraph.
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-----------------------------------------------
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Each User may also freely distribute the Program, whether in its
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original form or modified, to any third party or parties, PROVIDED
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that the provisions of Section 3 ("NO WARRANTY") will ALWAYS appear
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on, or be attached to, the Program, which is distributed substantially
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in the same form as set out herein and that such intended
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distribution, if actually made, will neither violate or otherwise
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contravene any of the laws and regulations of the countries having
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jurisdiction over the User or the intended distribution itself.
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-----------------------------------------------
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At the time I was writing this document, debian regarded
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mecab-ipadic as NON-free as they judged this paragraph problematic.
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So I asked Mr. Tom "spot" Callaway if this software can be
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legally accepted, and he asked FSF (The Free Software
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Foundation) if they can accept this license as free.
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The opinion of FSF on this passage was as below.
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-----------------------------------------------
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Debian's beef is with the following paragraph of the license:
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<This part is the same as the above paragraph>
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They have two complaints. I've given my thoughts on both, but I can't
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make a final determination on either; that would be for RMS and Eben.
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* They believe that when the license talks about something being
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"distributed substantially in the same form as set out herein," it's
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referring to the program -- implying that you can't radically alter
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the software (i.e., take a piece of it and incorporate it in some
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totally different software). I understand why they think that. On
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the other hand, I'm skeptical that this is the licensor's intent; I
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think they just want to keep you from messing up the warranty
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disclaimer too much. Unusually for Debian, apparently nobody tried to
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clear this up with the original authors. It might be worthwhile to
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try that. As it stands, I think we'd want to steer clear as well, as
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we did with the original Artistic license.
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* They object to the requirement that you follow the law. I'm not sure
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if we have a general policy on this, but I know we've accepted similar
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restrictions as being free before (the Intel Open Source License has
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similar, though narrower, language), so I think we would still
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consider the license free as well even with this text.
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If you can get some kind of clarification on the first point, I'd be
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happy to escalate this for further discussion.
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-----------------------------------------------
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So Mr Callaway asked me to clarify the intend of the original author
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with respect to the word "substantially".
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However, according to the original Japanese version of
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this license (which is included as "LICENSE.jp.html" in this rpm),
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the part of the license which corresponds to the ICOT license
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paragraph, which contains the words "substantially", reads
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as below (in English):
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-----------------------------------------------
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Each user of this program may freely use, modify and make a copy of
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this program. "To modify this program" used herein includes
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* to improve or to extend this program to make it better its
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function, performance, and the quality
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* to add programs and documents you created by yourself,
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however, it ("to modify this program") is not limited to the above.
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Each user of this program may distribute to others
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this program itself, or the modified version of this program,
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provided
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* the section three ("no warranty") of this license is
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included in it,
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freely as long as the distribution won't violate the laws
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which may relate to the distribution.
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-----------------------------------------------
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So as mecab developers mention, who maintain mecab-ipadic
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software currently, and also in my opinion, it does not seem
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to appear in the Japanese license the part which corresponds to
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the words "substantially in the same form". And in the Japanese
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license it is mentioned what to call "the modified version", which
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declares that the original developer imposes no limitation
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for modifying this software.
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Mr Callaway finally declared this license OK for Fedora
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on Mar 8th, 2007.
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-----------------------------------------------
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This is good. Add a text file which says exactly what you just said as
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LICENSE.Fedora, include it in %doc, and it is ok for Fedora.
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~spot
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----------------------------------------------- |