You might get better responses in debian-legal@ - license questions are their bread and butter.

On Tuesday, 17 September 2024 16.56.53 CDT Preu▀e, Hilmar wrote:

The following paragraph has been added by the author:

<snip>
If you copy or distribute a modified version of this Software, the entire
resulting derived work must be given a different name and
distributed under
the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.
<snip>

That's interesting, seems like an attempt to make MIT copyleft? To my untrained eye, that clause makes the license completely unlike the MIT license.

--
Piper McCorkle (~pmc)
they/them
contact@piperswe.me
https://piperswe.me/

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XPost: linux.debian.legal

Hilmar,

On Tuesday, September 17, 2024 2:56:53 PM MST Preuße, Hilmar wrote:

Hi,

before pushing a broken package to the NEW queue: I started again
working on #698886 and have a here a package, which is quite lintian
clean. What causes headache is the license "Modified MIT license".

The following paragraph has been added by the author:

<snip>
If you copy or distribute a modified version of this Software, the entire
resulting derived work must be given a different name and
distributed under
the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.
<snip>

Except that it is a pure MIT license. Could that cause issues?

I have copied the Debian Legal mailing list as this question is most directed toward their expertise.

My initial impression is that this custom addition to the license isn’t a DFSG
problem. It contains two parts:

1. It requires that any derivatives be given a different name. This is similar to trademark restrictions. Many, many packages in Debian have trademark restrictions that require derivatives to have different names (so end
users are not confused as to which is the original package) and that is not considered a DFSG problem.

2. It requires that derivatives must use the same license. That isn’t a standard part of a MIT (Expat) license, but it is a standard part of other DFSG licenses (like the GPL), so I don’t think it would be a DFSG problem.

--
Soren Stoutner
soren@debian.org
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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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XPost: linux.debian.legal

Soren Stoutner dijo [Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 03:08:22PM -0700]:

The following paragraph has been added by the author:

<snip>
If you copy or distribute a modified version of this Software, the entire
resulting derived work must be given a different name and distributed under
the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.
<snip>

Except that it is a pure MIT license. Could that cause issues?

I have copied the Debian Legal mailing list as this question is most directed toward their expertise.

My initial impression is that this custom addition to the license isn’t a DFSG
problem. It contains two parts:

1. It requires that any derivatives be given a different name. This is similar to trademark restrictions. Many, many packages in Debian have trademark restrictions that require derivatives to have different names (so end users are not confused as to which is the original package) and that is not considered a DFSG problem.

Hmmm... That does IMO look problematic. If not legally, practically. If "this exact same license" is required, then if I modify and redistribute foo, I might name it foo-gw. But if I then modify foo-gw, need I rename it foo-gw-newer? Should I include a version name as part of the item's name? Would conflating version numbers with the program name constitute a different name? But, yes, that's basically my mind wandering off in nonproductive directions.

2. It requires that derivatives must use the same license. That isn’t a standard part of a MIT (Expat) license, but it is a standard part of other DFSG licenses (like the GPL), so I don’t think it would be a DFSG problem.

So, this paragraph tries to make the MIT license into a Copyleft / Viral licensing scheme. This is counter to what most people believe the main point of the MIT licenses to be!

Maybe it is not against the DFSG, but it leads users to perform mind games they should not have to.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

XPost: linux.debian.legal

Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@debian.org> writes:

Soren Stoutner dijo [Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 03:08:22PM -0700]:

2. It requires that derivatives must use the same license. That isn’t a >> standard part of a MIT (Expat) license, but it is a standard part of other >> DFSG licenses (like the GPL), so I don’t think it would be a DFSG problem.

So, this paragraph tries to make the MIT license into a Copyleft / Viral licensing scheme. This is counter to what most people believe the main point of
the MIT licenses to be!

Maybe it is not against the DFSG, but it leads users to perform mind games they
should not have to.

Instead of trying too hard to figure out exactly what the author really
means, maybe you can contact them about dual-licensing it? I do not
know if you can contact the original author, but I found a (hopefully)
more up-to-date email at

https://pp3.sourceforge.net/

My suggestion would be to ask them if they would dual license everything
under the GPL-V3+, but any of the standard licenses would do.

https://www.debian.org/legal/licenses/

Cheers,
Walter Landry

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