Re: RFS: spim

[Ben Finney-5]

Mackenzie Morgan <macoafi@...> writes:

> [Please CC me in replies]

Done. I am sending to the ‘debian-legal’ forum, to discuss the license
terms of the work.

> * Package name    : spim
>   Version         : 7.5-1
>   Upstream Author :  James R. Larus <larus@...>
> * URL             :  http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html
> * License         : other
>   Section         : non-free/electronics
>
> It builds these binary packages:
> spim       - MIPS R2000/R3000 emulator
>
> The package appears to be lintian clean.
>
> The license is as follows:
>     You may make copies of SPIM for your own use and modify those copies.
>
>     All copies of SPIM must retain my name and copyright notice.
>
>     You may not sell SPIM or distribute SPIM in conjunction with a
>     commercial product or service without the expressed written consent of
>     James Larus.

This grants no permission to redistribute. What license from the
copyright holder does the Debian project have to redistribute this in
‘non-free’?

If the answer is “nothing explicit”, then the default copyright
restrictions prevent the Debian project from redistributing the work at
all.

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[Paul Wise-3]

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 1:49 PM, Ben Finney <ben+debian@...> wrote:

> Mackenzie Morgan <macoafi@...> writes:
>> The license is as follows:
>>     You may make copies of SPIM for your own use and modify those copies.
>>
>>     All copies of SPIM must retain my name and copyright notice.
>>
>>     You may not sell SPIM or distribute SPIM in conjunction with a
>>     commercial product or service without the expressed written consent of
>>     James Larus.
>
> This grants no permission to redistribute. What license from the
> copyright holder does the Debian project have to redistribute this in
> ‘non-free’?
>
> If the answer is “nothing explicit”, then the default copyright
> restrictions prevent the Debian project from redistributing the work at
> all.

Looks like a Debian person contacted him about this a long time ago:

http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/non-free/s/spim/current/copyright

IMO, the statement isn't particularly clear and I would not want
Debian to rely on it.

I'd suggest that upstream should provide a clear statement for
debian/copyright that Debian (and Ubuntu) is allowed to distribute
spim. It is a shame he refuses to change the license to something free
(as mentioned on IRC). If he has a PGP/GPG key to clearsign the
statement with, that would be good too.

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[Ben Finney-5]

Paul Wise <pabs@...> writes:

> On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 1:49 PM, Ben Finney <ben+debian@...> wrote:
> > This grants no permission to redistribute. What license from the
> > copyright holder does the Debian project have to redistribute this
> > in ‘non-free’?
> >
> > If the answer is “nothing explicit”, then the default copyright
> > restrictions prevent the Debian project from redistributing the work
> > at all.
>
> Looks like a Debian person contacted him about this a long time ago:
>
> http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/non-free/s/spim/current/copyright
>
> IMO, the statement isn't particularly clear and I would not want
> Debian to rely on it.

Not only that, it isn't an explicit statement from the copyright holder
at all; it's someone else reporting in their own words:

    Note: James Larus has clarified his license in regards to how it
    relates to packaging and redistribution. He welcomes the packaging
    and redistribution via other media, as long as his copyright is
    retained and source code is distributed.

That's far from what we normally require: explicit written license in
the copyright holder's own words.

> I'd suggest that upstream should provide a clear statement for
> debian/copyright that Debian (and Ubuntu) is allowed to distribute
> spim. It is a shame he refuses to change the license to something free
> (as mentioned on IRC). If he has a PGP/GPG key to clearsign the
> statement with, that would be good too.

Perhaps the copyright holder doesn't realise that, if he grants
additional permissions that “welcome packaging and redistribution”, that
*is* changing the license (at least, the license as received by Debian).
The license terms become a union of what he's initially written plus
that extra permission statement.

Better to re-write the license terms in a single document. Best, of
course, to simply choose an existing, widely-understood free software
license, and explicitly grant all of the work's recipients the license
under those terms.

Since it seems the copyright holder wants to have as little hassle from
copyright licensing as possible, I would suggest the terms of the Expat
license <URL:http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt> as being brief,
easily-understood, and clearly free.

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Ben Finney <ben@...>


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On Monday 19 October 2009 3:42:31 am Ben Finney wrote:
> Since it seems the copyright holder wants to have as little hassle from
> copyright licensing as possible, I would suggest the terms of the Expat
> license <URL:http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt> as being brief,
> easily-understood, and clearly free.

I asked him before to release it under a Free license.  He does not wish to do
so.

