[Phpmyadmin-devel] tcpdf and licensing

[Madhura Jayaratne]

On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 5:14 PM, Marc Delisle <marc at infomarc.info> wrote:

> Le 2012-01-29 06:41, Madhura Jayaratne a écrit :
> > On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 9:02 PM, Isaac Bennetch<bennetch at gmail.com>
>  wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> On 12/16/2011 10:26 AM, Marc Delisle wrote:
> >>> Isaac Bennetch a écrit :
> >>>> Greetings,
> >>>
> >>> Hi Isaac,
> >>> see the reply from Nicola Asuni (TCPDF) in our bug tracker:
> >>>
> >>
> https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=377408&aid=3460857&group_id=23067
> >>
> >> Thanks, sorry for the noise here, then. Apparently jimmik posted the bug
> >> around the same time ChrisWi came to IRC; since the tracker has more
> >> existing discussion let's continue the conversion there.
> >>
> >>>> As you might recall from the PHPExcel licensing discussion
> >>>> (https://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=27884122) the
> >>>> Fedora people were investigating a possible licensing concern with the
> >>>> tcpdf library we bundle. Nothing has come of that with Fedora, but
> >>>> apparently the SuSE people have found something they don't like. The
> >>>> user ChrisWi asked about it in the IRC channel and provided a link to
> >>>> their bugtracker: https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=736698--
> >>>> which requires a login, so he also provided the following text
> summary:
> >>>>
> >>>> ** begin paste **
> >>>> phpMyAdmin 3.4.7.1 (and presumably many earlier versions as well)
> >> contains
> >>>> tcpdf. This package claims to be LGPL-3.0+ licensed but contains the
> >>>> following
> >>>> clause:
> >>>>
> >>>> Additionally,
> >>>> YOU CAN'T REMOVE ANY TCPDF COPYRIGHT NOTICE OR LINK FROM THE
> >>>> GENERATED PDF DOCUMENTS.
> >>>>
> >>>> As the LGPL-3.0+ incorporates by reference the GPL-3.0+, sections 7
> and
> >>>> 10 of
> >>>> the GPL-3.0+ are relevant:
> >>>>
> >>>> All other non-permissive additional terms are considered "further
> >>>> restrictions" within the meaning of section 10.  If the Program as you
> >>>> received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is
> >>>> governed by this License along with a term that is a further
> >>>> restriction, you may remove that term.  If a license document contains
> >>>> a further restriction but permits relicensing or conveying under this
> >>>> License, you may add to a covered work material governed by the terms
> >>>> of that license document, provided that the further restriction does
> >>>> not survive such relicensing or conveying.
> >>>>
> >>>> Accordingly, it may be possible to point out to tcpdf upstream that
> the
> >>>> additional term that they apply may be viewed as a 'non-permissive
> >>>> restriction'
> >>>> and that you wish to exercise your rights under the GPL-3.0+ to remove
> >> that
> >>>> term from downstream distributions.
> >>>>
> >>>> If upstream are unwilling to engage in meaningful discussion or take
> the
> >>>> view
> >>>> that the additional restriction is per se not part of the license
> >>>> because it is
> >>>> above the license and not incorporated into it, tcpdf should be
> dropped.
> >>>>
> >>>> ** end paste **
> >>>>
> >>>> Now again, as I'm sure you're aware, we're not responsible for making
> >>>> the distributions happy, but it's also in our best interest to try to
> >>>> resolve these things. Looks to my non-lawyer eye like this is
> something
> >>>> to push back on the tcpdf folks. Again, if I'm understanding
> correctly,
> >>>> the problem is the additional line added that "YOU CAN'T REMOVE ANY
> >>>> TCPDF COPYRIGHT NOTICE OR LINK FROM THE GENERATED PDF DOCUMENTS."
> >>>>
> >>>> Additionally, Google provides a lot of results of people questioning
> >>>> this.
> >>>>
> >>
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/tcpdf/forums/forum/435311/topic/3757478
> >>>> seems to be the best discussion. A discussion regarding the inclusion
> in
> >>>> Tiki Wiki
> >>>> (
> >>
> http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss/2011-November/000028.html
> >> )
> >>>> went so far as to bring up the dubious legal position of putting a
> >>>> (tcpdf) copyright notice on the work of others.
> >>>>
> >>>>    From the tcpdf forums link, it appears the author has no interest
> in
> >>>> changing this. To be fair to tcpdf, the only place I see his notice in
> >>>> the generated PDF is the "PDF Producer" field of the file properties.
> I
> >>>> think that's reasonable, but I think the part that concerns the SuSE
> >>>> folks is the having a non-OSI-endorsed clause appended to a license;
> if
> >>>> every project would do that it would be a nightmare to maintain. But
> >>>> that's just my interpretation.
> >>>>
> >>>> I've signed up for a Novell account, but I'm still not authorized to
> >>>> view the bug report directly. At the moment, aside from the gentleman
> in
> >>>> IRC, we have no line of communication to them or way of getting
> updates
> >>>> on their internal discussion.
> >>>>
> >>>> Thanks for your thoughts on this...
> >>>> ~isaac
> >>
> >>
> > As mentioned in the tracker [1] TCPDF in its latest version(5.9.145) has
> > removed the additional clause in its licence. Shall we update  QA_3_5 to
> > use the latest version? Or only the master should be updated?
>
> I was even thinking appropriate to update MAINT_3_4_10 and QA_3_4 !
>
> --
> Marc Delisle
> http://infomarc.info
>

Updated to TCPDF version 5.9.145.

-- 
Thanks and Regards,

Madhura Jayaratne
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