Re: Mozilla Public License is non-free: stipulates court venue ?
Nathanael Nerode wrote: Jim Marhaus wrote: As discussed recently, choice of venue clauses may be non-free, because they require parties to travel unreasonable distances to avoid summary decisions against them. Does this clause make the MPL non-free? I believe so. Doesn't Debian use Mozilla under the GPL/LGPL license option though? (In other words, is anyone using the MPL in a way that matters to Debian?) Yes. I know of at least BrickOS (an alternative operating system for Lego Mindstorms kits), Firebird (a database, which uses a modified MPL), and several Mozilla extensions and locales. There are many licenses derived from the MPL with only the name changed, so it is difficult to search for them. - Josh Triplett
Re: license change for POSIX manpages
MJ Ray wrote: Redistribution of this material is permitted so long as this notice and the corresponding notices within each POSIX manual page are retained on any distribution, and the nroff source is included. Modifications to the text are permitted so long as any conflicts with the standard are clearly marked as such in the text. It would be nice to remove in the text from the end of this, I think. Agreed. In the text could imply right next to where you differ from the standard, which would probably be unreasonable enough to be non-free. Without the in the text, modifiers could simply add a blanket notice somewhere in the distributed work saying this has been changed and may not match the POSIX standard, which is a reasonable requirement. One other issue: does and the nroff source is included mean that if I want to hand someone a printed copy of a manual page, I have to either print the nroff source or supply it on an attached disk? This seems onerous for physical distribution. It maybe also depends what the corresponding notices look like: are they just copyright assertions? This clause doesn't say what the notices should look like, which seems like a good thing. I don't think this has anything to do with copyright notices; the kind of notice they are talking about is an explicit disclaimer of endorsement and of conformance to the standard. - Josh Triplett
Re: gens License Check - Non-free
On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS wrote: However, in the case of a a GPL library it is possible to argue that the person distributing the program is encouraging people to fetch the library from a public server and link it with the program, and therefore that person is in effect distributing the GPL library in an unlicensed manner. I don't accept this reasoning (though courts have said stranger things). I can't tell you you walked around my yard, but that's just another way of achieving the same result as walking across my yard, so you're in effect trespassing. Just because the outcome is the same does not make the two scenarios 'in effect' the same.
Re: Mozilla Public License is non-free: stipulates court venue ?
I don't believe the MPL was ever meant to be a free license,just an open one, hence the requests and eventual agreement to release it under the GPL. So long as Debian distributes under the GPL, there's no issue for debian-legal. Regarding the policy implications of loser pays contracts. Such clauses are generally unenforceable but are put in anyway so that should a particularly egregious claim be made against the company a judge feeling vindictive can slap around the plaintiff. But generally they don't fly. That being said, as I understand Debian's stance, even though clauses are seen as unenforceable we still avoid them as our users shouldn't be required to litigate such clauses in the first place. Oh, wouldn't life be easy if everyone would just use the GPL or BSD license and all these variations would just disappear. -Sean On Tuesday 08 June 2004 05:34 pm, Glenn Maynard wrote: On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 10:30:09PM +, Jim Marhaus wrote: | With respect to disputes in which at least one party is a citizen of, | or an entity chartered or registered to do business in the United | States of America, any litigation relating to this License shall be | subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Courts of the Northern | District of California, with venue lying in Santa Clara County, | California, with the losing party responsible for costs, including | without limitation, court costs and reasonable attorneys' fees and | expenses. Choice of venue aside, I question whether if you sue me and lose, you pay me my costs is free. That might be a good policy for laws (or perhaps not; I'm not very informed of the legal theory behind that), but I'm not sure if it belongs in a free license. | If Contributor has knowledge that a license under a third party's | intellectual property rights is required to exercise the rights granted | by such Contributor under Sections 2.1 or 2.2, Contributor must include | a text file with the Source Code distribution titled LEGAL'' which | describes the claim and the party making the claim in sufficient detail | that a recipient will know whom to contact. If Contributor obtains such | knowledge after the Modification is made available as described in | Section 3.2, Contributor shall promptly modify the LEGAL file in all | copies Contributor makes available thereafter and shall take other | steps (such as notifying appropriate mailing lists or newsgroups) | reasonably calculated to inform those who received the Covered Code | that new knowledge has been obtained. This fails the Chinese Dissident test. -- Glenn Maynard -- Sean Kellogg 1st Year - UW Law School c: 206.498.8207e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] w: http://www.livejournal.com/users/economyguy/ -- lazy mans blog When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail. -- Abraham Maslow
