bundled glfont2 is non-free (not redistributable in modified form)
rathann opened this issue · comments
According to the latest archived version of the original Brad Fish's glfont2 website (https://web.archive.org/web/20130511220912/http://students.cs.byu.edu/~bfish/glfont2.php#Distribution), it's not permitted to distribute modified copies of glfont2, and the copy included in Aquaria is modified. The license is thus incompatible with GPL version 2, under which most of Aquaria is licensed. I'd recommend porting the remaining uses of this API to FTGL, which is used elsewhere in the code already.
Please disregard the above if you have a written statement from Brad re-licensing the glfont2 code under a GPLv2-compatible license.
If it's somehow important to you to get this resolved, send me a PR that kicks out glfont. If not, why open this issue in the first place? Does Fedora have rules that prevent you from creating a package?
Anyway, listen up:
First, if the website is no longer available, it's technically not possible to look these things up. Just relying on archive.org for convenience, 14 years after the date noted in the code, and then complain is more than strange.
Second, it's not a distributed version. It's an internal component, modified to suit the needs of that particular codebase, that was in fact originally not intended to be open sourced. The later modifications were done by me because the original API was lacking. There is no actual license to be found that would disallow such use.
Third, if you are that much into nitpicking, let's dissect the statement on the archived site:
If you wish to distribute a modified version of the glFont API, please get in touch with me first
This is a request and not a requirement. As said before, this is not distribution. This is private use in a thing that happened to be open sourced later.
so that I can post it at the official glFont website
Which is down. If you haven't noticed, glfont is abandoned. Not gonna happen.
others may find your modifications useful
Certainly not.
and having them all at the official site will help reduce confusion.
Again, the official website does no longer exist, and expecting updates to the thing after 14 years is just weird.
That said, please use the issue tracker for actual bugs & enhancements, and not bullshit that doesn't help anyone and wastes my time. Don't you have anything better to do? Go write some code that makes the world a better place. Thanks.
If it's somehow important to you to get this resolved, send me a PR that kicks out glfont. If not, why open this issue in the first place? Does Fedora have rules that prevent you from creating a package?
I'd gladly help you kick out glfont if I had the time. Yes, Fedora has rules. While shipping bundled third-party code is strongly discouraged, it's not prohibited but must be documented. However, shipping code whose license prohibits redistribution of modified copies (i.e., non-free) is strictly prohibited.
First, if the website is no longer available, it's technically not possible to look these things up. Just relying on archive.org for convenience, 14 years after the date noted in the code, and then complain is more than strange.
It doesn't matter if the original upstream no longer exists. I remember reading about at least one court case where the judge accepted archive.org contents as evidence (https://archive.org/post/24177/internet-archives-web-page-snapshots-held-admissible-as-evidence). Why do you find it strange that someone actually read the license and complained that you're not following it?
Second, it's not a distributed version. It's an internal component, modified to suit the needs of that particular codebase, that was in fact originally not intended to be open sourced. The later modifications were done by me because the original API was lacking. There is no actual license to be found that would disallow such use.
Unfortunately, that's not how copyright law works. By default, all rights remain with the author and if they don't say that you can distribute modified copies explicitly then you can't. The html file accompanying the source code (found in https://web.archive.org/web/20130627091819/http://students.cs.byu.edu/~bfish/glfont2.zip) explicitly allows distribution of unmodified copies only. And yes, you are distributing the code (by posting it on github). It doesn't matter if it was private use or not before. I realize that you may not have been the person responsible for including this code in Aquaria in the first place, but you're the current maintainer.
Third, if you are that much into nitpicking, let's dissect the statement on the archived site:
If you wish to distribute a modified version of the glFont API, please get in touch with me first
This is a request and not a requirement. As said before, this is not distribution. This is private use in a thing that happened to be open sourced later.
The quoted statement doesn't give you the right to distribute modified copies. This should've been caught while open-sourcing the code and before posting it on github, when "private use" became publicly distributed. Actually, if the modified code was present in the original Aquaria, that distribution violated the original license as well.
In all likelihood, the original author (Brad Fish) won't ever go to court with you over this. He'd probably be happy to re-license the code under a free license, but the fact remains that the original license doesn't give permission to redistribute modified copies, which makes it incompatible with GPLv2. That makes the inclusion of this code in any Linux distribution which ships binary packages legally impossible (I'm not a lawyer though).
To move this forward I sent an e-mail to Brad requesting re-licensing the code under a more permissive license and will let you know if I hear anything back.
Again, the official website does no longer exist, and expecting updates to the thing after 14 years is just weird.
Obviously, I'm not expecting updates from the original author. You're effectively maintaining a fork of glfont2 and thus you're responsible for it.
That said, please use the issue tracker for actual bugs & enhancements, and not bullshit that doesn't help anyone and wastes my time. Don't you have anything better to do? Go write some code that makes the world a better place. Thanks.
That seems a bit hostile. I was just trying to create a proper package for Fedora and found this while going over the Fedora Packaging Guidelines compliance as I do with everything I try to package. This is a bug. Not a technical one, but a legal one, but still a bug. Issues like this crop up all the time, especially with old code. It's really nothing to get worked up about. The usual way of solving cases like this is either to ask the original author for permission or disable/rewrite the offending code (or use an alternative, free implementation). Fedora packagers file issues like this with many upstream projects all the time and I have to admit this is the first time I received such a reaction.
Yea, i was tired and cranky on that day, sorry.
If you hear anything back and get this solved, great. However neither of Arch/Gentoo/FreeBSD had a problem with this (packages do exist), so i assumed that fedora was just picky and special.
Gentoo actually has a policy of no static linking of external libs, but that was easy enough to fix via cmake. Heck, there's even an AmigaOS build that ships with all the data and everything. Not that i care.
(Since don't care about copyright problems, GPL this, GPL that, i will likely not touch any related code until something better is found. So let's wait for a reply.)
Good news! I've just received an e-mail from the original author of the code (Brad Fish) saying he's happy to change the license and he will set up a website with the code under a new license soon.