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[Charles Plessy-12]

Le Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 06:42:31PM +1100, Ben Finney a écrit :

> Paul Wise <pabs@...> writes:
> >
> > http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/non-free/s/spim/current/copyright
> >
>
> Not only that, it isn't an explicit statement from the copyright holder
> at all; it's someone else reporting in their own words:
>
>     Note: James Larus has clarified his license in regards to how it
>     relates to packaging and redistribution. He welcomes the packaging
>     and redistribution via other media, as long as his copyright is
>     retained and source code is distributed.
>
> That's far from what we normally require: explicit written license in
> the copyright holder's own words.

I do not know who ‘we’ are in this story, but the fact that the above URL stems
from packages.debian.org demonstrates that the statement was enough for the
package to be accepted in the Debian archive.

Have a nice day,

--
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan


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[Ben Finney-5]

Ben Finney <ben+debian@...> writes:

> Paul Wise <pabs@...> writes:
> > IMO, the statement isn't particularly clear and I would not want
> > Debian to rely on it.
>
> Not only that, it isn't an explicit statement from the copyright
> holder at all; it's someone else reporting in their own words
[…]

> Better to re-write the license terms in a single document. Best, of
> course, to simply choose an existing, widely-understood free software
> license, and explicitly grant all of the work's recipients the license
> under those terms.

Mackenzie Morgan <macoafi@...> writes:

> I asked him before to release it under a Free license. He does not
> wish to do so.

Okay. The Debian project still needs the copyright holder's explicit
license to redistribute, otherwise the work can't even be in ‘non-free’.

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[Ben Finney-5]

[sending again, this time with Mackenzie's requested Cc]

Ben Finney <ben+debian@...> writes:

> Paul Wise <pabs@...> writes:
> > IMO, the statement isn't particularly clear and I would not want
> > Debian to rely on it.
>
> Not only that, it isn't an explicit statement from the copyright
> holder at all; it's someone else reporting in their own words
[…]

> Better to re-write the license terms in a single document. Best, of
> course, to simply choose an existing, widely-understood free software
> license, and explicitly grant all of the work's recipients the license
> under those terms.

Mackenzie Morgan <macoafi@...> writes:

> I asked him before to release it under a Free license. He does not
> wish to do so.

Okay. The Debian project still needs the copyright holder's explicit
license to redistribute, otherwise the work can't even be in ‘non-free’.

--
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  `\                   authority myself.” —Albert Einstein, 1930-09-18 |
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[Ben Finney-5]

Charles Plessy <plessy@...> writes:

> Le Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 06:42:31PM +1100, Ben Finney a écrit :
> > Not only that, it isn't an explicit statement from the copyright
> > holder at all; it's someone else reporting in their own words:
[…]

> > That's far from what we normally require: explicit written license
> > in the copyright holder's own words.
>
> I do not know who ‘we’ are in this story, but the fact that the above
> URL stems from packages.debian.org demonstrates that the statement was
> enough for the package to be accepted in the Debian archive.

This doesn't contradict what I've said: that the Debian project
*normally* (AFAICT) requires explicit written license terms from the
copyright holder.

Nor does the fact that the package *was* in the archive mean that it
will be again accepted without explicit written license to redistribute.

I think it's unlikely that an alert ftpmaster would today allow it into
the archive in such a state, and I'm alerting the maintainer of this.

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[Paul Wise-3]

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 5:17 PM, Ben Finney <ben+debian@...> wrote:

> I think it's unlikely that an alert ftpmaster would today allow it into
> the archive in such a state, and I'm alerting the maintainer of this.

In case you missed it, spim has been removed from Debian for a long
time so there is no reason to alert the "maintainer". Mackenzie is the
maintainer for it in Ubuntu and you already notified her.

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[Timo Juhani Lindfors]

Ben Finney <ben+debian@...> writes:
>> * Package name    : spim
>>   Version         : 7.5-1

When I was asked to some university exercises with spim I used spimsal
4.4.2, a fork of an older version of spim that advertises itself to be
available under the terms of the GPL v1. How about packaging it
instead?

