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GhostTyper
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 11:55 am    Post subject: gentoo Licence Reply with quote

Hello,

we maybe would use gentoo for a commercial project, where we integrate other software along with stripped version of gentoo into a virtual machine and ship the whole package.

Which licence does gentoo use? What - beside that I need to check the licence of every package installed - do I also need to check?
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fedeliallalinea
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

To start read trademark wiki page
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Last edited by fedeliallalinea on Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:09 pm; edited 1 time in total
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krinn
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

or :)
https://www.gentoo.org/inside-gentoo/foundation/name-logo-guidelines.html
(same content but from gentoo.org instead of wiki)
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khayyam
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:20 pm    Post subject: Re: gentoo Licence Reply with quote

GhostTyper wrote:
Which licence does gentoo use? What - beside that I need to check the licence of every package installed - do I also need to check?

GhostTyper ... besides considering trademark, the licence is GPL-v2

head -n 2 /usr/portage/skel.ebuild:
# Copyright 1999-2018 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2

The other issue that comes to mind, you would need to have USE="bindist", this would need to be set because you are distributing.

best ... khay
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GhostTyper
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Uhm, thank you so far. Maybe I extend my explanation:

We don't want to print gentoo on the package. So we don't want to advertise this especially (- however, we could). Our software would also run on any other linux or even windows system and therefore we didn't think of announcing the used distribution.

It is moreover that we don't want to use buildroot (or a system alike) because we have way more know how on using gentoo and it's base-system than using some other linux distribution.
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steveL
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 1:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

What Khay said.

You can use the software (portage, and the ebuild-tree) as you like, under the terms of the GPL-v2, which means you must provide sources for all binaries distributed (or make them available over the web for 3 years iirc.)

Software is ofc distributed under its own licence (not all require you to distribute sources of built packages), so make sure you have ACCEPT_LICENSES set correctly, at the binhost side, and in any config root.

I am unsure if the GPL on the ebuild could possibly apply to a BSD package as distributed. I can see arguments for why it might, even though no-one perhaps intended that.
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GhostTyper
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 2:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you khayyam and steveL,

this is what I wanted to know.

I'm no lawyer, but this is my conclusion of this:
  • We need to ship GPLv2 because of the linux kernel and gentoo. (We may also need to ship other licences.)
  • As long as we don't change anything of the source-code belonging to gentoo (portage, etc.) we don't need to ship any source-code, because gentoo can be downloaded freely.
  • We need to mention in the documentation or when the user is accepting the licence all the licenses and therefore also which components are used. Therefore we need to mention gentoo according to the guidlines above?
We will not build an ebuild, we would just copy the software directly on the system. An update process would then just replace some files.
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Tony0945
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 3:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have what I hope is a closely related question.
Regarding the Gentoo copyright notice at the top of an ebuild:

If I write an ebuild on my own, does adding that copyright notice mean the Gentoo Foundation can prohibit me from using it or providing it and does it mean the Gentoo Foundation can sell it. i.e. I no longer own it, the Foundation does?
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krinn
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 4:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you put copyright notice to Gentoo, then the work you've done was done for Gentoo and Gentoo own your work.
Gentoo doesn't need to own the copyright to sell it anyway ; you can sell GPL software even you are not the author of the software ; just like you can sell air to anyone that wish buy it (don't smile, i know a story of a guy who "think" he brought the Eiffel Tower).
But as copyright owner, the Foundation could alter the software license, ie: dismissing the GPL for a own made license that prevent anyone to distribute the ebuild except themselves per example.

So if you want prevent the Foundation to sell your ebuild, use your own license that prevent selling it instead of GPL.
If you want alter the license all you wish, stay the copyright owner.

ps: if you want, i have an openrc version for just 500$ only ! But it's the Tony crazy special week, for the week, i could sell it only for 100$ (that's a 400$ save!!!)

GhostTyper: linking to gentoo is not enough, you must make sure the user could download the source code, from gentoo.org nobody is able to download portage-1 source code per example, because gentoo hold source code in two ways: generally github own the repo of the software, and distfiles hold a copy of a release. Which mean, providing github for portage will provide any versions, while providing distfiles for portage will only provide it as long as distfiles have it (which gentoo clear on newer version), still if you provide portage-1 you must provide portage-1 source code, providing portage-2 source code won't fulfil your need to provide portage-1 source code.
Never heard of this 3 years time limit steveL mention myself.
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Tony0945
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 6:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

krinn wrote:
If you put copyright notice to Gentoo, then the work you've done was done for Gentoo and Gentoo own your work.

Thank you, Krinn,

So, my own non-official repository of original ebuilds, like my palemoon ebuild and the ebuilds of my original programs should not have the Gentoo copyright notice.

How about my altered gentoo ebuilds, where I remove systemd/dbus/*kit support? As derivative work do they require the Gentoo copyright notice?

How about my unaltered ebuilds no longer in the tree? Are they legal to use? Distribute?

