status of file with multiple licences

[Ed Hill]

On Tue, 2005-09-20 at 00:49 +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> In a package I have submitted to fedora extras (grads) there is a file 
> with a lot of copyright and licences. Is it considered to be problematic 
> or not? The licences seems to be all BSD, and so compatible together 
> (except that there is one without licence...). What I am interested in 
> is not really an answer about those examples but something about the 
> possibility of inclusion in extras of files with multiple licences.
> Here are the licences, they all appear in the same file. 
> 
> /* gd.h: declarations file for the gifdraw module.
> 
>         Written by Tom Boutell, 5/94.
>         Copyright 1994, Cold Spring Harbor Labs.
>         Permission granted to use this code in any fashion provided
>         that this notice is retained and any alterations are
>         labeled as such. It is requested, but not required, that
>         you share extensions to this module with us so that we
>         can incorporate them into new versions. */
> 
> /* Code drawn from ppmtogif.c, from the pbmplus package
> **
> ** Based on GIFENCOD by David Rowley <mgardi at watdscu.waterloo.edu>. A
> ** Lempel-Zim compression based on "compress".
> **
> ** Modified by Marcel Wijkstra <wijkstra at fwi.uva.nl>
> **
> ** Copyright (C) 1989 by Jef Poskanzer.
> **
> ** Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
> ** documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided
> ** that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that
> ** copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting
> ** documentation.  This software is provided "as is" without express or
> ** implied warranty.
> **
> ** The Graphics Interchange Format(c) is the Copyright property of
> ** CompuServe Incorporated.  GIF(sm) is a Service Mark property of
> ** CompuServe Incorporated.
> 
> /*
>  *
>  * GIF Image compression - modified 'compress'
>  *
>  * Based on: compress.c - File compression ala IEEE Computer, June 1984.
>  *
>  * By Authors:  Spencer W. Thomas       (decvax!harpo!utah-cs!utah-gr!thomas)
>  *              Jim McKie               (decvax!mcvax!jim)
>  *              Steve Davies            (decvax!vax135!petsd!peora!srd)
>  *              Ken Turkowski           (decvax!decwrl!turtlevax!ken)
>  *              James A. Woods          (decvax!ihnp4!ames!jaw)
>  *              Joe Orost               (decvax!vax135!petsd!joe)
>  *
>  */
> 
> /* +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ */
> /* | Copyright 1990, 1991, 1993, David Koblas.  (koblas at netcom.com)    | */
> /* |   Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software   | */
> /* |   and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby | */
> /* |   granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all | */
> /* |   copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission  | */
> /* |   notice appear in supporting documentation.  This software is    | */
> /* |   provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.           | */
> /* +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ */


Hi Pat,

IANAL but I don't see any problems with the above licenses.  They are
all BSD-like as you mention and they do all appear to be compatible.

And, I think, it would be acceptable to put some sort of LICENSES.txt
file in the %doc section of the GrADS package that says something to the
effect:

  "Portions of this software are copyrighted under the following 
   terms..."

and then include a copy of the above sections.  I think thats fair,
accurate, and very much in the spirit of the explicitly-included-
licenses approach currently taken by Fedora.

Ed

-- 
Edward H. Hill III, PhD
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