taskSavannah Administration - Tasks: task #4371, Submission of Texi2HTML

 
 

task #4371: Submission of Texi2HTML

Submitter:  Derek Robert Price <dprice>
Submitted:  Wed 06 Jul 2005 08:59:45 PM UTC
   
 
Should Start On:  Wed 06 Jul 2005 12:00:00 AM UTC Should be Finished on:  Sat 16 Jul 2005 12:00:00 AM UTC
Category:  Project Approval Priority:  * 5 - Normal
Status:  Done Privacy:  Public
Assigned to:  kickino Open/Closed:  Closed
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Thu 28 Jul 2005 02:07:15 PM UTC, comment #25: 

So much for my guesswork, hey?  Anyhow, I've restored the images.  :)

Derek Robert Price <dprice>
Thu 28 Jul 2005 06:50:58 AM UTC, comment #24: 

Hello again :)

RMS suggested we accept any free license for images and other data
that are a secondary part of a package that is mainly software.

cc-by-sa is a free license, so you can use it for your project if needed.

Sylvain Beucler <Beuc>
Fri 22 Jul 2005 10:16:44 PM UTC, comment #23: 

Hi.

It is a matter of Savannah policy rather than licensing compatibility. I just sent a mail to RMS asking whether we should accept a different set of license for works other than software and documentation.

Sylvain Beucler <Beuc>
Fri 22 Jul 2005 01:01:04 PM UTC, comment #22: 

I'm not a lawyer and it would be interesting to hear it from the FSF, but I am willing to bet that the problem is the vagueness of the CC-SA in regards to Collective vs. Derivative works combined with the infectous nature of the license.

In other words, distributing a GPL'd product in conjunction with materials under the CC-SA might introduce the "Collective Works" loophole (which the GPL does not have) into the entire product, which is probably seen as bad at the FSF.  (Does linking a static library to an executable make it a collective work?  What about a dynamic library?  etc...)

Whether it is actually seen as bad or not, this would be a violation of the GPL since it changes/contradicts the terms of the original (GPL) license and relicensing a copyrighted product is not legal unless all copyright holders agree.

So the FDL and FAL are not seen as a problem despite their similar infectous natures, since, even if they are eventually interpreted in a court of law to extend to the software, they set up essentially the same copyleft terms for their manuals and/or art as the GPL sets up for software, but in terminology more appropriate to their mediums.  In other words, they do not introduce anything like the Collective Works loophole and are not seen as introducing terms which conflict with the GPL.

Derek Robert Price <dprice>
Fri 22 Jul 2005 07:22:07 AM UTC, comment #21: 

I am not identified but of course it is me, Patrice...

Yes the images come from the singular project. But they choosed that licence because I proposed them otherwise singular is GPL. I'll get in touch with them. Anyway from your post I am pretty sure that redistributing the images together with the code doesn't break the Creative Common licence. I am not a lawyer but for the creative commons a derivative work could be for example the inclusion of the images in an HTML page, not the inclusion in the same tarball.

For the GPL it seems that if it is in the same tarball it is a derivative work. However it doesn't define what is a derivative work and refers to the copyright law, which seems to imply that the creative common licence doesn't follow the copyright law in their definition of a derivative work. Here is the excerpt from the GPL:
 "any derivative work under copyright law:
that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it,
either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language."

However the GPL always refers to a program so to anybody but a lawyer, the images seem to be out of the scope of the GPL. That point of view is supported by the fact that the GNU manual are not under the GPL but the FDL that cannot be relicenced to be the GPL too. If we remove the images we should remove the manual too.
Or am I misunderstanding something?

Anyway the licence you cited appears to be also incompatible with the GPL. In fact I don't see any difference between the CC-SA licence and the artlibre licence they seem to be based on exactly the same principles (and the same principles that the GPL), see for the matter of incorporation in a work:
"All the elements of this work of art must remain free, which is why you are not allowed to integrate the originals (originals and subsequents) into another work which would not be subject to this license."

Anonymous
Thu 21 Jul 2005 09:26:12 PM UTC, comment #20: 

Are those your images?  If you are the author, you can simply relicense them.  I thought they came from Singular or one of the test projects.

Anyhow, the only official FSF statement about the Creative Commons licenses I know of is at the bottom of this page: <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html>.  Unfortunately it isn't very specific about what makes it GPL incompatible.  Perhaps:

1.  Shipping something under the GPL and something under CC-SA make the whole a single "derivative" product.
2.  One or both licenses require that the derivative product be licensed under its own license.
3.  One or both licenses prevent relicensing.

