Re: [aur-general] Fwd: Stolen material

Hi, Aaron "Hussein" Griffin wrote:

Hey guys,

I just got the email below and want to take this opportunity to point a few things out:

Licenses are important. If a project has no license that DOES NOT mean you are able to redistribute it by adding a file that says "Free to use". Just because it is in the AUR doesn't mean we are in the clear.

That said, I believe this email is a little silly for three reasons: a) Nothing there is stolen. It is a PKGBUILD. If it is illegal to redistribute the source, then the end user is liable (something we DON'T want). b) The original tarball no longer exists. c) I have seen no proof of copyright.

Still, I do want to take this opportunity to point out that we NEED to be more careful here.

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Richard Northcott Date: Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 3:03 AM Subject: Stolen material To: aaron@archlinux.org, jvinet@zeroflux.org

This is stolen copyrighted material. Please remove.

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/stardict-longman/

Richard Northcott Enfour,Inc. Tokyo

I don't understand it for several reasons. Some of them might be because the copyright law is different in different countries. BUT - let's assume for the sake of argument that there exist a piece of software (not necessarily this one) that a user is allowed to download, compile and then use (or just download a binary and then use) but no one is allowed to redistribute the original tarball or any other tarball with this software. Here I don't understand your point a) - why is the end user liable (and who is the end user exactly - the one who uploaded the PKGBUILD, or the one who used it?)? As you said - a PKGBUILD is just a PKGBUILD - simply a guide of how to download and install the software, nothing more. I'm very much sure that an existence of such a guide is by no means illegal in my country so here "we" (or "you") WOULD be in the clear. I just cannot see how anyone can be liable for such a guide. But maybe in other countries the law is stricter (and more ridiculous? - though I wouldn't be surprised...). Second, when you look here - http://stardict.sourceforge.net/Dictionaries_dictd-www.dict.org.php - you'll see the "free to use" phrase, so it's not something the packager in AUR made up (and the package can be downloaded, so the tarball still exists, unfortunately it doesn't contain any useful information about a license). Now the question is - what is the relationship between Stardict itself and this particular dictionary. If the dictionary belongs to the same people who run the site where it is downloadable from, then it's their own fault that they have misleading terms of usage. If it does not, then either people from Stardict have it there downloadable against the wishes of its owners, which means that Mr. Northcott needs to write to them, not to you, or it is really free to download and use, which means that there's nothing wrong with the PKGBUILD. By the way, I tried to find out more about this particular dictionary, find its home page for example - without success, instead I found out that rpmfind.net has an RPM for it (http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/sourceforge/s/st/stardict/stardict-longman-2.4....) and that they claim it is GPLed (probably mistake on their side but I wonder whether or not Mr. Northcott contacted them too). All of the above just my opinion though, of course. Ondřej -- Cheers, Ondřej Kučera