Bug 424078

Summary:	dprof2calltree cannot be distributed with a GPL-2 work
Product:	[Developer tools] kcachegrind	Reporter:	Nicholas D Steeves <nsteeves>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Josef Weidendorfer <josef.weidendorfer>
Status:	REPORTED ---
Severity:	grave
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	unspecified
OS:	All
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Nicholas D Steeves 2020-07-10 19:26:59 UTC

converters/dprof2calltree is © 2004 OmniTI Computer Consulting

Unfortunately its BSD-4-like (with problematic advertising clause) has the following issue:

* All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement: This product includes software developed by OmniTI Computer Consulting.

* Neither name of the company nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

I'm not 100% certain that bundling dprof2calltree with kcachegrind constitutes a "product[s] derived from this software", because I'm also of the opinion that bundling != derivation, but it seems like a lawyer might argue the it does.  So kcachegrind and any distributions' package would also need written persmission from OmniTI Computer Consulting.

Metadata, such as a package description (deb, rpm, etc.) or possibly even converters/README can be argued to be advertising materials.  If the package description appears in an "App store" like Discover then I think it would be considered advertising.

Thus, mentioning features provided by dprof2calltree in any user-facing way appears to require written permission from OmniTI Computer Consulting.

Given how this requirements is more restrictive than the GPL-2, it looks like dprof2calltree cannot be distributed with a GPL-2 work.

Disclaimer, this is not legal advice, but legal advice should be sought if kcachegrind is to continue to distribute dprof2calltree.

Thanks,
Nicholas

Comment 1 Nicholas D Steeves 2020-07-10 20:18:43 UTC

Also, the license of dprof2calltree is in violation of https://community.kde.org/Policies/Licensing_Policy

Thanks to nicolas17 in irc://#debian-qt-kde@oftc.net

Comment 2 Josef Weidendorfer 2021-08-09 09:58:29 UTC

Just saw this now. Interesting, and thanks for the clarifications.

As kcachgrind and converters can be executed completely independently
without needing each other in any way, it should be clear that this is
just bundling of 3rd-party provided contributions.

Further, I am quite sure that every author of a converter script provided
it in the hope this helps other users in the open source community.
It seems to me the same arguments can be said about the pprof2calltree
contribution from the same author?

I never used any of these contributions myself, so I do not care enough
and just would delete the complete converters directory, given that these
are almost 20 years old.