Thus, CC-SA would require Texi2HTML be released under CC-SA and/or GPL would require you relicense images under the GPL, and one license or the other forbids this from happening?

Yes, here it is.  From the CC-SA license:

1.a. "Collective Work" means a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology or encyclopedia, in which the Work in its entirety in unmodified form, along with a number of other contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole. A work that constitutes a Collective Work will not be considered a Derivative Work (as defined below) for the purposes of this License.

1.b. "Derivative Work" means a work based upon the Work or upon the Work and other pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted, except that a work that constitutes a Collective Work will not be considered a Derivative Work for the purpose of this License. For the avoidance of doubt, where the Work is a musical composition or sound recording, the synchronization of the Work in timed-relation with a moving image ("synching") will be considered a Derivative Work for the purpose of this License.

...

4.b. You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform a Derivative Work only under the terms of this License, a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License, or a Creative Commons Commons license that contains the same License Elements as this License (e.g. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Japan)...


Reading a little deeper, there appears to be an exception for "Collective Works", but I agree with the FSF that it is somewhat vague, at least in the respect that it does not clearly put software such as Text2HTML in either the Collective or Distributed Works categories.  Thus, the CC-SA may have to be extended to cover all of a product the art is distributed with, such as Texi2HTML, which might also extend the "Collective Work" loophole to cover Texi2HTML, thus violating the GPL by adding a loophole.


Regardless, if you are the author, you can relicense the images.  FSF recommmends the Free Art License (FAL) <http://artlibre.org/licence/lalgb.html> in the commentary on CC-SA.  If you are the author of the images and particularly attached to the CC-SA, perhaps you could use something like Perl's Artistic License, and allow distribution of your images "Under the CC-SA 2.0 or the FAL, as you see fit."

Derek Robert Price <dprice>
Thu 21 Jul 2005 03:54:01 PM UTC, comment #19: 

Why is the Creative Common License Attribution-ShareAlike incompatible with the GPL? To me they seem pretty close. I think that I choosed that licence because of this similarity. Is there an explanation of the incompatibility somewhere?

Patrice Dumas <pertusus>
Tue 19 Jul 2005 11:17:15 PM UTC, comment #18: 

Excuse me, I neglected to log in, but that last was from me.

Derek Robert Price <dprice>
Tue 19 Jul 2005 11:12:24 PM UTC, comment #17: 

I've removed the files.  Since incompatible licenses is probably serious enough to warrant a new release, I'll roll a new release in the next few days.  Patrice, if you want to replace the deleted images with new ones or convince the author to change the license, feel free.  If you haven't finished in a few days when I'm ready to roll a new release, they can go in the next.

Sebastian, I think incompatible licenses are serious enough that the old tarballs should be pulled from the downloads section?  Assuming this is correct, I assume I should open another ticket with Savannah support to have that done?

Thanks,

Anonymous
Tue 19 Jul 2005 09:33:10 PM UTC, comment #16: 

Hello.

Adrian Aichner wrote:
| A timely (I think) URL on the matter:
|
| http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1838244,00.asp

Well, we do not accept licenses incompatible with the GNU GPL or the GNU FDL, as stated in the registration page anyway.

And we do not encourage the proliferation of mutually exclusive licenses.


On the one hand you can remove the images, on the other hand you can write the author and ask him to change to license of these files.
But we need to clarify this point.

Regards,


P.S.: By refering to the "Creative Common License", I meant "Creative Common License Attribution-ShareAlike".

Sebastian Wieseler <kickino>
Tue 19 Jul 2005 07:35:41 PM UTC, comment #15: 

Hello.

We had to review your source code again.

We noticed that it is a problem that the images were published under the "Creative Common License". This license is incompatible with the GPL and FDL.

So you've got two choices. You can ask the auther to change to license of the images or you had to remove these images.


Look forward to your response.

Sebastian Wieseler <kickino>
Tue 12 Jul 2005 08:51:33 PM UTC, comment #14: 

Thanks!

Derek Robert Price <dprice>
Tue 12 Jul 2005 08:47:27 PM UTC, comment #13: 

Hi,

There is nothing more to be done. Thanks for your submission.

I have approved your project.  You will receive an automated e-mail containing detailed information about the approval.

Regards.

Sebastian Wieseler <kickino>
Tue 12 Jul 2005 03:07:59 PM UTC, comment #12: 

I've updated the copyright notices in the texi2html sources.  Is there anything else, other than getting you a copy of the old CVS repository for import, that needs doing before registration can be completed?

