Re: SDK header translations licensing?

> First, let me way that JEDI have done a great job over the years, and
> I'm trying to troll here, but the following has struck me as curious...
> 
> I've noticed that a lot (all?) of the JEDI headers are now under the
> Mozilla license. I'm wondering about the legality of this...?

The translation is what is MPL, probably . Original header copyrights 
of course still apply.

However, headers are traditionally quite liberally licensed since they 
are meant to be public, and using them without the product the headers 
interface to (which is also copyrighted) is a bit pointless.
 
However there are indeed cases that headers are too strictly licensed, 
a well known example are the win32 headers.

gcc and mingw32 afaik package reverse engineered headers (without using 
M$ sources). I don't know the exact reason, but maybe the microsoft 
licenses were to restrictive, or they saw uses of the headers with non 
microsoft products.

Such an example could be Wine.  Assume the headers are only free for 
use with a valid copy of M$ windows. Then using headers based on the M$ 
headers for e.g. getting a program running under Linux with Wine would 
be a license violation.

> Now, if I took a novel in german and translated it into english this
> does not remove the copyright of the author. In the translation of
> Gunter Grass - My Century I just read (good book!) there is the original
> copyright and a further copyright for the translation.

The jedi added MPL is the "further copyright". However the situation is 
a bit different in practice because most header licenses for common 
library products are quite open. 

But afaik e.g. Borland doesn't have open licenses at all, e.g. ripping 
out unit interfaces from the VCL and using them with FreePascal would 
be a license violation if you don't own Delphi. (if you own Delphi, 
Borlands liberal no nonsense license applies, see FreePascal as a 
Delphi program)

> But I assume this
> requires permission from the original copyright holder? So unless the
> original owner has given explicit permission is the attachment of a
> Mozilla license to a translated file legal? Or should it still be under
> the same conditions as the original file?

Yes, and it should be annotated as such. IOW, the Jedi files should 
reflect the original copyright, even if it is a liberal one as the BSD 
license.



Marco van de Voort ([email protected] or [email protected])





 
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