[Savannah-register-public] [task #14528] Submission of relax

[Edward d'Auvergne]

Follow-up Comment #30, task #14528 (project administration):

>> Does this mean that we have to wait ~4 months for any progress on this
task?
>
> Strictly speaking, you don't have: you could make sure that Savannah hosting
requirements (for example, the documentation should be released in a
FDL1.3+-compatible way) are met by then (i.e. June).

As far as I was aware, that is what we have always strived to do:

* The webpages are FDLv1.3+ (see the footnotes).  I have just made this
clearer
<https://sourceforge.net/p/nmr-relax/website/ci/349b481cf7577490894e8758648f60df439b3d5a/>
though.

* The API documentation <http://www.nmr-relax.com/api/4.0/> is GPLv3+,
matching the source code as expected (it is 100% auto-generated from the
source code).

* The PDF manual
<https://sourceforge.net/projects/nmr-relax/files/manual/relax.pdf/download>
and auto-converted HTML manual <http://www.nmr-relax.com/manual/index.html>
are GPLv3+ licensed.  These contain lots of source code fragments, full
scripts, UI screenshots, documentation auto-generated from the code (215 pages
from 712), and a huge number of non-copyrightable mathematical equations. 
Using the GPLv3+ was determined to be far less complicated than having a FDLed
document interspersed with a huge number of GPLed text, graphic, and data
components.  So we chose licensing simplicity for legal clarity.


> Scripts are nice, but they rarely catch things like licensing inconsistency

The relax project was started in 2001 with an aim of adhering to all of
Richard Stallman and the FSF goals to be truly free software.  That is why we
chose Gna! hosting originally (see this discussion about the Affero licence
<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/savannah-hackers/2004-04/msg00096.html>). 
Any licensing inconsistencies will be due to honest mistakes.  With such an
old project written by scientists (i.e. non-programmers) for scientists, and
including a large quantity of data files for complete test coverage, some
issues might creep in.  But I have tried to be vigilant and have caught and
fixed most of these issues as they are committed.

The script I wrote was to help find any inconsistencies (but not all).  As
many other GPLv3+ licensed projects do, we also did not attach copyright
notices to non-source-code files (data and graphics).  This is under the
assumption that those copying any source or content would look at the
repository(s) to obtain that information (otherwise they would not have a
legal licence for their distributed copy).  We have changed that policy now so
that all files have a copyright notice, and the script is a useful tool for
identifying those with missing notices.

The script will also be very useful for automated checking in the future in
case other developers do not meet the FSF licensing standards.  The developer
can run the script themselves to see the issue.


> (e.g. what license actually applies to graphics/oxygen_icons? GPL? LGPL? may
you really relicense it under GPLv3 "or later"?;

The authors listed in the AUTHORS file
<https://sourceforge.net/p/nmr-relax/code/ci/master/tree/graphics/oxygen_icons/AUTHORS>
originally licensed the graphics under the LGPLv3+
<https://sourceforge.net/p/nmr-relax/code/ci/master/tree/graphics/oxygen_icons/COPYING>.
 They use the text "or (at your option) any later version" in their COPYING
file.  The original AUTHORS and COPYING file have been placed into the
graphics/oxygen_icons/ directory.

We originally just had the LGPLv3 licence text in the
graphics/oxygen_icons/COPYING file, rather than their "annotated" version. 
The new README files contained a cut and paste error that is now fixed
<https://sourceforge.net/p/nmr-relax/code/ci/03a0010c46591003e2b39832ba9e01670a1ae665>
(the copied GPL notice should have been modified to be LGPL).


>and public domain files should also have notices saying who was the original
copyright holder;

This is the case for all the public domain content except for PDB (Protein
Data Bank) 3D protein structures
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_Data_Bank>.  For the structures listed
in test_suite/shared_data/structures/README and elsewhere as being public
domain, it is impossible to determine the "original copyright holder".  The
PDB file lists all authors on the scientific paper.  However the "original
copyright holder" is only one of those authors and that author is not
identified.  See the "AUTHOR" and "JRNL        AUTH" entries in these files
for the author lists.  The "AUTHOR" entry is sometimes the "original copyright
holder", sometimes the professor who does not have copyright ownership rather
than their student who created the file, and sometimes all of the authors on
the publication.  Upon submission of a 3D structure to the PDB, the "original
copyright holder" accepts to release the work as public domain.  Therefore
there is no legal question about the copyright-free status of the contents in
the Protein Data Bank.


> and why opening SVG files in an editor like Inkscape shows that they have a
proprietary license,

This new Inkscape "feature" of listing the licence, which I've only just found
out about, did not exist when these graphics were created.  It seems to
default to "proprietary" in the Inkspace application for any SVG without
<cc:license/> tags.  But that does not make our vector graphics "proprietary".
 Should we be adding "Creative Commons" tags to our SVG files just for the
benefit of the current version of the Inkscape application?  This is not even
used by the Creative Commons organisation themselves (see
https://mirrors.creativecommons.org/presskit/logos/cc.logo.svg).


> and why normally reading DVI and PDF files people don't see the notices) and
one has to figure out why files like graphics/oxygen_icons/AUTHORS are
missed.

I'm not sure what this means?  Should the GPLv3+ licensing of the PDF and HTML
manual be better advertised?  If so, I have just added a second title page
with this info
<https://sourceforge.net/p/nmr-relax/code/ci/a8f54acde1d44511238d9c56a2edc64ab33425c1/>.
 It adds the following text to the bottom of page 2:

"""
Copyright (C) 2001-2018 the relax development team

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under
the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL), Version 3 or any later
version published by the Free Software Foundation.
"""

For graphics/oxygen_icons/AUTHORS, this simply a list of authors.  Does it
require a copyright notice?  I thought this type of content is not
copyrightable.

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