I'll quote their README file from

http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~spim/cvsweb/cvsweb.cgi/spimsal/README?rev=1.1.1.1&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup

entirely here:

> This release is Version 4.4.2.
>
> See the file INSTALL for information on compiling Spim.
>
> Spim versions begining with 4.4.1 are on a separate
> developement track from Spim versions after 5.0.
> This is due to changes to the GNU licence released
> with Spim 5.0.  Spim 5.0 has many features not present
> in this version, including cycle level simulation.
> Spim 4.4.2 has features not in Spim 5.0.  Most notible
> is that this version can assemble SAL (Simple Assembly
> Launguage).
>
> Spim version 4.4.2 is based on Spim version 4.4.
> Version 4.4 was written by Jim Larus and Alan Siow.
> Version 4.4.2 is covered by the GNU licence
> (see COPYING).  Version 4.4.2 includes modifications
> and bug fixes by Scott Kempf.  These modifications allow
> Spim to exectute SAL code, an assembly launguage similar
> to MIPS assembly language, but easier to use.  SAL was
> designed by James Goodman, Scott Kempf, and Karen Miller.
>
> Additions and changes to Spim Version 4.4 are copyrighted by
> Scott Kempf and are distributed under the terms of the GNU
> General Public License, Version 1.  Please read this document,
> which is in the file COPYING.
>
> These additions and changes include, but are not limited too:
> the SAL assembler, error handling improvements, the memory
> mapped I/O feature, improved installation, improved testing,
> and the interrupt driven trap handler.
>
> // You must not use -DNOMEMIO in the Makefile to use memory mapped I/O.
>
> Ftp to pipe.cs.wisc.edu and look in pub/spim.tar.Z .
> For ancient compilers that do not support ANSI,
> use pub/nonansi.spim.tar.Z.
>
> For e-mail on future updates (until May 1993) mail scottk@....
> Until May 1993, please feel free to mail any bugs, complaints,
> or comments to me at scottk@....  Portability is a
> major consern of mine, so I'd even like to know minor changes
> needed to make spim compile on your system.
>
> Scott Kempf
>
> This directory contains SPIM--an assembly language MIPS R2000/R3000
> simulator.  The files are:
>
> Makefile
> The make file for the system.
>
> README This file.
>
> COPYING
> GNU copyright notices.
>
> VERSION
> Version number of system.
>
>
> buttons.c
> X-interface code for command buttons.
>
> data.c
> Code to handle data directives.
>
> inst.c
> Code to build instructions and manipulate symbol table.
>
> mem.c
> Code to maintain memory.
>
> memio.c
> Code to handle memory mapped I/O.
>
> run.c
> Instruction simulator.
>
> spim-utils.c
> Misc. routines.
>
> spim.c
> Top-level interface.
>
> sym_tbl.c
> Symbol table.
>
> textact.c
> X-interface code.
>
> windows.c
> X-interface code to build windows.
>
> xspim.c
> Top-level X-interface.
>
> xutils.c
> X-inteface code.
>
> *.h
> include files for public funtions
>
> parser.y
> Parser for lines of assembly instructions.
>
> scanner.l
> Scanner.
>
>
> trap.handler
> Standard trap handler.
>
> Tests
> Subdirectory contain torture tests to verify that SPIM works.
>
> spim.tex
> mips.id
> xinterface.id
> TeX document that describes SPIM.
>
> spim.ps
> Postscript version of TeX document.
>
> 
>
> To make spim, edit the first few lines of the Makefile to set the
> parameters for the target machine, then type "make test".
>
> To make xspim, type "make xspim."
>
>
> SPIM is copyrighted by me and is distributed under the terms of the
> GNU General Public License, Version 1.  Please read this document,
> which is in the file COPYING.
>
>
> Although SPIM is free software, it cost time and money to produce.  If
> you use SPIM and work in industry, you can help support development of
> software of this sort by having your company make a unrestricted
> donation to my research program.  To do this, mail me check (address
> attached) payable to ``Computer Sciences Fund -- University of
> Wisconsin Foundation.''  The foundation's federal taxpayer
> identification number is 39-074-3975.
>
> James Larus
> larus@...
> Computer Sciences Department
> 1210 West Dayton Street
> University of Wisconsin
> Madison, WI 53706
> 608-262-9519

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On Monday 19 October 2009 5:10:54 am Ben Finney wrote:
> Okay. The Debian project still needs the copyright holder's explicit
> license to redistribute, otherwise the work can't even be in ‘non-free’.

I talked to Larus and he said he would send a statement to Debian Legal. Does
that work?

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[Ben Finney-5]

Mackenzie Morgan <macoafi@...> writes:

> On Monday 19 October 2009 5:10:54 am Ben Finney wrote:
> > Okay. The Debian project still needs the copyright holder's explicit
> > license to redistribute, otherwise the work can't even be in
> > ‘non-free’.
>
> I talked to Larus and he said he would send a statement to Debian
> Legal. Does that work?

Possibly, depending on how it's done.

