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[ft-devel] Licensing issue


From: Chris Gilbert
Subject: [ft-devel] Licensing issue
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:29:33 +0000
User-agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 (Windows/20060909)

Hi,

(Note I'm not a lawyer, I'm just paranoid about licenses, and want to
get this one cleaned up)

While checking over the code for any odd licenses, I've found this one:
http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/freetype/freetype2/src/pcf/pcfutil.c?rev=1.8&view=auto

Basically the license on the file doesn't give any rights to
redistribute, modify, copy or sell.  In fact it specifically says:
All Rights Reserved.

IE it says it's opengroup's and you can do nothing with it.  Even if the
intention (by releasing it into the public domain) was that it could be,
it doesn't specify that fact, which is legally dubious.

I believe it's easily fixed by taking the latest version from
x.org's lib/font/util/utilbitmap.c eg:
http://webcvs.freedesktop.org/xorg/xc/lib/font/util/utilbitmap.c?revision=1.5&view=markup

(note that rev 1.1 from X11R6.6 has the updated license, so it was
updated at some point for X.org)

It changes the license so that:
All Rights Reserved.
becomes:
Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and
its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee,
provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that
both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in
supporting documentation.

Which is the more usual and common Open Group license, and gives rights
to use the code, both in open source and in commercial products.

Thanks,
Chris




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