Hi!
I'm a newbie and have probably missed a lot of things. That said: While I understand that DecodeIR is free to use in a broad sense(?), I'm wondering about the more exact conditions. Is this in public domain (anyone can do anything with it), or is it distributed with some kind of license such as MIT or GPL?
This is important if someone wants to make DecodeIR part of Linux distributions such as Debian or Fedora.
Q: DecodeIR license terms?
Moderator: Moderators
DecodeIR was originally developed by John S Fine (johnsfine) and all versions up to 2.36 of Apr 15, 2007 were due to him. Modifications and extensions to produce versions up to 2.41 of May 25, 2010 were due to me (mathdon) and subsequent versions to date by Dave Reed (3FG), the latest of which is 2.44 of Oct 7, 2012.
John Fine never specified the terms under which the binary or its source code were made available. I think this means that a definitive answer to your question would have to come from him. If it were up to me, I would say that it is available under GPL, and am happy for my contributions to be treated as such. I don't think it can be taken as fully public domain. Perhaps John and Dave can give their views also. It would be good to have a definitive answer to the question.
John Fine never specified the terms under which the binary or its source code were made available. I think this means that a definitive answer to your question would have to come from him. If it were up to me, I would say that it is available under GPL, and am happy for my contributions to be treated as such. I don't think it can be taken as fully public domain. Perhaps John and Dave can give their views also. It would be good to have a definitive answer to the question.
Graham
Barf had raised this issue earlier, but received no comment.
I'm not an attorney, but I think the following is true in the USA.
1) John Fine holds the original copyright, and mathdon and any others who have contributed also have copyright to the parts they have added. This is an implied copyright since the code has no copyright notice.
2) Because the source code has been made freely available to anyone, everyone has a implied non-exclusive license to use the code, based on the evident intent of the creator(s).
I'm not familiar with the process involved in conferring a GPL, but if it can regularize this situation, I'm in favor of it.
I'm not an attorney, but I think the following is true in the USA.
1) John Fine holds the original copyright, and mathdon and any others who have contributed also have copyright to the parts they have added. This is an implied copyright since the code has no copyright notice.
2) Because the source code has been made freely available to anyone, everyone has a implied non-exclusive license to use the code, based on the evident intent of the creator(s).
I'm not familiar with the process involved in conferring a GPL, but if it can regularize this situation, I'm in favor of it.
IMNAL either, but as I understand it a reasonable process would be that you (all three) claim the copyrights and add a GPL clause. The details:3FG wrote:Barf had raised this issue earlier, but received no comment.
[snip]
I'm not familiar with the process involved in conferring a GPL, but if it can regularize this situation, I'm in favor of it.
Add a header to each file, something like
Code: Select all
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
# with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
# 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
#
# (C) 200?-2007 - John S Fine <John at somewhere dot net>
# (C) 2007-2011 - "mathdon" <???>
# (C) 2011-2014 - Dave Reed <dave at somewhere dot net>
#
You need some kind of common understanding with John to do this, I presume.
I have got a message (private email) from John that his library is in Public Domain.
IANAL, but I think this makes it possible for other persons who have worked with this code to claim copyright and possibly apply license restrictions on their work in these files.
Bengt (barf) has checked in the library in SVN. If anyone wants to add their copyright notice I guess it's up to them. My plan is to start the process to package this in some time, and use it with whatever conditions applied to it at that point. If anyone has thoughts about this, this is the time to speak up
IANAL, but I think this makes it possible for other persons who have worked with this code to claim copyright and possibly apply license restrictions on their work in these files.
Bengt (barf) has checked in the library in SVN. If anyone wants to add their copyright notice I guess it's up to them. My plan is to start the process to package this in some time, and use it with whatever conditions applied to it at that point. If anyone has thoughts about this, this is the time to speak up
Good news!
Alec (leamas) has a package for Fedora Linux finished, meaning that Fedora users will (optionally) have it as part of their system. As is the Fedora policy, the "modifications made" is offered "upstream", i.e. to this project. Therefore, Alec asked me to check in the files DecodeIRCaller.java (that would be as http://sourceforge.net/p/controlremote/ ... aller.java) an a pom.xml (as http://sourceforge.net/p/controlremote/ ... ir/pom.xml). This is for building a jar file from the java file using Maven. (Maven is a new build system that has lately gained a lot of popularity in the Java community.)
DecodeIRCaller is the Java part of the JNI interface needed to call DecodeIR from Java. It was included in John Fine's original sources, then this file instead sneaked in into RemoteMaster (http://sourceforge.net/p/controlremote/ ... aller.java) which unfortunately made it unusable outside of RemoteMaster (through the calls to com.hifiremote.LibraryLoader). The "new" version just removes the calls to LibraryLoader.
So, if no-one objects I I would like to check in those two files in svn. No, it does not infer in any way with RemoteMaster or the build of RemoteMaster. Any objections? (No answer will be considered as approval.)
Alec (leamas) has a package for Fedora Linux finished, meaning that Fedora users will (optionally) have it as part of their system. As is the Fedora policy, the "modifications made" is offered "upstream", i.e. to this project. Therefore, Alec asked me to check in the files DecodeIRCaller.java (that would be as http://sourceforge.net/p/controlremote/ ... aller.java) an a pom.xml (as http://sourceforge.net/p/controlremote/ ... ir/pom.xml). This is for building a jar file from the java file using Maven. (Maven is a new build system that has lately gained a lot of popularity in the Java community.)
DecodeIRCaller is the Java part of the JNI interface needed to call DecodeIR from Java. It was included in John Fine's original sources, then this file instead sneaked in into RemoteMaster (http://sourceforge.net/p/controlremote/ ... aller.java) which unfortunately made it unusable outside of RemoteMaster (through the calls to com.hifiremote.LibraryLoader). The "new" version just removes the calls to LibraryLoader.
So, if no-one objects I I would like to check in those two files in svn. No, it does not infer in any way with RemoteMaster or the build of RemoteMaster. Any objections? (No answer will be considered as approval.)