Better would be for the copyright holder to re-release the work, with
the license terms changes to include all the freedoms in a single
document in the work. That way it's obvious to everyone what the full
set of license terms is.

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On Monday 19 October 2009 3:42:31 am Ben Finney wrote:
> Paul Wise <pabs@...> writes:
> > On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 1:49 PM, Ben Finney <ben+debian@...>
wrote:

> > > This grants no permission to redistribute. What license from the
> > > copyright holder does the Debian project have to redistribute this
> > > in ‘non-free’?
> > >
> > > If the answer is “nothing explicit”, then the default copyright
> > > restrictions prevent the Debian project from redistributing the work
> > > at all.
> >
> > Looks like a Debian person contacted him about this a long time ago:
> >
> > http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/non-free/s/spim/current/copyri
> >ght
> >
> > IMO, the statement isn't particularly clear and I would not want
> > Debian to rely on it.
>
> Not only that, it isn't an explicit statement from the copyright holder
> at all; it's someone else reporting in their own words:
>
>     Note: James Larus has clarified his license in regards to how it
>     relates to packaging and redistribution. He welcomes the packaging
>     and redistribution via other media, as long as his copyright is
>     retained and source code is distributed.
>
> That's far from what we normally require: explicit written license in
> the copyright holder's own words.
>
> > I'd suggest that upstream should provide a clear statement for
> > debian/copyright that Debian (and Ubuntu) is allowed to distribute
> > spim. It is a shame he refuses to change the license to something free
> > (as mentioned on IRC). If he has a PGP/GPG key to clearsign the
> > statement with, that would be good too.
>
> Perhaps the copyright holder doesn't realise that, if he grants
> additional permissions that “welcome packaging and redistribution”, that
> *is* changing the license (at least, the license as received by Debian).
> The license terms become a union of what he's initially written plus
> that extra permission statement.

Being not on the DL mailing list I don't know if there's been any movement.  I
talked to Larus (CC'd here) about it and he said he'd be willing to send a
statement directly to the list.

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[Ben Finney-5]

Mackenzie Morgan <macoafi@...> writes:

> On Monday 19 October 2009 3:42:31 am Ben Finney wrote:
> > Perhaps the copyright holder doesn't realise that, if he grants
> > additional permissions that “welcome packaging and redistribution”,
> > that *is* changing the license (at least, the license as received by
> > Debian). The license terms become a union of what he's initially
> > written plus that extra permission statement.
>
> Being not on the DL mailing list I don't know if there's been any
> movement.

As I understand it, ‘debian-legal’ has discussed as far as it can go for
now. The movement needs to come from the copyright holder.

> I talked to Larus (CC'd here) about it and he said he'd be willing to
> send a statement directly to the list.

Far better than a separate statement in email, the full license terms
should simply be updated in a new release of the work. That way, every
recipient has access to the full terms under which they can act.

Then the new license terms can be discussed as a whole here on
‘debian-legal’ to see what problems remain.

Choosing a well-understood, widely-known free-software license (e.g. GNU
GPL or Expat terms) would make this much simpler, of course.

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[Ben Finney-5]

Ben Finney <ben+debian@...> writes:

> Far better than a separate statement in email, the full license terms
> should simply be updated in a new release of the work. That way, every
> recipient has access to the full terms under which they can act.
>
> Then the new license terms can be discussed as a whole here on
> ‘debian-legal’ to see what problems remain.

That's poorly phrased. While I did mean to imply that both the above
should happen, there is no necessary sequence to them. That is,
discussing a new set of license terms doesn't require that the release
has yet happened.

> Choosing a well-understood, widely-known free-software license (e.g.
> GNU GPL or Expat terms) would make this much simpler, of course.

Meaning that it would make the discussion much quicker, and simpler to
get the work into Debian.

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[Jim Larus]

OK, let's make this simple.

The Debian project has permission to distribute spim and xspim.

I'm planning on changing the license in the next release -- but not GPL, probably BSD or MIT.

Is this sufficient?

/Jim

James Larus
larus@...
Cloud Computing Futures • Microsoft Research                              
http://research.microsoft.com/~larus       
425-706-2981


-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Finney [mailto:ben+debian@...]
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 3:20 PM
To: debian-legal@...
Cc: Mackenzie Morgan; Jim Larus
Subject: Re: RFS: spim

Ben Finney <ben+debian@...> writes:

> Far better than a separate statement in email, the full license terms
> should simply be updated in a new release of the work. That way, every
> recipient has access to the full terms under which they can act.
>
> Then the new license terms can be discussed as a whole here on
> ‘debian-legal’ to see what problems remain.

