Comment 25 for bug 6792

In case anyone was wondering, this is far from cleared up. :-(

 >Ahh, the horror continues.
 >
 >I would be happy to remove all of the Minolta-copyrighted code.
Perhaps the best choice.

Beat Rubischon has sent a nice message apparently granting permission to
use his code under "any license" as long as his name is preserved
(earlier in the bug trail) -- so for anything copyrighted by him, we're OK.

*UN*fortunately he apparently isn't the sole copyright holder of the
5250 code. Permission would be needed from Minolta, and I seriously
doubt he has the right to speak for them, even though he's an employee.
  I doubt he wants to go to the trouble of clearing this with Minolta's
legal department. :-(

 >As for the "what this means" paragraph in the Lineage file, that was
 >written
 >by an idiot, and should be removed (in fact, I thought I had removed
it >already).
Well, that's simple then. :-)

 >As for the Georgia Tech copyrighted code, I've been through this issue
 >with
 >them twice over the years, and the "public use" language was something
 >they
 >suggested. I don't know what it means, either. Shall I give it
 >another go
 >with them, to see if they will allow a different copyright notice? If
 >so,
 >what kinds of notices would be acceptable?

Ideally, the MIT/X11-like license already used by most of the code; that
would look like this:
 > Copyright © 1989 by Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta, GA 30332.
 > Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
 >documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted,
 >provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that
 >both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in
 >supporting documentation.

(It could also be consolidated with the other essentially identical
notices.)

If they don't like that, perhaps change it to "hereby granted to all
members of the public"? That's probably (hopefully) what they mean by
"public use".

Alternately, the Georgia Institute of Technology license appears to be
an acceptable and DFSG-free license (-legal, please verify -- I'm not
100% sure). That, changed for Georgia Tech Research, would look like this:
 > Copyright © 1989 by Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta, GA 30332.
 >All rights reserved except for those rights explicitly mentioned below.
 >Permission is granted to distribute freely or to modify and distribute
 >freely any materials and information contained herein as long as the
 >above copyright and all terms associated with it remain intact.

This appears to be a free, all-permissive license. (Debian-legal should
probably comment, of course; I am assuming that "freely" is not a no-fee
restriction but simply intended to make the permission broad, and that
"copy" is clearly implied by "distribute". Ideally the copyright
holders would clarify that my interpretation is the same as theirs.) If
Georgia Tech Research Corporation has some relationship with the Georgia
Institute of Technology, it might be more amenable to using a "familiar"
license statement.

If none of these options work for them, we really need to figure out
what they *want*. If we know *why* they don't like the standard license
used for the rest of 3270, debian-legal can probably recommend a license
tailored to suit their needs.