Re: Draft Summary: MPL is not DFSG free
Lex Spoon said on Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 05:43:31PM -0400,: A license text is simply a proposed contract, Right and wrong. A document allowing your neighbout over your property is a contract. The law relating to immoveable property (real property) calls it a license. Its validity is governed by law of contracts. A document allowing your neighbout to use a work copyrighted you is also a license. This license is governed by _copyright_ law. and a license is what you obtain after you agree to follow a license text. Under law of contract, yes. Under copyright law, a license can be a unilateral grant. WHich is what GPL does. Heck, you can mail RMS your signed agreement Yes. Your ISP/department of posts / courier will be richer. No other consequence. -- Mahesh T. Pai http://paivakil.port5.com ~/\$ mv -vfi linux gnu/linux
Re: How to proceed with an ITP of questionably licensed software?
On Thu, Jun 10, 2004 at 01:02:08AM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: Do you really want to package software if you can't even make contact with the author? Man, there are a lots of stable old softwares without an active/known upstream around in Debian since ages. -- Francesco P. Lovergine
Re: Draft Summary: MPL is not DFSG free
On Thu, Jun 10, 2004 at 09:49:36PM +, Jim Marhaus wrote: Hi all - The consensus from debian-legal archives and current discussion seems to be the MPL is non-free. Below is a summary of reasons, compiled from commentary on the MPL and the similar Nokia license reviewed last August. By the way, the following software is apparently licensed under the MPL, but not being relicensed like Mozilla: 2. Aolserver http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/a/aolserver/aolserver_3.5.6-4/copyright Sorry, but aolserver3,4 is released under amendements: --- AMENDMENTS The AOLserver Public License Version 1.1 (APL) consists of the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1 with the following Amendments, including Exhibit A - AOLserver Public License. Files identified with Exhibit A - AOLserver Public License are governed by the AOLserver Public License Version 1.1. Additional Terms applicable to the AOLserver Public License. I. Effect. These additional terms described in this AOLserver Public License -- Amendments shall apply to the AOLserver Code and to all Covered Code under this License. II. AOL's Branded Code means Covered Code that AOL distributes and/or permits others to distribute under one or more trademark(s) which are controlled by AOL but which are not licensed for use under this License. III. AOL Trademarks. This License does not grant any rights to use the trademarks AOL, America Online, AOLserver or the AOL Triangle logo even if such marks are included in the Original Code or Modifications. IV. Inability to Comply Due to Contractual Obligation. Prior to licensing the Original Code under this License, AOL has licensed third party code for use in AOL's Branded Code. To the extent that AOL is limited contractually from making such third party code available under this License, AOL may choose to reintegrate such code into Covered Code without being required to distribute such code in Source Code form, even if such code would otherwise be considered Modifications under this License. V. [Intentionally Omitted] VI. Litigation. Notwithstanding the limitations of Section 11 above, the provisions regarding litigation in Section 11(a), (b) and (c) of the License shall apply to all disputes relating to this License. EXHIBIT A - AOLserver Public License. The contents of this file are subject to the AOLserver Public License Version 1.1 (the License); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://aolserver.com/. Software distributed under the License is distributed on an AS IS basis, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing rights and limitations under the License. The Original Code is AOLserver Code and related documentation distributed by AOL. The Initial Developer of the Original Code is America Online, Inc. Portions created by AOL are Copyright (C) 1999 America Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Contributor(s): __. Alternatively, the contents of this file may be used under the terms of the GNU General Public License (the GPL), in which case the provisions of GPL are applicable instead of those above. If you wish to allow use of your version of this file only under the terms of the GPL and not to allow others to use your version of this file under the License, indicate your decision by deleting the provisions above and replace them with the notice and other provisions required by the GPL. If you do not delete the provisions above, a recipient may use your version of this file under either the License or the GPL. [ A copy of GPL can be find in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL ] - AFAIK Debian could release all under GPL or not? -- Francesco P. Lovergine
Re: Draft Summary: MPL is not DFSG free
On Sat, Jun 12, 2004 at 01:23:37PM +0200, Francesco Paolo Lovergine wrote: Alternatively, the contents of this file may be used under the terms of the GNU General Public License (the GPL), in which case the provisions of GPL are applicable instead of those above. If you wish to allow use of your version of this file only under the terms of the GPL and not to allow others to use your version of this file under the License, indicate your decision by deleting the provisions above and replace them with the notice and other provisions required by the GPL. If you do not delete the provisions above, a recipient may use your version of this file under either the License or the GPL. To be more precise every single damn file in AOLServer sources are released with both AOLPL and GPL. That allow me to release the whole beast under GPL if needed. Single libraries could be of interest for compatibility analysis with GPL eventually. -- Francesco P. Lovergine