EDIT: New found worry about these issues. This guy is going to PRISON for distributing software that Microsoft gives out free for the asking.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/25/17279190/microsoft-restore-disk-eric-lundgren-sentence-right-to-repair
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krinn
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 7:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's different, there's only "primary" similitude is that "most" GPL software are free (of cost), and those MS tools were free (of cost).
Still, the license of those free products from microsoft may not accept anyone to distribute them (or worst, sell them) without permission.

Licenses do all. You can sell GPL product, still you must provide source for them. And as you provide source and as anyone is allow to again distribute them, that's why few GPL products are sold ; because you sold it to one guy, and this one guy can freely distribute them next.
To change licensing you must be copyright owner, but as GPL software is getting patch and modify by many people, you must either drop code not from yourself, or having all code not own by you transfer to you or having all code owners accepting your change (that's vlc case, when they have drop code and contact all contributors to allow the change).
If you want change your GPL to non more GPL product, you might face reality that people will fork your product in its GPL version prior you made the change: openofffice, Xfree cases, or mysql too (yeah oracle is such an ass!). But it's not only big company that are ass with GPL, if you look at grsecurity case, they are asses too.

ebuild are under GPL, so you can distribute them with their source code ; which for ebuild is just the ebuild :)
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 8:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tony0945,

Do not confuse copyright with licensing.

You and Gentoo and everyone else can use and redistribute software under the terms of its licence.
There are a few popular ones like the GPL. There are lots of different licences, look in /usr/portage/licenses/
When you make a distro all the licences of the packages you distribute apply to the individual packages.
There is no single distro licence.

In comparision to copyright, licensing is simple. Gentoo may be moving away from Copyright Gentoo Foundation Inc.
See Draft GLEP 76.
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GhostTyper
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 10:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Okay. A new try:

Would it be enough (instead of offering the source) to offer the download of the minimal install cd and the used stage 3 tarball upon creation of the virtual machine?

Remember: I don't alter the software in any way.
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 10:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

GhostTyper,

The minimal install cd is not required to install Gentoo. Its only a toolkit. None of its code goes into the install.
Almost any liveCD can be used.

You will be altering the stage3 tarball during the install, packages included in the stage3 will be upgraded, so they won't be as per the stage3.
You need to look at all the licences that apply to the sources of the code you ship and comply with the licences on a package by package basis.
All of them.

Gentoo is the portage package manager and the gentoo ebuild repository.
Everything else is ${UPSTREAM}

-- edit --

This isn't a new question. It comes up every few years but the only place I know its been discussed and answered in some detail is on a closed mailing list.
You may get some useful information if you email trustees at g.o ... you need to unmunge that.
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GhostTyper
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 26, 2018 12:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I actually know that I need to check all licenses of all packages. But I also would need to check them when using buildroot or whatever is used today.

Our product would be updated periodically. So I would need to make every operating-system-state we ever use available? This is somehow impractical.

I find so many virtual machines out there with pre-installed gentoo and non existent licencing information. This feels kinda unfair.
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 26, 2018 1:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Copyright is unfair at times, yes. As for "every operating-system-state", not exactly. Again, it depends on the licenses involved, but looking specifically at the source availability requirements of GPL, those apply to things you distribute under the GPL. Intermediate states that are never distributed do not require satisfying obligations triggered by "distribution." Generally, if you have proper change control internally, you should be able to cheaply recreate any past state of the product. If you can recreate the state it had when it was distributed, you can recreate the source archives necessary to satisfy your obligations.
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GhostTyper
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 26, 2018 3:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you for your help.

We will use buildroot for our project.
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steveL
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 1:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

GhostTyper wrote:
Would it be enough (instead of offering the source) to offer the download of the minimal install cd and the used stage 3 tarball upon creation of the virtual machine?

Remember: I don't alter the software in any way.
Nope; it's not about whether you alter the software (although that would kick in any wording wrt "derivative works".)

It is about your obligations (under the licence) when you distribute binaries built from a GPL codebase.

--
krinn: I don't recall the exact period, but there was a requirement to either distribute sources with binaries, or to provide a publically-accessible URL from where the sources can be downloaded.
The latter approach is often used by router manufacturers, rather than paying to manufacture and distribute disks with the h/w.

Obviously, if you're providing sources over an internet url, that can't just be for a month or so after first shipping.

And ofc, if you go out of business (and you/your IP are not bought-out), there is no one to sue.
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Tony0945
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 2:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Example from the page entitled "Open Source" on my Motorola cable modem:
Quote:
For instructions on how to obtain a copy of any source code being made publicly available by Motorola Mobility related to software used in this Motorola Mobility product, you may send your request in writing to:

Motorola Mobility, LLC.
OSS Management
2450 Walsh Avenue
Santa Clara, CA 95051
USA

The Motorola Mobility website http://opensource.motorola.com also contains information regarding Motorola Mobility's use of open source and source code for this product. Motorola Mobility has created this website to serve as a portal for interaction with software community-at-large.
The table below shows list of Open Source Licenses and corresponding Software Components used in this product.

