[fpc-devel] Forwarded message about FPC status

[ListMember]

On 2012-12-22 11:48, Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, 22 Dec 2012, ListMember wrote:
>
>> On 2012-12-22 00:27, Sven Barth wrote:
>>
>>       Am 21.12.2012 22:20 schrieb "ListMember" 
>> <listmember at letterboxes.org>:
>> >
>>
>> > Can you (or someone else, of course) think of a better search 
>> string to locate it?
>>
>>       Go to View Issues, click on the + before the search bix, click 
>> in the appearing entries in the top left for "reporter" and select 
>> the user "Inoussa
>>       OUEDRAOGO" in the list (strangely the user exists twice, I used 
>> the first one) and click on Apply Filter. The second entry should be 
>> the correct one
>>       (you should be able to judge this from the issue's description).
>>
>>
>> Thank you for that detailed navigation; I got it now. [ 
>> http://mantis.freepascal.org/view.php?id=22909 ]
>>
>> Does anyone know if the license issue has been discussed in any 
>> public maillist/wiki etc.
>>
>> Reason I am asking is this: Having read (now and several times in the 
>> past) unicode.org's license [ 
>> http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html#Exhibit1 ] I simply
>> cannot see what it is that is so (or, rather, at all) restrictive.
>
> It would require every FPC made program to include the unicode license.
> By itself maybe not a problem, but this contrasts with the fact that 
> for years, you could make an FPC program without any additional 
> licenses, if you didn't use any third-party libraries.
>
> Inclusion in the RTL would make this an obligation for every FPC program.
>
> However, last status/opinion is that this is only so if you were to 
> copy the files verbatim. If the data contained in the files is somehow 
> recoded, then it would probably not apply.
>
> We didn't get any answers to our inquiries. But we found that Delphi 
> also uses these files, and they put forward the above argument on the 
> Delphi forums when Paul Ishenin inquired.
>
> It boils down to: Only the form is copyrighted, not the actual data.
>
> We hope they are right, otherwise every Delphi program as of Delphi 2009
> is in violation of the unicode license :-)
>
> Note that I am not a lawyer, the above are therefor not rigorous legal 
> truths.

I am not a lawyer either, but I did notice that they were quite pedantic 
(or, a better word might be meticulous) with their wording: In the 
license text they state that "Data Files *or* Software" must contain 
their license text.

Unicode.org guys are as much coders as linguists, so I believe they have 
used '*/or/*' (as opposed to '/*and*/' or '/*and/or*/') for a reason.

So, as an addition to what you have said, my take is that including 
their copyright in the data alone will suffice --programs/software need 
not have to bear the same text.

[Plus, of course, there should be a clear statement that it is 
'modified'. And, the documentation should bear license text. Wiki should 
do.]
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