Those are links of interest to debian-legal archive, you can have a look at
DroitFrancais [fr] and
CommunicationLibre [en] (hardware-firm oriented) or
DroitDesMarquesLinux [fr]
I do not read everything (nor even understand everything I read !) and I sometimes think that this ML debian-legal is turning my inbox to junk (it's quite verbose !).
Beware, some terms have to be well understood before grasping the meaning of thoses threads (which sometimes include trolls) whether it is legal or about debian social contract.
Particularly, seek definitions for free / contrib / non-free which correspond to Debian packages categories
Licenses related to artwork
http://people.debian.org/~evan/ccsummary.html [en] creative commons are not free by debian interpretation, suggestions to enhance them
http://freecontentdefinition.org/Definition [en] other definition
http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-legal@lists.debian.org/msg34944.html [en] CC 3.0 are going the right way, see
NewsCreativeCommons30 [fr]
https://linuxfr.org/~akauffmann/19408.html [fr] CC / Art Libre a view compared to free software and its 4 freedoms
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-uk/2004-October/000104.html [en] hum, some discussion about CC and how nd (non derivatives) should be enforced... /o\
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/04/msg00485.html [en] problem(s) with public-domain by Nathanael Nerode (neroden)
http://lwn.net/Articles/61292/ GPL is a licence, not a contract
General licenses : code and documentation
http://www.gnome.org/~markmc/openssl-and-the-gpl.html Open SSL license not compatible with GPL (advertising clause)
http://cygwin.com/licensing.html [en] exception for distribution of opensource not-GPL-compatible programs compiled with cygwin's library
http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_001 [en] GFDL is non-DFSG compliant
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/fsfe-france/2003-05/msg00033.html [fr] how to apply GPL 2 or later, when GPL 3 becomes available it can apply by default (or not) unless people contest it
http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070901041657 [en] dual licensing BSD & GPL, good practices to respect *BSD developers work
https://linuxfr.org/~MilkaJinka/25621.html [fr] Domaine public et WTFPL
http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/1/25/436 [en] "mark USB drivers as being GPL only" in the Linux kernel, thanks to Greg
To Do : search for URL, sort in categories (trademark, license compatibility, binary blobs...)
- Hypothetical situation to chew on [20050113]
- public domain and copyright in the US
- Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988
- [gnu.org #219101] Re: Compatibility between CC licenses and the GPL [20050113]
- oula the difficulty to include documentation with other license in GPL packages is not yet solved :-(
- RMS position is clear (though have a look at original citation for context) : "However, no reasonable free documentation license is compatible with the GNU GPL", the FSF text recommands GFDL for documentation
- Eclipse 3.0 Running ILLEGALY on Kaffe [20050112]
- help to understand potential problems with Java and mix of software having different licenses
- Non-free files in source packages? [20050106]
- it addresses the status of packages containing non-free stuff
- "but if the rest of the code is GPL-licensed, the net result is that the package cannot be legally distributed at all" [Henning Makholm]
- Trademarks: what is the line? [20041231]
- examination of one part of the problem / difficulties generated by firefox seeking to enforce their trademark
- mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ? [20041230]
- thread after decision by FireFox?(tm) to enforce their trademark
- changing the package name (some trolls)
- Is the xdebug's non-free license necessary? [20041220]
- having a license that prevent using the term xdebug can lead to strange problems
- LCC and blobs [20041219]
- check what means LCC : perhaps Licenses Creative Commons ? (reread the thread)
- could "binary blobs" (other name for proprietary firmware) be fetched from the web ?
- "usual" discussion whether a driver is in free or contrib if it depends on binary-only firmware
Some professional constraints
When working on free software, NDA and default attribution of copyright to the employee's firm are a plague that has to be cured...
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/nopanicing
there's another one describing the agreement to obtain by the employee from the firm to retain his/her copyright
http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=contrat+de+travail+GPL&btnG=Recherche+Google&meta= [fr] work agreement for free software
http://fsffrance.org/contrats/travail.fr.html [fr] clauses for GPL / GFDL contributions for software & documentation
https://linuxfr.org/~benjdto/8182.html [fr] attribution par défaut à l'employeur
see
CommunicationLibre for firms wanting to enter the libre software world
History
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_v._Sperry_Rand [en] patents, computer's inventor