[Celestia-developers] Re: Bug#174456: celestia: Please clarify copyright license of astronomical and image data used by the software

[Marcelo E. M. <mma...@de...>]

Hi people,

 please keep the following addresses in the Cc:

    17...@bu...
    jf...@da...
    cel...@li...

 For future reference, you can track this issue at the URL:

    http://bugs.debian.org/174456

 The quoted text is from Javier, who made me aware of this issues.  I
 haven't removed any of the original text.  You can find it in the
 original form at the URL quoted above.

 > There are no copyright notices provided regarding the star data sets
 > used by Celestia under the data/ dir and the textures and models
 > provided under textures/ and models/.
 >
 > As for the start catalog data it seems to use the HD catalog and the
 > HIPPARCOS data set (from reading the README).
 >
 > I believe the HD catalog is the "Henry Draper catalog". AFAIK this
 > catalog has been distributed (in machine readable form) in the
 > NASA/GSFC Astronomical Data Center (ADC) CD-ROM.
 >
 > However reading http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov/adc/adccdrom4_R2_doc.html
 > says:
 >
 > >>>
 > Note: The data contained herein are for scientific use only and have
 > no commercial value. Use of these data in publications of any kind
 > should be acknowledged by reference to the original authors and
 > publication and to the ADC CD-ROM. The acknowledgment might read as
 > follows: This paper uses data provided by Jane Astronomer in
 > AJ,110,1992 as distributed by the Astronomical Data Center at NASA
 > GSFC on the CD-ROM "Selected Astronomical Catalogs" Vol. 4, NASA
 > Publication NP-1997(10)-042-GSFC, 1997.
 > <<<

 This one is going to be thorny.  I guess you could read "[...] and have
 no commercial value" as meaning that it can't be bound with other parts
 for profit.  That might be sound harmless to you, but it's an actual
 problem for Debian.  Packages in Debian have to adhere to the Debian
 Free Software Guidelines[0].  In particular:

  6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

     The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program
     in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict
     the program from being used in a business, or from being used for
     genetic research.

 in plain English, if a license says "do whatever you want with this,
 but don't use it for commercial purposes" it's not DFSG-ok.  The data
 comes from NASA, an US Goverment Agency.  That means the data is
 released to the public domain at _some_ point in time.  There are
 exceptions to that.  I don't know what the situation with this
 particular dataset is.  That said, I'm of the opinion that the DFSG
 apply to _software_, and data is not software.  The problem is we have
 never managed to get a concensus on what is ok for data.  From my point
 of view, if a dataset says "you can use it but you have to acknowledge
 our work" it's _fine_.  If it's says "it's freely available", even
 better.

 > The Hipparcos catalog, also, does not seem to hold a proper license
 > or copyright information. This catalog has been produced by the ESA:
 > http://astro.estec.esa.nl/Hipparcos/catalog.html. Are they in the
 > public domain? I guess so, but it doesn't say so anywhere....

 Well, AFAIK the reduced HIPPARCOS data is in the public domain, but I
 don't have access to the ESA CD-ROMs here to verify this information.
 Chris, where did you get that data from?  Is there a copyright notice
 attached to it?  HIPPARCOS was financed by ESA, and I don't really know
 what ESA's policy in these matters is.

 > As for the models, it's not perfectly clear that the authors of them
 > have provided under the same license that the software uses (GPL).
 > For example, the  Venus, Saturn, and Saturn's rings textures are said
 > to be extracted from http://www.mmedia.is/~bjj/acknow.html. The
 > copyright of that site is _not_ GPL:
 >
 > "All the planetary maps on these pages are publicly available.  You
 > do not need a special permission to use them but if you do then
 > please mention their origin in your work, e.g. "created by Bj=F6rn
 > J=F3nsson" (or "Bjorn Jonsson" for all of you 8 bit character set
 > challenged out there ;) or something equivalent. "

 It doesn't say you can't give them to other people.  A clarification
 from the author would be a plus.  Again, this is data.  "To use" in the
 case of data can't possibly mean the same as in the case of software --
 it makes no sense.  Using data means modifying it in some way, e.g. you
 have to read JPEG files in and convert them to a different
 representation before being able to display them.  People will _surely_
 argue that that kind of use does not cover creating derived works.  I
 for one am ok with that (until someone convinces me that taking and
 RFC, modifying parts of it and giving it to other people in the same
 way you can do with Free Software actually makes sense).

 From a more practical point of view, for Chris and the rest of the team
 it would be _extremely_ important to get that kind of permission from
 the original author(s).  Since the author does not say that you can
 distribute his work to other people, you might eventually find yourself
 in the extremely uncomfortable situation of facing a claim of
 redistribution of copyrighted work without permission from the
 copyright holder.

 > The planet maps from David Seal's site: http://maps.jpl.nasa.gov/
 > also hold a non-GPL license. The site points to
 > http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/copyrights.html which states:=20
 >
 > "JPL authored documents are sponsored by NASA are sponsored by NASA
 > under Contract NAS7-1407. All documents available from this server
 > may be protected under the U.S. and Foreign Copyright Laws.
 > Permission to reproduce may be required. "
 >
 > This is not a proper DFSG license at all. As a matter of fact, in
 > absence of license, we have to assume that it is _not_ DFSG-free.

 That's in fact what "may be protected under the U.S. and Foreign
 Copyright Laws" means.

 "But these are just photos of planets!" someone might say.  Yes, but
 Mr. Adams' photographs are just mountains... that doesn't mean you can
 copy them and distribute them without Mr. Adams' permission.  And I'm
 sure Mr. Adams would be mightly pissed off if you modify them (say, you
 clip them) and then redistribute them.

 > This is a difficult issue, and probably it will take time to decide
 > wether or not all the information available and used by Celestia is
 > DFSG-free, however I think that, at the very least, and until this
 > issue is fixed, the debian/copyright should hold _much_ more than the
 > GPL license.

 Sure.

 To summarize: permission to _at least_ use and redistribute (possibly
 in modified form) the data from the catalogs is needed.  The same thing
 holds for the textures.  Celestia has other kinds of data, but that
 falls comfortably under "fair use" (the other data doesn't because
 those are complete works).  Giving credit for that data would be
 nevertheless a big plus.

 Marcelo

 [0] Sorry, I don't have an URL handy.  Just go to
     http://www.debian.org/ and look for "Social Contract" at the left
     side (it's close to the top).  The DFSG are at the bottom half of
     that document.

--=20
Marcelo             | The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy wate=
rs
mma...@de... | of the mind.
                    |         -- (Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)