Derek Robert Price <dprice>
Fri 08 Jul 2005 06:57:08 PM UTC, comment #11: 

Hello.

We could review your CVS code as well; no need to provide us a tarball.

Sebastian Wieseler <kickino>
Fri 08 Jul 2005 06:29:05 PM UTC, comment #10: 

I'm fine with removing the FSF Copyright, if Pat and Ardian are.  I'd just say we go with our own names.  Pat?  Adrian?

Will I really need to update the tarball (i.e. roll a new realease) immediately, or will you be content with updated CVS sources?

Derek Robert Price <dprice>
Fri 08 Jul 2005 06:11:03 PM UTC, comment #9: 

Hello.

Go on with the copyright issue. Karl Berry wrote:
"The copyright.list information and your analysis is basically right.

texi2html was never part of the Texinfo package (and never will be, as far as I can see), and was never an official GNU package.  Probably back in 1994 the clerk just recorded the assignment papers without looking into it (certainly I wasn't asked about it).

texi2html is currently maintained at cvshome.org, last I knew.  It's never been part of Texinfo CVS.  Are they asking for a savannah project for it?

Anyway, Lionel Cons was indeed the original author of texi2html, back when Texinfo had no HTML output.  Olaf Bachman took it over from Lionel for a while, I took it over from Olaf for a while, and then it got passed on to Derek and Patrice.

I haven't had any success contacting Olaf on the few occasions I've tried in the last several years.  He'd probably be willing to sign an assignment if he can be reached -- I guess Derek/Patrice/Adrian are the people who should do that.

Seems like the simplest thing is for them to just to remove the FSF as the copyright holder, since it isn't a GNU package now and never will be, and either put on the group of individuals, or their company, or whatever.  (I personally certainly don't care if I'm listed, and would just as soon not be.  I didn't make any particularly substantial contributions anyway.)"


I think it would be really the best way to remove the FSF as the copyright holder and put there your own names, or your company.
Would you accept these procedure and update your tarball?

Regards,

Sebastian Wieseler <kickino>
Fri 08 Jul 2005 05:08:30 PM UTC, comment #8: 

To answer you next set of copyright questions:

Texi2HTML is currently being maintained on cvhsome.org, at https://texi2html.cvshome.org.  I have a link there to Olaf's page, which Ted mentioned, but that page has not been updated since 2000.  That and the fact that Olaf did not respond to several emails led me to create the new project on cvshome.org.

Texi2HTML is not being maintained as part of texinfo, though I believe Patrice Dumas keeps in pretty close contact with that project and, IIRC, Karl Berry pokes his head into the texi2html dev list on occassion.

Derek Robert Price <dprice>
Fri 08 Jul 2005 04:58:50 PM UTC, comment #7: 

To answer your questions, roughly in order:

I am an author, not the author, and I am not the original author, but the original sources from said author already had copyright attributed to the FSF when I inherited the code.  Therefore, I guess I cannot change the license of the manual.

There is a web browsable CVS repository with the latest sources for texi2html here: <https://texi2html.cvshome.org/source/browse/texi2html/>.  There hsould also be instructions for accessing the CVS repository via CVS on that same page.

Re the Creative Common License, I did not create the images, so I cannot change it.  I did however paste the contents of the license into images/COPYING.

Re the GIFs, texi2html does not generate GIFs, it only creates HTML with references to preexisting GIFs, but I converted all the GIFs to PNG on principle anyhow.

Derek Robert Price <dprice>
Fri 08 Jul 2005 04:08:34 PM UTC, comment #6: 

Hello.

Let's try to clarify the copyright assignment issue. I have got an answer from Ted Teah <copyright-clerk@fsf.org> for you. He wrote:

"Hmmmm,  the first hit on google for texi2HTML is
http://www.mathematik.uni-kl.de/~obachman/Texi2html/.  This page claims that it was created by Lionel Cons.  We have his assignment for this program, dated 1994.  I have cc'd Karl Barry so he can help with his institutional memory.  According to the notations in copyright.list the specific program, a perl script create by Linoel Cons and given to the FSF,  named Texi2HTML, is recorded as part of the package texinfo.  It seems from what I could glean that texinfo has recently acquired internal support for html output, but is not as advanced as the perl script.  Thus, leading me to believe that although texi2HTML was
recorded as a subset of texinfo although it is really a distinct entity.

Where is texi2HTML maintained?   Is it under Texinfo in CVS?"

So can you please comment on these statements and answere the questions?

