Hi, I started building the software (now named licc -- License Compatibility Checker) a few weeks ago. It's begining to take shape, the code is at http://gitorious.com/vitorbaptista/licc. Suggestions, critiques and patches are welcome.
I made tests following the compatibility chart at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ and it passes them. Also added a few GNU licenses' checking. I found a possible inconsistency between the compatibility chart at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ and CC Taiwan's Compatibility Wizard at http://creativecommons.org.tw/licwiz/english.html. In the first, there's: > The blank rows for the by-nc-nd and by-nd licenses indicate that derivative > works or adaptations are not permitted by the license of the original work, > therefore you are never allowed to re-license them. But into CC Taiwan consider BY-ND relicensable to BY-NC-ND and BY-ND. Which one is right? Regards, On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 7:24 PM, Vítor Baptista <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Mike, > On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 4:16 PM, Mike Linksvayer <[email protected]> > wrote: >>> >>> * I'm thinking about how I could, using ccREL, check if two licenses are >>> compatible. >> >> You can check for incompatibility (but even then an edge case/limited >> circumstances potential for compatibility could be missed, eg imagine if FDL >> 1.3 were so modeled; it would appear incompatible with BY-SA, but under >> circumstances and for a limited time, it was), but can't be certain of >> compatibility based on CCREL-level permissions/requirements/prohibitions. >> Licenses could be incompatible for reasons not modeled. For example, BY-SA >> 1.0 is not upwards compatible with later versions. (Perhaps this indicates >> we should add another assertion to the description of BY-SA 1.0 and look for >> other such cases to allow more reasoning with just CCREL level >> descriptions.) > > Before I found ccREL, I was looking into LIDESC [1]. I prefer ccREL over > LIDESC's tags because they are more simple, organized, better maintaned and, > mainly, because CC and FSF support it. But LIDESC's attributes are more > specific than ccREL's. It has more than 60 versus ccREL's 12. A license > could almost be 100% described with LIDESC's tags, but I thought that I > didn't need this, as my aim is "just" to say "they're not compatible", and > not "you can distribute but you have to keep Foo's notices in every source > code, Bar's notices in your About, etc.". > >> >> It's also important to realize that "compatible" (or "interoperable") >> often is too imprecise to be useful without specifying up/down, >> donor/recipient (or whatever your preferred term is); two-way compatibility >> is usually only among very similar licenses, eg among any >> version/jurisdiction of BY or among jurisdiction ports of a single version >> of BY-SA. > > If I remember well, what I am trying to solve is downwards compatibility. My > use case is "I have a software which is composed by 10 modules, each with > it's own license. Can I license the whole as GPLv3?". At first, it'll be > used in OpenGinga, a free implementation of the brazilian's digital tv > middleware. > >>> >>> At a first glance it seems that I could simply: >>> 1. You can't give more permissions than those that were given to you (but >>> you can give less); >>> 2. You can't remove prohibitions (but you can add); >>> 3. You must comply to the requirements of each and every part of your >>> software (and might add some more); >>> >>> These seems to work for the simple case (no copyleft/sharealike parts). >>> But, before I go into that, there're two attributes that I find confusing. >>> 1. High Income Nation Use -- If I don't this permission, what does it >>> means? That I can't distribute the work in the USA, for example? I couldn't >>> find any licenses that uses this (not CC licenses, at least); >> >> Uh oh, you found a bug in our schema -- this is a prohibition developed >> for the ill-fated http://creativecommons.org/licenses/devnations/2.0/ -- >> glad you couldn't find it. :-) If you find this prohibition, you don't have >> permission to distribute in the USA, for example. >> >> Bug: http://code.creativecommons.org/issues/issue663 >> Schema, for those following along described at >> http://creativecommons.org/ns# >> >>> >>> 2. Sharing -- Also, couldn't find no licenses using it. It means that I >>> may create a derivative work and sell it, but can't sell the unmodified >>> program? >> >> Right. Associated with another ill-fated license I'm happy you couldn't >> find -- http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling/1.0/ >> >> Devnations and sampling received almost no use and were retired 3 years >> ago, see http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7520 and my >> mini-celebration http://gondwanaland.com/mlog/2007/06/04/eol/ :-) > > Great! One less thing to confuse me :P > >>> >>> * For compatibility between copyleft licenses, there're x rules: >>> 1. Is it the same license? If so, they're compatible; if not, use rule 2; >>> 2. Are they explicitly compatible? For this, I have to use a >>> pre-calculated database like "GPLv2+ is compatible with GPLv2 or any later >>> version", etc. (maybe it'll be nice to have an extension to ccREL to support >>> this? (Thanks RDF)) >>> If there's a Lesser Copyleft license, my program (as I think of it) >>> cannot decide, so just tell the user to contact a lawyer. If there's a >>> ShareAlike, use: >>> 1. Compatible if it's just a newer version of the license; >>> 2. Compatible if it's the same version but for a different jurisdiction; >>> 3. Incompatible if not. >> >> Those rules sound right to me, but need a test suite. As above, it might >> be useful to extend CCREL to support more compatibility reasoning. > > Yes, that's one of the first things that I'll do. Just checking first if I > am on the right track. I think that [2] could be used as a first test > suite... :-) > Maybe I could find some useful attributes to extend ccREL in LIDESC's list > [1] and the license wizard at [3]. > >>> >>> Any thoughts or ideas about this? Does these rules makes sense? >> >> Really appreciate that you're doing this work/research! Where can one >> find your code? > > I still haven't written anything, just some tests of Ruby's RDFa support. > But, as soon as I begin coding, I'll post a link to my repository here. > Thanks for your thoughtful comments. > [1] http://www.mibsoftware.com/librock/lidesc/tags.htm > [2] http://creativecommons.org.tw/licwiz/english.html > [3] http://swan.iis.sinica.edu.tw/LicenseWizard/index.htm?en > Regards, > -- > Vítor Baptista > Comissão Organizadora > IV Encontro de Software Livre da Paraíba > 6, 7, 8 e 9 de Maio de 2010 > Estação Ciência, Cultura e Artes Cabo Branco > João Pessoa, PB. > > http://www.ensol.org.br > -- Vítor Baptista Comissão Organizadora IV Encontro de Software Livre da Paraíba 6, 7, 8 e 9 de Maio de 2010 Estação Ciência, Cultura e Artes Cabo Branco João Pessoa, PB. http://www.ensol.org.br
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