amepd license

[zeehio]

Hi Reece,

I was reviewing the licence of each mimic file and I either I did not find the license terms for the amepd dictionary or they are vague enough to pose problems from a legal point of view. I found this amepd license terms:

 Use of this dictionary for any research or commercial purpose is completely
 unrestricted.  If you make use of or redistribute this material, we would
 appreciate acknowlegement of its origin.

On the other hand cmudict 0.7 (amepd is based on that as far as I know) has the following license:

;;; #
;;; # ========================================================================
;;; # Copyright (C) 1993-2015 Carnegie Mellon University. All rights reserved.
;;; #
;;; # Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
;;; # modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
;;; # are met:
;;; #
;;; # 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
;;; #    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
;;; #    The contents of this file are deemed to be source code.
;;; #
;;; # 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
;;; #    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in
;;; #    the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
;;; #    distribution.
;;; #
;;; # This work was supported in part by funding from the Defense Advanced
;;; # Research Projects Agency, the Office of Naval Research and the National
;;; # Science Foundation of the United States of America, and by member
;;; # companies of the Carnegie Mellon Sphinx Speech Consortium. We acknowledge
;;; # the contributions of many volunteers to the expansion and improvement of
;;; # this dictionary.
;;; #
;;; # THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY ``AS IS'' AND
;;; # ANY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
;;; # THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
;;; # PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
;;; # NOR ITS EMPLOYEES BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
;;; # SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT
;;; # LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,
;;; # DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY
;;; # THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
;;; # (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE
;;; # OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
;;; #
;;; # ========================================================================
;;; #
;;;

Note that the amepd license does not give permissions for any use other than research or commercial purposes (these two are the only purposes considered in the license). Would you consider using the BSD-2 license as the cmudict does?

[rhdunn]

The amepd is derived from commit 7825 of http://svn.code.sf.net/p/cmusphinx/code/trunk/cmudict (the cmudict.0.7a file). This was before the dictionary changed to the BSD-2 license, so uses the license statement as described in cmudict 0.2.

I will switch to the BSD-2 license given your concerns over the research or commercial purposes, to align it with the more recent cmudict versions.

[zeehio]

Thanks! For clarification, if I want to use amepd "for fun" (not research and not a commercial purpose) I cannot do that because the license terms do not grant permission to use the dictionary for any other purpose. This silly issue makes amepd non-free source code.

On the other hand the BSD 2 license states "Redistribution and use in source and binary.. are permitted..." so under that license I can have as much fun with amepd as I want :smile:

[rhdunn]

I agree with your analysis, so have made the changes by merging in cmudict commit 8122, which was the point at which it switched to use the BSD-2 license.