That's poorly phrased. While I did mean to imply that both the above should happen, there is no necessary sequence to them. That is, discussing a new set of license terms doesn't require that the release has yet happened.

> Choosing a well-understood, widely-known free-software license (e.g.
> GNU GPL or Expat terms) would make this much simpler, of course.

Meaning that it would make the discussion much quicker, and simpler to get the work into Debian.

--
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Ben Finney <ben@...>

[Paul Wise-3]

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 7:52 AM, Jim Larus <larus@...> wrote:

> OK, let's make this simple.
>
> The Debian project has permission to distribute spim and xspim.
...
> Is this sufficient?

Great, thanks!

Some permission to modify and distribute modified versions would be
useful in the  case a bug needs to be patched in a stable release.

More importantly, Mackenzie, I imagine Ubuntu will want the same
permissions as Debian?

> I'm planning on changing the license in the next release -- but not GPL, probably BSD or MIT.

That would be much much better.

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pabs

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[Jim Larus]

Just to confirm: I give permission to any open source project to modify and distribute spim and xspim, so long as my name and copyright remains on the code.

/Jim

James Larus
larus@...
Cloud Computing Futures • Microsoft Research                              
http://research.microsoft.com/~larus       
425-706-2981


-----Original Message-----
From: paul.is.wise@... [mailto:paul.is.wise@...] On Behalf Of Paul Wise
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 5:59 PM
To: Jim Larus
Cc: debian-legal@...; Mackenzie Morgan
Subject: Re: RFS: spim

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 7:52 AM, Jim Larus <larus@...> wrote:

> OK, let's make this simple.
>
> The Debian project has permission to distribute spim and xspim.
...
> Is this sufficient?

Great, thanks!

Some permission to modify and distribute modified versions would be useful in the  case a bug needs to be patched in a stable release.

More importantly, Mackenzie, I imagine Ubuntu will want the same permissions as Debian?

> I'm planning on changing the license in the next release -- but not GPL, probably BSD or MIT.

That would be much much better.

--
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

[Ben Finney-5]

Jim Larus <larus@...> writes:

> Just to confirm: I give permission to any open source project to
> modify and distribute spim and xspim, so long as my name and copyright
> remains on the code.

Thanks for persisting with this.

However, this is insufficient for the work to meet the Debian Free
Software Guidelines. For those guidelines, the license terms must grant
*any* recipient of the work via Debian, regardless of that recipient's
purpose or field of endeavour, to modify and redistribute the work under
the same license terms.

You might like to quickly review the guidelines we use to judge the
freedom of a work <URL:http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt>, and a
related FAQ document <URL:http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html>.

Would it be acceptable to grant license under the terms of the Expat
license <URL:http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt>? If you make a
statement that you grant recipients of the works ‘spim’ and ‘xspim’ a
license under those terms, then those works will be unambiguously free
under the DFSG.

--
 \     “We are no more free to believe whatever we want about God than |
  `\         we are free to adopt unjustified beliefs about science or |
_o__)              history […].” —Sam Harris, _The End of Faith_, 2004 |
Ben Finney <ben@...>


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[Jim Larus]

I give permission to anyone to  modify and distribute spim and xspim, so long as my name and copyright  remains on the code.

James Larus
larus@...
Cloud Computing Futures • Microsoft Research                              
http://research.microsoft.com/~larus       
425-706-2981

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Finney [mailto:ben+debian@...]
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 7:41 PM
To: Jim Larus
Cc: debian-legal@...; Mackenzie Morgan
Subject: Re: RFS: spim

Jim Larus <larus@...> writes:

> Just to confirm: I give permission to any open source project to
> modify and distribute spim and xspim, so long as my name and copyright
> remains on the code.

Thanks for persisting with this.

However, this is insufficient for the work to meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines. For those guidelines, the license terms must grant
*any* recipient of the work via Debian, regardless of that recipient's purpose or field of endeavour, to modify and redistribute the work under the same license terms.

You might like to quickly review the guidelines we use to judge the freedom of a work <URL:http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt>, and a related FAQ document <URL:http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html>.

Would it be acceptable to grant license under the terms of the Expat license <URL:http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt>? If you make a statement that you grant recipients of the works ‘spim’ and ‘xspim’ a license under those terms, then those works will be unambiguously free under the DFSG.

--
 \     “We are no more free to believe whatever we want about God than |
  `\         we are free to adopt unjustified beliefs about science or |
_o__)              history […].” —Sam Harris, _The End of Faith_, 2004 |
Ben Finney <ben@...>