WURFL licensing concerns and Git migration - Wikitech-l

Diederik van Liere

21 Mar 21 Mar

3:05 p.m.

Yes, ScientiaMobile has made some very important changes to the license and it does mean (AFAIK) that you cannot store the wurfl.xml in a repository. This paragraph is particularly important: "You are not authorized to create a derivative work of or otherwise modify this WURFL file, and you are further not authorized to use, copy, display, or distribute, in each case, any derivative work of this WURFL file, whether created by you or someone else." I think it's best with waiting to put the file in git and I'll forward this question to the legal team. Best, Diederik On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 12:03 AM, Kevin Israel <pleasestand(a)live.com> wrote:

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Our MobileFrontend extension, which is currently deployed on Wikimedia sites, uses WURFL to detect the mobile devices it targets. However, I recently became aware the version of the WURFL data files we use has a rather restrictive license. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/wmlprogramming/message/34311 The license seems to suggest we are not even supposed to redistribute verbatim copies or install the data files on multiple servers rather than only making "[...] one copy [...]", if not merely fail to grant such permission. Currently, the files are in our Subversion repository and are going to end up in Git soon. I am not a lawyer, and I realize this is probably a matter for the Wikimedia Foundation to handle, albeit one of urgent importance to us. If I am not mistaken, proper removal of infringing material from Git repositories is somewhat painful in that it causes all child SHA-1 hashes to change, so I feel resolution of the above licensing concern blocks Git migration of at least the MobileFrontend extension. -- Wikipedia user PleaseStand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PleaseStand _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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Erik Moeller

4:23 p.m.

On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 10:37 PM, Q <overlordq(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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ScientiaMobile basically took an open data repository and closed it, the complete opposite of what the WMF is trying to do. I'd strongly suggest looking for real Open solutions like OpenDDR/DeviceMap

And apparently they've been trying to take down legitimate copies, too: http://openddr.org/takedown.html Yikes, that's evil. To the extent we're relying on it today, we should move off it ASAP. -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Diederik van Liere

22 Mar 22 Mar

2:45 a.m.

I am in touch with the core developers of the Apache Devicemap project and we are exploring the possibility of collaborating. If something comes out of this exploration then I will announce it here. Best, Diederik On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 2:33 AM, Patrick Reilly <preilly(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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I can remove it. — Patrick On Mar 20, 2012, at 10:53 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 10:37 PM, Q <overlordq(a)gmail.com> wrote:

ScientiaMobile basically took an open data repository and closed it, the complete opposite of what the WMF is trying to do. I'd strongly suggest looking for real Open solutions like OpenDDR/DeviceMap

And apparently they've been trying to take down legitimate copies, too: http://openddr.org/takedown.html Yikes, that's evil. To the extent we're relying on it today, we should move off it ASAP. -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

_______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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Ryan Kaldari

10:52 a.m.

Ironically, WURFL is now violating Sourceforge's Terms of Use, as their software is not compliant with the Open Source Initiative's Open Source Definition. I'll drop a note to SourceForge's staff. Ryan Kaldari On 3/20/12 9:35 PM, Diederik van Liere wrote:

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Yes, ScientiaMobile has made some very important changes to the license and it does mean (AFAIK) that you cannot store the wurfl.xml in a repository. This paragraph is particularly important: "You are not authorized to create a derivative work of or otherwise modify this WURFL file, and you are further not authorized to use, copy, display, or distribute, in each case, any derivative work of this WURFL file, whether created by you or someone else." I think it's best with waiting to put the file in git and I'll forward this question to the legal team. Best, Diederik On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 12:03 AM, Kevin Israel<pleasestand(a)live.com> wrote:

Our MobileFrontend extension, which is currently deployed on Wikimedia sites, uses WURFL to detect the mobile devices it targets. However, I recently became aware the version of the WURFL data files we use has a rather restrictive license. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/wmlprogramming/message/34311 The license seems to suggest we are not even supposed to redistribute verbatim copies or install the data files on multiple servers rather than only making "[...] one copy [...]", if not merely fail to grant such permission. Currently, the files are in our Subversion repository and are going to end up in Git soon. I am not a lawyer, and I realize this is probably a matter for the Wikimedia Foundation to handle, albeit one of urgent importance to us. If I am not mistaken, proper removal of infringing material from Git repositories is somewhat painful in that it causes all child SHA-1 hashes to change, so I feel resolution of the above licensing concern blocks Git migration of at least the MobileFrontend extension. -- Wikipedia user PleaseStand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PleaseStand _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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