Regards,

Sebastian Wieseler <kickino>
Fri 08 Jul 2005 08:01:15 AM UTC, comment #5: 

Hello...

At first, if you are the author, you should be able to change the license of a file, if not, you cannot change the license from GPL to FDL.
The point "any later version" only says that you can use any later version of the same license as well, but not the version of a later license.
Hope that helps.

At second, I thought I have a look at the wrong source. :-(
Can you pleae point me to the current code?

About the pictures:
It is not enough to include only a link to the license, you had to include the "whole" license text from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/legalcode into the images/COPYING file.

And please have a look at
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OtherLicenses, why we prefer to use the "Free Art License".

Nevertheless, please remove GIF image files from your project and replace them with an other format (such as PNG or JPEG).

Because of the patents (Unisys and IBM) covering the LZW compression algorithm which are used when making GIF files,
it's impossible to have free software to generate proper GIFs.  These patents also apply to the compress program.

For more information, see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html.


At last, we will investigate about the copyright assignment papers, because we do not see that Olaf Bachman had signed such papers. And (almost) only official GNU projects can sign, so we had to check this issue.

Look forward to your reply, while we will investigate.
Regards,

Sebastian Wieseler <kickino>
Thu 07 Jul 2005 09:49:26 PM UTC, comment #4: 

Can the FDL be considered "any later version" of the GPL for documentation released with a GPL'd application but never previously & explicitly released under the FDL itself?

Derek Robert Price <dprice>
Thu 07 Jul 2005 09:45:53 PM UTC, comment #3: 

I've updated the Copyright notices in the sources to have the current address for the FSF and the recently modified years.

Derek Robert Price <dprice>
Thu 07 Jul 2005 09:04:17 PM UTC, comment #2: 

I have not signed copyright assignment papers for texi2html, though I would be glad to.  I expect the other two recent major contributors to texi2html, Patrice Dumas and Adrian Aichner (both CC'd), would also be willing to sign assignments based on their previous contributions to other GNU projects.

I have know way of knowing if the original authors of the program signed any assignments, however.  The copyright assignments were in the sources when I took over maintenance of texi2html and none of my attempts to contact the original author have elicited a response.

I started a new CVS repository and picked up maintenance of texi2html when the original website went down and all my attempts to contact Olaf Bachman (the original author) failed.

Derek Robert Price <dprice>
Thu 07 Jul 2005 08:18:45 PM UTC, comment #1: 

Hi,
I'm evaluating the project you submitted for approval in Savannah.


At first, your notices state that the copyright of the software is owned by the Free Software Foundation. This is only valid if you signed papers to assign your copyright on this software to the FSF.
Did you do so?

At second, maybe you had to update the date of your copyright notices?

And last, please notice that the address of the FSF has changed, and is now:

  51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA

Please update your license notices.

Updates versions of the GPL, LGPL and GFDL can also be found at:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.txt
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.txt

Please update the copy of the license (usually, the 'COPYING' file) in your package as well.

You can find some background and a possible migration script at https://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=3766

I'm look forward to your answer(s)
Regards,

Sebastian Wieseler <kickino>
Wed 06 Jul 2005 08:59:45 PM UTC, original submission:  


Site Admin. Approval/Edition URL:
 <https://savannah.gnu.org/admin/groupedit.php?group_id=7789>


###### ORIGINAL SUBMISSION DETAILS ######

System Group Name:
-----------------
  texi2html


Full Name:
----------
  Texi2HTML


Type:
-----
  non-GNU software & documentation


License:
--------
  GNU General Public License V2 or later


Other License:
--------------



Description:
------------
  A Perl script which converts Texinfo source files to HTML output.  The CVS manuals available from <https://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual/> have been generated from the texinfo source distributed with CVS using this script.

This project used to be maintained by Olaf Bachmann, but no one will admit to hearing from him in quite some time and the previous CVS repository has been down for at least as long. Since several of us wanted to use the code with quite a few of our own patches and bugfixes, I moved it here. I think we have most of the code Olaf's Texi2HTML homepage claims he was working on for 2.0 even though the current dev version claims to be 1.65.

The source is available at http://texi2html.cvshome.org.


Other Software Required:
------------------------
  Perl


Other Comments:
---------------
  One of the texi2html developers, Patrice Dumas, maintains pretty close ties with the developers of GNU texinfo but chooses to keep us compatible since texi2html still provides additional functionality.

#########################################

Derek Robert Price <dprice>

 

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2005-07-12 kickino StatusWait reply Done
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