Re: Creative Commons Attribution license element
On 2004-06-09 09:17:45 +0100 Evan Prodromou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I just don't think the second paragraph in the trademark box is binding in any way. After all, Creative Commons (quite wisely) states that it is not a party to the license. For what reason, then, should either of the parties be bound by the excessive trademark restriction paragraph? It seems it should not be in the licence. I admit, I didn't understand why it should be part of the licence, from the situation you describe. Sadly, that doesn't mean that people don't have to comply with the licence as written. People have added the trademark block to Creative Commons licences as part of their licence. For example, the subversion book includes it in their copyright licence at http://svnbook.red-bean.com/svnbook/ape.html This bug has spread! But I think Bob isn't bound by Evil Commons's decree in any way -- neither under trademark law, nor under copyright law, nor under the license agreement. _Alice_ didn't Bob couldn't use the trademark; Evil Commons did. Why isn't he? Complying with CC's trademark terms is a condition of the licence Alice used. Being someone else's trademark doesn't excuse Bob from complying with the copyright licence, including agreeing to use the CC trademark however it is permitted, does it? It's just that Alice and CC both need to go evil to attack Bob. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing Help hack the EuroParl! http://mjr.towers.org.uk/proj/eurovote/
Re: license change for POSIX manpages
* Josh Triplett: Agreed. In the text could imply right next to where you differ from the standard, which would probably be unreasonable enough to be non-free. Without the in the text, modifiers could simply add a blanket notice somewhere in the distributed work saying this has been changed and may not match the POSIX standard, which is a reasonable requirement. They probably want to avoid that someone puts the markers into an nroff comment. (We could actually add the markers and provide a patched groff to hide them again.) One other issue: does and the nroff source is included mean that if I want to hand someone a printed copy of a manual page, I have to either print the nroff source or supply it on an attached disk? This seems onerous for physical distribution. This is what happens if you apply the GPL to documentation, and it seems to be considered acceptable. -- Current mail filters: many dial-up/DSL/cable modem hosts, and the following domains: bigpond.com, di-ve.com, fuorissimo.com, hotmail.com, jumpy.it, libero.it, netscape.net, postino.it, simplesnet.pt, spymac.com, tiscali.co.uk, tiscali.cz, tiscali.it, voila.fr, yahoo.com.
Re: license change for POSIX manpages
Florian Weimer wrote: * Josh Triplett: One other issue: does and the nroff source is included mean that if I want to hand someone a printed copy of a manual page, I have to either print the nroff source or supply it on an attached disk? This seems onerous for physical distribution. This is what happens if you apply the GPL to documentation, and it seems to be considered acceptable. The GPL has an option for just providing an offer to provide source on request. If you apply the GPL to documentation, distributors of physical copies can just include a one-liner saying if you want the source, ask me. With this license, you must include the source in the same distribution. I don't think it is non-free, just highly inconvenient. - Josh Triplett
Re: Creative Commons Attribution license element
NN == Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Me On the Creative Commons side, I'd wonder what opportunity there Me is to get Debian's very tardy comments and critiques applied to Me new versions of the CC licenses. NN Perhaps if they read their own mailing list?... That's a good point; I didn't see any followup on your message to that list. Here's a pointer to your message, BTW, for reference: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-licenses/2004-January/000320.html NN The trademark issue appears to be an issue solely with the web NN page presentation of the license, which should simply be NN fixed; the trademark clause is not supposed to be part of the NN license at all, but the web page does not make that clear. As far as I can tell, no. NN I sent a message regarding this to them some time ago, but it NN seems to have fallen into a black hole. Perhaps you know NN someone who could actually get something done on this NN point?... I can try to bring the subject up on the cc-licenses list again. ~ESP -- Evan Prodromou Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Mozilla Public License is non-free: stipulates court venue ?