Open Source License Software Components Version
GPLv2 Busybox 1.4.2, Kernel 2.6.18, Bridge Utils 1.0.4, Ruli 1.19, Syslogkd 1.4, Udhcp 0.9.7, Utelnetd 0.1.2, Uboot 1.2.0, Squashfs 4.57.0, Udev 0.055, Kconfig 1.4, Envutils, Iostat2.2, Exmap 0.9, Mkimage
LGPLv2.1 7zip, Liboop 1.0, uClibc 0.9.27, Sme
Flex BSD Flex 2.5.4
OpenSSL OpenSSL 0.9.8, TI Kerebos 1.1.2
Matt Johnson MIT, TDCAL, Tatu Ylonen, PuTTY MIT, OpenSSH BSD Dropbear 0.50, Libtomcrypt 1.0, Libtommath 1.0
Wide Project BSD, Emanual Dreyfus BSD, University of California BSD Ipsec Tools 0.6.6
Abraham vd Merwe BSD, Texas Instruments BSD Libber 0.4.2
Texas Instruments BSD TI NetDK Libs 1.2.0, TI Docsis 1.2.0
Wide BSD, ISC MIT, Texas Instruments BSD, Todd Miller BSD TI DHCPv6 1.3
Portions under Jef Poskanzer MIT TI Webserver 1.2.0
University of California BSD, Texas Instruments BSD TFTP 0.17
Gray Watson MIT, MIT MIT, Textil Computer Design MIT, USC/ISI MIT DMalloc 5.5.2
Portions under University of California BSD TI Icc 1.1.2


Details on packages using GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE is available here.
Details on packages using GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE is available here.
Details on other open source packages is available here.
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

GhostTyper,

On your Gentoo
Code:
sort /var/db/pkg/*/*/LICENSE | uniq -c
will list the licences for all installed packages, with a count of how many packages use each one.
You need to comply with all those licences simultaneously or remove the package(s) in question.

Some packages have different licences for different use cases. When that happens, you need to comply with the one that fits your use case.
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GhostTyper
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2018 3:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you for your follow up answers.

The posts from Tony0945 and NeddySeagoon make me feel that it would be the same effort to use gentoo or buildroot in the case of licences.

Is there also a way to export the downloaded source-code from the installed ebuilds? Maybe a combination with fetch-only while going over /var/db/pkg/*/*?

Because I would need to serve all the sources if somebody requests them. And if this can be automated, I would directly pack them in the build process and then deliver them with the applicane itself.
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2018 9:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

GhostTyper wrote:
Is there also a way to export the downloaded source-code from the installed ebuilds? Maybe a combination with fetch-only while going over /var/db/pkg/*/*?

GhostTyper ... assuming your build is not from a stage3, and/or you're using '--emptytree', you can set DISTDIR to some location prior to the build ... and so all sources for that build will be located there. Otherwise you would need to run '--fetchonly', perhaps after a 'eclean-dist --deep' (app-portage/gentoolkit).

HTH & best ... khay
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2018 11:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

GhostTyper,

What khayyam suggested will get 99.9% of the source code.
The last 0.01% is located in the .patch files distributed in /usr/portage/<category>/<package>/files.
You need those *.patch files for the packages you distribute too.

If you use the portage repo from a squashfs image, you can distribute the squashfs repo image, Its only about 80Mb, so its tiny compared to some other source tarballs.
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khayyam
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2018 2:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

NeddySeagoon wrote:
What khayyam suggested will get 99.9% of the source code.
The last 0.01% is located in the .patch files distributed in /usr/portage/<category>/<package>/files.
You need those *.patch files for the packages you distribute too.

NeddySeagoon ... good catch, that probably means you also need to check those for a licence and provide the respective licence also?

Code:
% ag --ignore-dir profiles --ignore-dir licences --ignore-dir metadata --ignore-dir eclass -G ".*[^/]\.patch$" -l 'Distributed' ~portdir/
/var/db/repositories/gentoo/net-vpn/miredo/files/miredo-1.2.5-ip-path.patch
/var/db/repositories/gentoo/net-dns/avahi/files/avahi-0.6.32-openrc-0.21.7-fix-init-scripts.patch
/var/db/repositories/gentoo/net-dns/avahi/files/avahi-0.6.x-openrc-0.9.x-init-scripts-fixes.patch
/var/db/repositories/gentoo/app-admin/bastille/files/bastille-3.0.9-openrc.patch
/var/db/repositories/gentoo/app-admin/perl-cleaner/files/perl-cleaner-2.20-prefix.patch
/var/db/repositories/gentoo/net-firewall/psad/files/psad-2.2.4-var-run.patch
/var/db/repositories/gentoo/sys-devel/distcc/files/distcc-3.1-freedesktop.patch
/var/db/repositories/gentoo/dev-python/pygraphviz/files/pygraphviz-1.3.1-swig-3.patch
/var/db/repositories/gentoo/sys-apps/mouseemu/files/mouseemu-0.15-openrc.patch

I would suspect 'Distributed' only covers gpl licenced patches, there may be others.

best ... khay
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PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2018 2:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

khayyam,,

I suspect that patches carry the same licence as the code they apply to.
I'm not aware of .patch files carrying their own licences, nor of any mechanism in Gentoo that would manage such separate licences if they existed.

I'm not infallable either. Because I'm not aware of these things does not mean that they don't exist.
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