Content-Type=message/rfc822 Content-Description=embedded message Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 14:04:52 +0100 (BST)
From: Lance Davis lance@uklinux.net
To: kevin kwood@free.fr Cc: centos@caosity.org Subject: Re: [Centos] Diff files to be made publicly available.
On Wed, 30 Jun 2004, kevin wrote:
If the diff files were made available with each update, the community would understand more, less questions and confusion would occur. More scrutiny would result in a better product for us all.
This really is a strange post.
When one can not see from another persons perspective, things often looks strange.
The patch files are all contained separately within the source rpms.
The exceptions are redhat-artwork and anaconda-images where the graphic files are contained with the source rpm, and anaconda itself where there are wholesale changes.
I dont know what 'questions and confusion' you are referring to.
RHEL takes open source software and closes it. CentOS takes this closed software and reopens it. By making the changes open to public inspection, CentOS would become 100% open source.
But they already are and it already is.
I interpret this comment to mean CentOS 3.1 is 100% open source.
Red Hat are very clear in RHEL 3ES about what they claim to be "Copyright" with "All rights reserved".
However, can someone please explain the following line from redhat-logos.spec in CentOS 3.1 SRPMS:
License: GPL - CentOS logos Copyright 2003 and Trademark Definitive Software Ltd
I presume the following equation is true:
Lance === Definitive Software Ltd
I hope very much to be wrong. I hope CentOS is 100% GPL, open source software, free for all men (and women) to copy and distribute at a small cost (even if their enemies can do the same four times cheaper).
So please feel free to regard this posting as strange, tell me I've found a typo, or tell the world that parts of CentOS 3.1 have Copyright restrictions and is NOT therefore 100% GPL, open source software. Not just yet anyway......
Kevin Wood In a world where GPL sometimes stands for (Greedy People Lying)
Lance
-- uselinux.co.uk - The ISP of choice for the discerning Linux user.
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004, kevin wrote:
However, can someone please explain the following line from redhat-logos.spec in CentOS 3.1 SRPMS:
License: GPL - CentOS logos Copyright 2003 and Trademark Definitive Software Ltd
I hope CentOS is 100% GPL, open source software, free for all men (and women) to copy and distribute at a small cost
Copyright is not license.
Materials can be *licensed* under the GPL, and therefore freely copied, even when copyrighted. In fact, the entire basis of the GPL, as I understand it (IANAL etc. etc.) is copyright law -- someone has to hold a copyright on the material in order to have legal grounds for applying the GPL. If no one holds a copyright, then the material is in the public domain and the GPL is neither necessary nor applicable.
It is true that in many cases the copyright of GPL'd material is assigned to the FSF or some similar entity, but that is not a necessary condition of licensing it under the GPL.
*IF* there were a statement somewhere that explicitly *excludes* these images or other selected parts of CentOS from the terms of the GPL, then you might have grounds for complaint, but the statement that they are copyrighted does not AFAIK constitute such an exclusion.
The effect of the copyright is that you cannot separate the CentOS logos from the rest of the sources and use them, independently, for some other purpose, without permission from Definitive Software Ltd. The effect of the GPL is that you can copy and distribute CentOS as a whole, even though it includes the copyrighted images. Do you see the distinction?
(Again, I am not a lawyer, and the GPL has all sorts of other effects that might be construed to make it possible to re-use the logos.)
On Thu, 2004-07-15 at 05:05, Bart Schaefer wrote:
Copyright is not license.
Materials can be *licensed* under the GPL, and therefore freely copied, even when copyrighted. In fact, the entire basis of the GPL, as I understand it (IANAL etc. etc.) is copyright law -- someone has to hold a copyright on the material in order to have legal grounds for applying the GPL. If no one holds a copyright, then the material is in the public domain and the GPL is neither necessary nor applicable.
Jumping in late on this but you are correct. The GPL strongly relies on existing copyright law. The reason there's some confusion is that most people just automatically assign the copyright to the FSF or put nothing at all in for copyright. In the later case I _believe_ that the copyright falls to the author automatically. However, IANAL either.
Looks more to me like the logos are copyright and trademarked ( including the name centos ).
On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 09:48:48 +0200, kevin kwood@free.fr wrote:
Content-Type=message/rfc822 Content-Description=embedded message Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 14:04:52 +0100 (BST)
From: Lance Davis lance@uklinux.net
To: kevin kwood@free.fr Cc: centos@caosity.org Subject: Re: [Centos] Diff files to be made publicly available.
On Wed, 30 Jun 2004, kevin wrote:
If the diff files were made available with each update, the community would understand more, less questions and confusion would occur. More scrutiny would result in a better product for us all.
This really is a strange post.
When one can not see from another persons perspective, things often looks strange.
The patch files are all contained separately within the source rpms.
The exceptions are redhat-artwork and anaconda-images where the graphic files are contained with the source rpm, and anaconda itself where there are wholesale changes.
I dont know what 'questions and confusion' you are referring to.
RHEL takes open source software and closes it. CentOS takes this closed software and reopens it. By making the changes open to public inspection, CentOS would become 100% open source.
But they already are and it already is.
I interpret this comment to mean CentOS 3.1 is 100% open source.
Red Hat are very clear in RHEL 3ES about what they claim to be "Copyright" with "All rights reserved".
However, can someone please explain the following line from redhat-logos.spec in CentOS 3.1 SRPMS:
License: GPL - CentOS logos Copyright 2003 and Trademark Definitive Software Ltd
I presume the following equation is true:
Lance === Definitive Software Ltd
I hope very much to be wrong. I hope CentOS is 100% GPL, open source software, free for all men (and women) to copy and distribute at a small cost (even if their enemies can do the same four times cheaper).
So please feel free to regard this posting as strange, tell me I've found a typo, or tell the world that parts of CentOS 3.1 have Copyright restrictions and is NOT therefore 100% GPL, open source software. Not just yet anyway......
Kevin Wood In a world where GPL sometimes stands for (Greedy People Lying)
Lance
-- uselinux.co.uk - The ISP of choice for the discerning Linux user.
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