Nathanael Nerode wrote: Doesn't Debian use Mozilla under the GPL/LGPL license option though? (In other words, is anyone using the MPL in a way that matters to Debian?) Could you provide a reference about this GPL/LGPL option? The copyright file I found for Mozilla Firefox only references the MPL [1]: http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/m/mozilla-firefox/mozilla-firefox_0.8-11/copyright The copyright file for mozilla-browser indicates some source files are tri-licensed under the MPL/GPL/LGPL, but others [2] are only licensed under the MPL: http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/m/mozilla/mozilla_1.6-7/copyright Can Debian distribute Mozilla as a whole under the GPL, given that some of the files are only available under the MPL? -Jim FSF license list 1. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html Mozilla Relicensing FAQ 2. http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/relicensing-faq.html#not-yet-relicensed package copyright files: - http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/m/mozilla/mozilla_1.6-7/copyright This is Mozilla, source can be retrieved from mozilla.org by either FTP or HTTP http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozillaversion/src/ ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozillaversion/src/ Currently maintained by Takuo KITAME [EMAIL PROTECTED] Some files in this source package are under the Netscape Public License Others, under the Mozilla Public license, and just to confuse you even more, some are dual licensed MPL/GPL. The full text of the NPL and MPL are in the same directory as this file with the filenames NPL-1.1.txt and MPL-1.1.txt, and may be compressed. The full text of the GPL is in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL - http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/m/mozilla-firefox/mozilla-firefox_0.8-11/copyright This package was debianized by Eric Dorland [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Thu, 05 Jun 2003 01:01:22 -0400 It was downloaded from http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firebird Upstream Authors: Mozilla Project Copyright: MOZILLA PUBLIC LICENSE Version 1.1 --- snip: MPL text
Re: Mozilla Public License is non-free: stipulates court venue ?
Sean Kellogg said on Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 09:55:55PM -0700,: I don't believe the MPL was ever meant to be a free license,just an open one, hence the requests and eventual agreement to release it under the We had discussed the *Nokia* Public licnese earlier, found that it identical in certain respects to the MPL http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/08/msg01842.html , Concluded that the Nokia Public is not DFSG compliant, See (among others) http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/08/msg01826.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/08/msg01808.html (and there are others too). And decided that we can continue with Mozilla coz. it is dual licensed under GPL/LGPL. Oh, wouldn't life be easy if everyone would just use the GPL or BSD license and all these variations would just disappear. Freedom comes at a price!!! -- Mahesh T. Pai http://paivakil.port5.com ~/\$ mv -vfi linux gnu/linux
Re: Mozilla Public License is non-free: stipulates court venue ?
Sean Kellogg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't believe the MPL was ever meant to be a free license,just an open one, hence the requests and eventual agreement to release it under the GPL. So long as Debian distributes under the GPL, there's no issue for debian-legal. I'm afraid that is a revisionist interpretation. First, Mozilla is certainly intended to be Open Source, which is essentially the same as what Debian means by free: This document contains the Mozilla Public License, which is an Open-Source license suitable for general use. -- http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/ Second, the stated reason for the GPL option is to deal with incompatibilities, not to change the overall policy: Some time ago mozilla.org announced its intent to seek relicensing of Mozilla code under a new licensing scheme that would address perceived incompatibilities of the Mozilla Public License (MPL) with the GNU General Public License (GPL) and GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). -- http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/relicensing-faq.html In fact, the site goes on to say they are not even sure that this step is really necessary, but instead that they are simply trying to avoid *possible* worries: It is unclear whether a developer could be successfully sued for copyright infringement on grounds related to these perceived license incompatibilities. However, to eliminate possible uncertainties concerning this question... -- http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/relicensing-faq.html This is an interesting case. Many people have been operating under the assumption that MPL is freer than GPL, and after this discussion that still seems to be the case in *practice*. -Lex
Re: Mozilla Public License is non-free: stipulates court venue ?
