Came across https://lore.kernel.org/linux-man/13285139.O9o76ZdvQC@delle/T/#t on linux-man today. There was a suggestion that sys-apps/man-pages-posix is not redistributable as a paragraph was dropped from its licence between the 2013 & 2017 versions. ulm notes however: "man-pages-posix-2017-a.Announce says "For the POSIX pages, permission to distribute was given by IEEE and the Open Group, see POSIX-COPYRIGHT."" So the only issue for us, it seems, is that we can't modify freely: "Modifications to the text are permitted so long as any conflicts with the standard are clearly marked as such in the text." We should probably drop it as a dep of sys-apps/man-pages so it's not included in stages anymore, even if that's unfortunate.
I think we have seen similar cases elsewhere where documentation for standards basically says "You can modify, but you can't lie about the modification", and I don't think that qualifies as non-free. E.g. I think IETF standards say you can modify RFC 12345, but then you no longer can claim what you modified is RFC 12345. In the same spirit I think this sentence says "you are free to create a man-page for something other than posix based on this, but you can no longer claim it's posix".
(In reply to Hanno Böck from comment #1) > I think we have seen similar cases elsewhere where documentation for > standards basically says "You can modify, but you can't lie about the > modification", and I don't think that qualifies as non-free. > > E.g. I think IETF standards say you can modify RFC 12345, but then you no > longer can claim what you modified is RFC 12345. > > In the same spirit I think this sentence says "you are free to create a > man-page for something other than posix based on this, but you can no longer > claim it's posix". Yes, that was our conclusion because man-pages-posix-2013a had the following in POSIX-COPYRIGHT: Redistribution of this material is permitted so long as this notice and the corresponding notices within each POSIX manual page are retained on any distribution, and the nroff source is included. Modifications to the text are permitted so long as any conflicts with the standard are clearly marked as such in the text. The problem is that this paragraph has been dropped from POSIX-COPYRIGHT in man-pages-posix-2017a. I think this leaves us with two possibilities: - If the note in man-pages-posix-2017-a.Announce saying "For the POSIX pages, permission to distribute was given by IEEE and the Open Group, see POSIX-COPYRIGHT." is genuine, then this is freely distributable and LICENSE should be changed to "freedist". - OTOH if that note no longer applies (as it refers to POSIX-COPYRIGHT, and it already was there in the 2013a version), then neither we nor upstream have the right to distribute this, which means that we must either downgrade to 2013a or remove the package altogether.
The following is in the release notes for 2017a: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-man/0a36ce05-f3f3-afd5-7675-a5fc4b4f0c02@gmail.com/ We are pleased to announce that, once again, the IEEE and The Open Group have kindly granted us permission to distribute extracts from the latest version of the POSIX.1 standard: [...] Which doesn't say anything about modification. Also, "granted _us_ permission to distribute" doesn't imply that it is redistributable.
The bug has been referenced in the following commit(s): https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=965ccb2d69c3a70ead6b7fae55588c8eb3826507 commit 965ccb2d69c3a70ead6b7fae55588c8eb3826507 Author: Ulrich Müller <ulm@gentoo.org> AuthorDate: 2022-09-19 07:59:47 +0000 Commit: Ulrich Müller <ulm@gentoo.org> CommitDate: 2022-09-19 08:03:45 +0000 sys-apps/man-pages-posix: Update LICENSE to freedist For what we know at this point in time, version 2017a of this package is nonfree because modification is not allowed. This is pending further clarification in bug 871636. Note that Fedora has dropped this package: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2116859 Bug: https://bugs.gentoo.org/871636 Signed-off-by: Ulrich Müller <ulm@gentoo.org> .../{man-pages-posix-2017a.ebuild => man-pages-posix-2017a-r1.ebuild} | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
The bug has been referenced in the following commit(s): https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=762666abf1a9fb455bb50d66f347caa4859080c0 commit 762666abf1a9fb455bb50d66f347caa4859080c0 Author: Ulrich Müller <ulm@gentoo.org> AuthorDate: 2022-09-19 13:38:23 +0000 Commit: Ulrich Müller <ulm@gentoo.org> CommitDate: 2022-09-20 06:31:04 +0000 sys-apps/man-pages: Drop dependency on man-pages-posix Bug: https://bugs.gentoo.org/871636 Suggested-by: Sam James <sam@gentoo.org> Signed-off-by: Ulrich Müller <ulm@gentoo.org> sys-apps/man-pages/man-pages-5.12-r2.ebuild | 3 +-- sys-apps/man-pages/{man-pages-5.13.ebuild => man-pages-5.13-r1.ebuild} | 1 - sys-apps/man-pages/man-pages-6.0_rc1.ebuild | 1 - sys-apps/man-pages/man-pages-9999.ebuild | 1 - 4 files changed, 1 insertion(+), 5 deletions(-)
The bug has been referenced in the following commit(s): https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=af82d70a60ee02a73b67a1b6140dace646a07500 commit af82d70a60ee02a73b67a1b6140dace646a07500 Author: Sam James <sam@gentoo.org> AuthorDate: 2022-09-21 04:15:29 +0000 Commit: Sam James <sam@gentoo.org> CommitDate: 2022-09-21 04:19:13 +0000 sys-apps/man-pages: add ewarn re dropped man-pages-posix This change was made to avoid conflicts for users by default (as man-pages is installed already) by way of licence. Let's make users aware of the change so they aren't taken aback by their POSIX man pages missing. Bug: https://bugs.gentoo.org/871636 Signed-off-by: Sam James <sam@gentoo.org> .../{man-pages-5.12-r2.ebuild => man-pages-5.12-r3.ebuild} | 12 ++++++++++++ .../{man-pages-5.13-r1.ebuild => man-pages-5.13-r2.ebuild} | 12 ++++++++++++ sys-apps/man-pages/man-pages-6.0_rc1.ebuild | 14 +++++++++++++- sys-apps/man-pages/man-pages-9999.ebuild | 14 +++++++++++++- 4 files changed, 50 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
