Re: [Groff] Unix Research Editions 8, 9, and 10 Available.

[walter harms]

Am 30.03.2017 17:02, schrieb Ingo Schwarze:
> Hi Ralph,
> 
> Ralph Corderoy wrote on Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 02:31:24PM +0100:
> 
>> Research Unix Editions 8, 9, and 10 will no longer have copyright
>> asserted over them.
> 
> While that vaguely resembles the wording of the original announcement,
> in this form, it is a grossly misleading statement.
> 
> For one thing, Alcatel-Lucent explicity says that they do "not
> relinquish any intellectual property rights".  That includes
> Copyright, so they clearly and explicitly retain ownership of their
> Copyright.  In stark contrast to that very clear and unambiguous
> statement, they do not explicitly say that they grant any permissions;
> the word "permit" does not occur at all in the document.  Even
> worse, the crucial sentence is grammatically incorrect and does not
> contain any predicate.  At least one word is obviously missing.  If
> that missing word is intended to be something like "guarantees" or
> "promises" or "officially states its legally binding, irrevocable
> intent", the statement might be somewhat useful; but if the missing
> word is intended to be somelike like "plans" or "considers" or
> "hopes", then it is rather useless and potentially a trap.
> 
> Besides, while they fail to explicitly grant any rights whatsoever,
> they do explicitly say that they do not grant "any rights for
> commercial purposes" - which is potentially another trap: For
> example, if somebody includes parts of this code into a compilation
> that is distributed non-commercially, suddenly parts of that
> compilation can no longer be used commercially, which users might
> not expect, potentially dragging unsuspecting end users into trouble.
> 
>> https://www.spinellis.gr/cgi-bin/comment.pl?date=20170328 says they
>> contain, amongst other things, "graphics typesetting tools" so perhaps
>> there's something of interest to today's troff users in them.
> 
> Something interesting, maybe; but given the vagueness of the statement,
> doing anything with it other than looking at it for historical interest
> seems fraught with multiple risks to me.
> 
> In particular, i don't think including code into groff that cannot
> be used for commercial purposes and that does not have a clear and
> unambiguous license would be a bad idea.
> 


I guess the only solution is to ask Alcatel-Lucent for clarification.

re,
 wh