Re: Many locale definitions need license change

[Keld Simonsen <keld at keldix dot com>]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 11:46:40AM -0500, Brett Smith wrote:
> Hello locale maintainers,
> 
> 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?

best regards
keld

> This license is not appropriate for part of glibc because it does not
> grant the four freedoms of free software.  In particular, it does not
> give people permission to modify the work.  This may make it difficult
> to maintain the files in the future, or prevent people from forking
> glibc.
> 
> Every locale definition distributed with glibc should have a free
> software, GPL-compatible license.  Ideally, it would be either the GPL,
> the LGPL, or perhaps the Expat license
> (http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt) if the author wanted to use very
> permissive terms.
> 
> If you are the author of some of the locale definition files under this
> license, please change it.
> 
> If you have up-to-date contact information for some of the authors of
> locale definition files affected by this change, please let me know.
> Soon I'll be trying to contact them individually to get their permission
> to make this change.
> 
> If there are any files that we can't get permission to relicense,
> unfortunately we will need to replace them.
> 
> If anybody has questions about this, please feel free to contact me.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> -- 
> Brett Smith
> License Compliance Engineer, Free Software Foundation
> 
> Support the FSF by becoming an Associate Member: http://fsf.org/jf
>