Re: Many locale definitions need license change

[Brett Smith <brett at fsf dot org>]

On Fri, 2011-02-25 at 05:12 +0200, Keld Simonsen wrote: 
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 11:46:40AM -0500, Brett Smith wrote:
> > My name is Brett Smith; I handle various license-related issues at the
> > FSF.  We recently learned that several locale definitions included with
> > glibc have a license that says "Distribution and use is free, also for
> > commercial purposes."  Other definitions have an incomplete copy of this
> > license.
> 
> I am probably the origin of this license. How would you advocate me to proceed to
> remedy the situation?

Keld,

Thanks for getting in touch.  It helps a lot to have the support of
someone who's contributed so much to the locale definitions.

Even if you did create or first use this license, we can't use that fact
to take any shortcuts, unfortunately.  We'll still have to follow the
procedure I outlined in my last e-mail: all the contributors using this
license will need to give use permission to use a free, GPL-compatible
license instead.

To take care of your own contributions, you have a couple of options.
If you want to have complete control over the process, you can prepare a
patch that replaces all the license notices in your contributions with
notices for one of the acceptable licenses I mentioned last time.  Send
that patch to me, I'll double-check to make sure it covers everything,
and then you can send it along to get integrated into the main glibc
codebase.  This might also be a good opportunity to update contact
information, etc.

If you don't want to get so detailed, you can also just send me an
e-mail that gives the FSF permission to distribute your work under one
of the acceptable licenses.  I'm working with our attorneys to prepare a
brief text that you can just send back to me to accomplish this, and
I'll pass it along as soon as it's done -- which should be Monday or
Tuesday.  Once we have that permission, I'll prepare a patch myself that
just updates the license notices, and send it to the glibc team.

Thanks again,

-- 
Brett Smith
License Compliance Engineer, Free Software Foundation

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