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Re: Creative Commons Attribution license element
NN == Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: NN Actually, I think most of clause 4b is fine; it's only one NN little bit of it which is troublesome. Thanks for your close attention. This is really helpful. 4b to the extent reasonably practicable, the Uniform Resource 4b Identifier, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated 4b with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright 4b notice or licensing information for the Work; NN Well, I think this is barely free, though it's a little silly. It's probably less silly in light of the mechanism Creative Commons suggests for embedding license info into artifacts with tight space for metadata: http://creativecommons.org/technology/embedding For file formats like MP3/ID3, there's only so much space for rights info. So, CC recommends storing an URL to the full info. One thing that bothers me, though, is how this becomes 'barely free'. I realize that it may be *annoying* or *stupid*, but how is it *non-free*? I understand how *excessive* conditions on modifications may make something non-free, but requiring that a verbatim URL be included with the Work doesn't seem excessive to me. I also am having a problem with understanding how putting limits on the modification of metadata (info about the Work) makes something non-free. This seems to be standard issue with most free licenses (you have to keep copyright notices, you have to distribute the license with the work, you have to keep a change history, yadda yadda). I see where restrictions on the content (can't change function names, can't change the ending of the short story) are non-free, but I'm not sure I grok why metadata invariance is. I really need some help getting this straight in my head. What am I missing, here? 4b provided, however, that in the case of a Derivative Work or 4b Collective Work, at a minimum such credit will appear where any 4b other comparable authorship credit appears and in a manner at 4b least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit. NN *This* is the problem clause. It's unclear to most of us NN exactly what any other comparable authorship credit means. Yes, I see that. Is it credit for comparable authorship, or comparable credit for authorship? A failure of the appositive! The any other ... part is kind of difficult, too. Does it mean some other ... (credit has to be somewhere), or every other ... (anytime there's credit, this one has to be there, too)? NN With this ambiguity, the at least as prominent requirement NN is then a potential interpretation nightmare. Suppose, for a NN silly and extreme example, you wanted to use a huge hunk of NN material under this license in a version of ReiserFS, so that NN the code under this license needed a comparable authorship NN credit to Reiser's. Would that mean that the credit would NN have to appear in the FS name, so as to be in the same NN location and at least as prominent as Reiser's credit? Yeech. Yeech, yes. Possibly a more appropriate example would be when I include an Attribution-licensed quote from you (beyond the extent of fair use) in my book, The Autobiography of Evan Prodromou. Would I have to change the title to The Autobiography of Evan Prodromou and Nathanael Nerode? Again, though, I wonder about the non-free aspects of this. Clumsy and inaccurate, yes. Non-free...? Would it be non-free because it's not possible for the licensee to comply because the license is vague? NN This isn't supposed to be an actual part of the license, NN according to the source code for the web page; this should be NN fixed so that this is clear when *viewing* the web page (it is NN *not* clear now). That doesn't require changing the license. NN It does require someone at Creative Commons noticing and NN dealing with the issue. :-P Probably something as simple as: Creative Commons, the Creative Commons logo, and the Some Rights Reserved logo are trademarks of Creative Commons. Their use is restricted by Creative Commons trademark policy to the extent of applicable law. ...would work better. ~ESP -- Evan Prodromou Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Creative Commons Attribution license element
On Sat, Jun 12, 2004 at 02:15:37PM -0400, Evan Prodromou wrote: One thing that bothers me, though, is how this becomes 'barely free'. I realize that it may be *annoying* or *stupid*, but how is it *non-free*? I understand how *excessive* conditions on modifications may make something non-free, but requiring that a verbatim URL be included with the Work doesn't seem excessive to me. Freedom is a binary test; a work is either free, or it is not. There is no partially free or semi-free. So barely free is free, but very close to the line; make this any stronger and it will be non-free. Again, though, I wonder about the non-free aspects of this. Clumsy and inaccurate, yes. Non-free...? Would it be non-free because it's not possible for the licensee to comply because the license is vague? Yes; if the licensee cannot comply with the license, then they have no right to distribute or modify, and that's what we're really interested in. Analysing the license is merely a means to the end - it's what you can do with the work that counts. Licenses which are vague are particularly nasty, because you can go with the obvious interpretation, and then get sued by the copyright holder who turns out to have a different one. Certainly we've had some copyright holders applying strange interpretations to apparently free licenses before now. To provide reasonable assurance to our users that everything in main is free, we have to take the most pessimistic interpretation, and see if that is free. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Creative Commons Attribution license element
