[License-review] Legacy Approval, Licnese of Jam

[Tom Callaway]

jam is in Fedora, using the logic that the term "use" combined with the
requirement to mark modifications implied a permission to modify.

There is exactly one package currently in Fedora that requires jam:
lincity-ng.

~spot

On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 3:53 PM Richard Fontana <rfontana at redhat.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 1:14 PM McCoy Smith <mccoy at lexpan.law> wrote:
> >
> > Given that this license does not grant the right to modify (or in US law
> > parlance, make derivative works), I wonder if it fails OSD 3. I think it
> > does, although perhaps it impliedly grants a modification right by saying
> > that "modifications" must be marked even though it doesn't grant the
> right
> > to make modifications?
> > There are other issues with this one (patent rights, which I think
> recently
> > OSI likes to see something like an express license) and the
> effectiveness of
> > the warranty disclaimer, but if it fails the OSD, it is not approvable.
>
> I don't know the history or usage of this particular license, but
> there are what must be many hundreds of legacy licenses similar to
> this one that have been treated as equivalent to simple permissive
> FOSS licenses. They are found in packages regarded as "open source" in
> all mainstream Linux distributions (many of them licensed under the
> GPL or LGPL).
>
> Based on some quick research I don't think the Fedora argyllcms
> package makes use of jam but someone can correct me if that's wrong.
> It didn't seem as though jam was in Fedora other than as part of
> boost.
>
> The approach Fedora, and I think the other Linux distributions with
> similar licensing policies, have taken is to treat charitably
> sufficiently old licenses that context suggests were meant to grant
> permissions equivalent to what we'd regard as FOSS today, but which
> may have been drafted naively to refer (for example) to "use" and not
> explictly grant (for example) a right to prepare derivative works. In
> other words, it is arguably not practical or appropriate to apply
> present-day drafting standards to licenses from a sufficiently early
> era in the history of FOSS licensing. If you say licenses of this sort
> are not open source, that would mean that many packages assumed to be
> open source are actually only partly open source, and perhaps even
> embody some sort of FOSS license violation. In this case it is clear
> from the license text that "use" was meant to encompass permission to
> modify.
>
> There are other cases where legacy licenses have later come to be seen
> as non-FOSS, the best example of which may be the Sun RPC license.
> (See: https://spot.livejournal.com/315383.html) But those are cases
> where it is impossible to read the license as being consistent with
> normative definitions of FOSS.
>
> I don't know if OSI should start granting legacy approval to the large
> numbers of licenses of this sort, but I see some benefits to moving
> OSI approval closer to the reality of how "open source" is understood
> in the community.
>
> The strongest objection I see to granting legacy approval here is why
> the OSI should start with *this* license when there are plenty of
> others in the same category that are probably more frequently
> encountered.
>
> Richard
>
>
>
>
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: License-review <license-review-bounces at lists.opensource.org> On
> > > Behalf Of Jack Hill
> > > Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2021 2:34 PM
> > > To: license-review at lists.opensource.org
> > > Subject: [License-review] Legacy Approval, Licnese of Jam
> > >
> > > As a licensee of Jam, I'm asking for legacy approval of the following
> > > terms:
> > >
> > > """
> > > License is hereby granted to use this software and distribute it
> freely,
> > as long
> > > as this copyright notice is retained and modifications are clearly
> marked.
> > >
> > > ALL WARRANTIES ARE HEREBY DISCLAIMED.
> > > """
> > >
> > > This is the license used by Jam [0] and its forks [1][2][3] (n.b. the
> > boost
> > > version is also distributed under the Boost license). Outside of
> Boost, I
> > don't
> > > believe this build tool is widely used. However, it is needed to build
> at
> > least
> > > one important open source package: the Argyll Color Management System.
> > > Argyll is the only open source package that I know of that can generate
> > color
> > > calibration profiles, so it is critically important for the use of open
> > source
> > > software in fields where that is important.
> > >
> > > I believe that the proliferation category for this license is
> > > Other/Miscellaneous.
> > >
> > > In other discussions [4] I've had about this license, the problematic
> > points
> > > were what "distribute freely" meant, and how modifications could be
> > clearly
> > > marked. The Argyll fork of Jam marks modifications as follows:
> > >
> > > """
> > > This if "Argyll-Jam", a simple derivative of the "FT-Jam" build tool,
> > based and
> > > 100% compatible with Jam 2.5. See http://www.freetype.org/jam/ for
> more
> > > details about FT-Jam.
> > >
> > > This is the "FT-Jam" 2.5.2 release, with minor ArgyllCMS tweaks, and
> the
> > > ArgyllCMS V1.3.3 Jambase as the default rule set.
> > >
> > > Note that you'll find the original Jam README in the file README.ORG
> """
> > >
> > > [0] https://www.perforce.com/documentation/jam-documentation
> > > [1] https://www.freetype.org/jam/index.html
> > > [2] http://www.argyllcms.com/doc/Compiling.html
> > > [3]
> > >
> https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_76_0/tools/build/doc/html/index.html#b
> > > bv2.jam
> > > [4]
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2021-04/msg00436.html
> > >
> > > Best,
> > > Jack
> > >
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>
>
> --
>
>
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