Most of the mapping files in the Unicode directory have a disclaimer in
the section that says:
# Recipient is granted the right to make copies in any form for
# internal distribution and to freely use the information supplied
# in the creation of products supporting Unicode. Unicode, Inc.
# specifically excludes the right to re-distribute this file directly
# to third parties or other organizations whether for profit or not.
I have a software library that uses the data in the titles that I wish
to release under the GNU Lesser GPL.
However, the software package during the "make" uses the mapping data by
building a tool which converts the Mapping file format (in it's raw
form) into C code, and then compiles the C code, and uses this binary
for doing the conversion. So it "uses" the information supplied to
support Unicode, but it also needs the original MAPPING files during the
build process-- which is more convenient in the case that a mapping
table should change... as editing the mapping data after it's been
prefiltered into C code is harder because it optimizes the layout for
space efficiency.
If I distribute the library as a tarball/zip file with source and
makefiles, can I include the Unicode mapping tables as well (the
instructions include the original source of the mapping files so one can
add mapping tables or get the latest versions should they (hopefully
not) need to be changed? Or does the "exclude the right to
re-distribute" forbid this?
I'd rather not use a "crypto-soft" style distribution, when I tell the
user in the readme "in order to build this software, first go to xxx
(Unicode) site and download the following files into the following
directory because we can't include these files in the dist for legal
reasons."-- I'm aiming for the no-brainer
download-un-targz-configure-make ease-of-use.
Do the sites that mirror this data have an exception to this rule?
-- PGP Key Fingerprint: D5B6 321C 0F82 117D EAC2 6D08 D942 FA38 7427 8195
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:48 EDT