On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 09:23:23PM -0400, Richard Stallman wrote: > > Tahoe-LAFS is licensed to the public under the "Transitive Grace Period > Public > Licence 1.0" [*]. Tahoe-LAFS is Free and Open software. The "Transitive > Grace > Period Public Licence" is an Open Source licence. > > Is that true? Or is it just a hypothetical example?
This is true: https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/trunk/docs/about.rst#license > I don't recall studying this license. I am not sure what it says. It is not > in our license-list.html page. So I don't know whether it is a free software > license, and if it isn't, then Tahoe-LAFS is not free sotfware. Tahoe-LAFS is also available under the GPL, at your option. In addition it is my current belief that the TGPPL is a Free Software licence. At least as much as the GNU All-Permissive License is -- the TGPPL permits derived works to be proprietary, just as the GNU All-Permissive License does, but the TGPPL permits such proprietary derived works only under limiting conditions, unlike the GNU All-Permissive License, which allows proprietary derived works unconditionally. Tahoe-LAFS is available to the public under the terms of either licence, and so the public has full rights to use the Tahoe-LAFS software freely, therefore Tahoe-LAFS is Free Software. > If you send me the text of this license, I can study it. I'll append it to the end of this letter. I've previously submitted it to the FSF for review. Brett Smith replied in private email in December of 2010: """ We haven't done a complete analysis (so please don't take this as the FSF's official position), but my initial impression was that our opinion about permissive licenses generally would extend to the TGPPL as well. Namely: the TGPPL legally grants a recipient all the rights they need to have free software. But when a user receives a particular work under the license's terms, they may not have the source code that they need to practically exercise those rights -- at least for a while. So the license itself is free, but you need to look at a little more information to figure out whether a particular user has freedom with a particular work under its terms. """ (I hope Brett does not mind that I quoted his email in public! It seems appropriate and I think he won't mind.) He also wrote a great deal more in a private conversation between him and me about practical considerations. By the way, I too am concerned about the practical issue that Brett raised: do you have access to the source code that you would need in order to exercise your rights? With Tahoe-LAFS and LeastAuthority.com, we have hitherto published source code even when the user did not (yet) have full rights to it. That way, there is no action or inaction on our part that could prevent the user from subsequently exercising their rights. I would be interested in a variant of the Transitive Grace Period Public Licence which imposed that as a condition on the makers of derived works. Regards, Zooko ------- begin appended text of Transitive Grace Period Public Licence, v1.0 ======================================================= Transitive Grace Period Public Licence ("TGPPL") v. 1.0 ======================================================= This Transitive Grace Period Public Licence (the "License") applies to any original work of authorship (the "Original Work") whose owner (the "Licensor") has placed the following licensing notice adjacent to the copyright notice for the Original Work: *Licensed under the Transitive Grace Period Public Licence version 1.0* 1. **Grant of Copyright License.** Licensor grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicensable license, for the duration of the copyright, to do the following: a. to reproduce the Original Work in copies, either alone or as part of a collective work; b. to translate, adapt, alter, transform, modify, or arrange the Original Work, thereby creating derivative works ("Derivative Works") based upon the Original Work; c. to distribute or communicate copies of the Original Work and Derivative Works to the public, with the proviso that copies of Original Work or Derivative Works that You distribute or communicate shall be licensed under this Transitive Grace Period Public Licence no later than 12 months after You distributed or communicated said copies; d. to perform the Original Work publicly; and e. to display the Original Work publicly. 2. **Grant of Patent License.** Licensor grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicensable license, under patent claims owned or controlled by the Licensor that are embodied in the Original Work as furnished by the Licensor, for the duration of the patents, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, have made, and import the Original Work and Derivative Works. 3. **Grant of Source Code License.** The term "Source Code" means the preferred form of the Original Work for making modifications to it and all available documentation describing how to modify the Original Work. 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