[arch-general] Question about the license of opera

[Allan McRae]

David C. Rankin wrote:
> Allan McRae wrote:
>   
>> Attila wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> i recognized that there is new package in aur for opera with this
>>> informations:
>>>
>>> "This package is the official one from the [extra] repository. We have
>>> to move
>>> it because of a unclear license issue. After we have clarify this
>>> issue the
>>> package will be back in the repos or not. It should not be moved to
>>> community, because of the license."
>>>
>>> I'm a little bit surprised that a custom license is such a problem
>>> because
>>> this shows me 343 entries:
>>>
>>> find /var/abs -name PKGBUILD | \
>>>  xargs grep license | \
>>>  grep custom | grep extra | wc -l
>>>
>>> Will now all packages with custom licenses disappear from extra?
>>>   
>>>       
>> No.  Only the ones where it is unclear if we can legally distribute it.
>>     
>
>
> 	What are the issues surrounding the Opera License?? If I can't help with the
> technical side, I can sure help with the legal side. What concerns does Arch
> have with the Opera license? What part do you think is "unclear" so as to
> justify moving the package?
>   

I really do no want to get in to this too much on the mailing list as 
the devs are already dealing with this, but the license is actually 
quite clear:

"You shall not modify, translate, reverse engineer, decompile or 
disassemble the Software or any part thereof or otherwise attempt to 
derive source code, create or use derivative works therefrom."

Now look at the PKGBUILD 
(http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/opera/opera/PKGBUILD) and notice the 
sed and patch lines there.  That would be doing something to "modify the 
Software"...

> 	With that information, I can look at the license and then see what authority
> exists to either substantiate the concerns or provide the information showing
> that the concern is unjustified.
>   

Argh!  Lawyer speak!

Allan