On Thu, Jun 10, 2004 at 02:14:33AM +0530, Mahesh T. Pai wrote: Oh, wouldn't life be easy if everyone would just use the GPL or BSD license and all these variations would just disappear. Freedom comes at a price!!! The price of freedom is eternal idiots? -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Mozilla Public License is non-free: stipulates court venue ?
Glenn Maynard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 10:30:09PM +, Jim Marhaus wrote: | With respect to disputes in which at least one party is a citizen of, or an | entity chartered or registered to do business in the United States of America, | any litigation relating to this License shall be subject to the jurisdiction of | the Federal Courts of the Northern District of California, with venue lying in | Santa Clara County, California, with the losing party responsible for costs, | including without limitation, court costs and reasonable attorneys' fees and | expenses. Choice of venue aside, I question whether if you sue me and lose, you pay me my costs is free. That might be a good policy for laws (or perhaps not; I'm not very informed of the legal theory behind that), but I'm not sure if it belongs in a free license. The point of DFSG (I thought) is that you can do free software things such as using, modifying, and redistributing the software. This clause doesn't interfere with that sort of thing, so it would seem to be okay. Just to toss some fuel on the fire, it seems like debian-legal should give careful consideration to licenses like this that are written by a team of lawyers from a big corporation. These licenses seem to frequently include stipulations about how litigation may happen--including choice of venue and who pays for it--and heck, maybe it's just good legal hygiene to include these things. I don't know the answers, but it would be a shame if Debian ends up recommending people to use *poor* licenses in order for us to consider them to be free. This would be a good thing to ask an IP lawyer about if any debian-legal people get a chance. -Lex
Re: Mozilla Public License is non-free: stipulates court venue ?
On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 02:31:44PM -0400, Lex Spoon wrote: Just to toss some fuel on the fire, it seems like debian-legal should give careful consideration to licenses like this that are written by a team of lawyers from a big corporation. These licenses seem to frequently include stipulations about how litigation may happen--including choice of venue and who pays for it--and heck, maybe it's just good legal hygiene to include these things. I don't know the answers, but it would be a shame if Debian ends up recommending people to use *poor* licenses in order for us to consider them to be free. This would be a good thing to ask an IP lawyer about if any debian-legal people get a chance. Choice of law would fall into this category. I think that choice of venue would not - it's more a case of lawyers trying to grab everything they can, to improve the corporate bottom line. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: XMMS in main?
Threads on debian-user don't mean a damn thing. Thanks. That totally clears up the issue. I will now continue using XMMS properly!
Re: Mozilla Public License is non-free: stipulates court venue ?
On 2004-06-09 19:08:06 +0100 Lex Spoon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm afraid that is a revisionist interpretation. First, Mozilla is certainly intended to be Open Source, which is essentially the same as what Debian means by free: The jury seems out on that. They could mean *anything* by Open Source. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/writing/ambigopen.html Even assuming they mean OSI's OSD and not whatever fuzzy idea, OSI seem to have a very different process to Debian and don't seem concerned with the four freedoms at all. OSI Certified seems to mean roughly no-one found a flaw in the licence advocate's lawyer's analysis that we couldn't help them patch up while DFSG-free should mean there is rough consensus of debian-legal contributors that this could be part of the debian OS distribution without violating the debian social contract. To the choice of venue problem, which I'm still not sure about: Does the possibility of ruling by a distant court impact my freedom to distribute the work? Definitely, if they can get and enforce a ruling on me without having to prove their case or give me a reasonable opportunity to defend myself. Is the default to appear in my local court? I don't know, but it looks like it from Articles 2 and 5.3 of the Brussels Convention on Jurisdiction and the Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters. Why don't venue clauses fail common tests like tentacles of evil? -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing Help hack the EuroParl! http://mjr.towers.org.uk/proj/eurovote/
