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Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2011 15:54:19 +0400
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: john-dev@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: New directory in Jumbo tree

On Thu, Jun 02, 2011 at 01:18:43PM +0200, magnum wrote:
>  * Limitations on Rights to Redistribute This Code
>  *
>  * Unicode, Inc. hereby grants the right to freely use the information
>  * supplied in this file in the creation of products supporting the
>  * Unicode Standard, and to make copies of this file in any form
>  * for internal or external distribution as long as this notice
>  * remains attached.
>  */

"The right to freely use the information ... in the creation of ..." is
not specific enough.  It may mean that we're permitted to look at the
file and learn the standard from it while writing our own program code.
It doesn't necessarily mean we're permitted to directly reuse the code.

The right "to make copies ... as long as this notice remains attached",
without an explicit mention of the right to modify and redistribute
modified versions, may be interpreted as implying that we're not allowed
to modify the code and redistribute modified versions.

> In what way does this not say we can use it like we do now? To me it was 
> crystal clear, but I admit having no experience with license issues.

Please see above.  If you read e.g. the FSF's comments on various
licenses, you'll see that this is not crystal clear.  For example:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#ISC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_(e-mail_client)#Licensing_and_clones

As you can see, even when the right to modify and the right to
distribute are explicitly mentioned, there's still doubt as to whether
distribution of modified versions is permitted or not.

Alexander

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