AS == Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Me One thing that bothers me, though, is how this becomes 'barely Me free'. AS Freedom is a binary test; a work is either free, or it is AS not. There is no partially free or semi-free. So barely AS free is free, but very close to the line; make this any AS stronger and it will be non-free. I understood that part. The part I don't understand is, what line does the URL requirement get close to? What is the line between acceptable modification restrictions and unacceptable ones? I'll try to present one dimension of modification restrictions, being what type of content those restrictions require to remain in the modified version: 1. No restrictions on modifications whatsoever. 2. Restrictions to make sure that downstream users get the following 4 things: copyright notices, license notification, changelogs, warranty disclaimers. 3. Restrictions to make sure that downstream users get general information about the work (metadata), including the above 4 things, but maybe perhaps some others. Examples: original author name, original work title, original metadata URL, bug-reporting site or address, main download site URL. 4. Restrictions that protect certain parts of the work itself (e.g., invariant sections). 5. Restrictions that prevent any modification of the work whatsoever. I'd posit that our line for free-vs.-non-free is between 3 and 4 here. Me Would it be non-free because it's not possible for the licensee Me to comply because the license is vague? AS Licenses which are vague are particularly nasty, because you AS can go with the obvious interpretation, and then get sued by AS the copyright holder who turns out to have a different AS one. Certainly we've had some copyright holders applying AS strange interpretations to apparently free licenses before AS now. To provide reasonable assurance to our users that AS everything in main is free, we have to take the most AS pessimistic interpretation, and see if that is free. Cool. So, if I can redirect back to the Attribution license, we have a worst-case interpretation with the Attribution license, where the author's credits have to be listed in _every_ place other credits are given, even if those places are possibly inconvenient (file name, work title). Even though it's vague (could mean some places, could mean all places), our New Math set theory teaches us that if we give credit in all places, we will have also have given credit in some places. So, by giving credit in _all_ places, we can comply. Now, given the all places idea: is that non-free? It may suck, but is it non-free? ~ESP -- Evan Prodromou Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jabber: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft Summary: MPL is not DFSG free
On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 10:45:48PM +0530, Mahesh T. Pai wrote: Jim Marhaus said on Thu, Jun 10, 2004 at 09:49:36PM +,: 1. Firebird Database http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/f/firebird/firebird_1.0.2-2.1/copyright Something wrong here?? Interbase Public License is based on Mozilla. A deep ananlysis should be conducted in order to see if amendaments add significant changes to the ongoing discussion. -- Francesco P. Lovergine
Re: Draft Summary: MPL is not DFSG free
Brian Thomas Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You think it's beneficial. Reasonable people might disagree. Thus, while you might accept such a contract, it's not a free license. It is always beneficial to receive software under a free license. I disagree; obtaining software under a DFSG-compliant license agreement is not necessarily a benefit. Some people feel that the advertising clause of BSD is a hindrance, for example, but that does not make the BSD license agreement become non-free. DFSG has some specific requirements and I think we should stick to them. Those requirements talk about use, modification, and redistribution, and those are the most important things for open source software. -Lex
Re: Draft Summary: MPL is not DFSG free
Brian Thomas Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You are exceptionally confused. A contract is a legal agreement, with specific requirements -- typically agreement, compensation, and a few less famous ones. A license is a grant of permission. Much like a title or deed, a license may be exchanged as part of a contract -- I'll give you a license to edit this message for a million bucks --- or it can just be granted. Right. Almost all free licenses are not contracts. I cannot think of any Free license which *is* a contract, but there might, I suppose, be one out there. Given American law requires an exchange, I can't see how. What do you mean? In order to gain the licenses GPL grants you, you must comply with all of the terms. Some of those terms require that you perform in some way, e.g. by distributing source code. I am not a legal expert, but GPL has all of the earmarks of a contract. It is a written document, it requires agreement by both parties to be binding, it grants something (a license), and it puts requirements on one of the parties (You) to perform actions in exchange for the granted item. I'm sure you are getting at something important, but talking about contracts versus non-contracts doesn't seem to be exactly the dividing line you are trying to specify. Heck, you can mail RMS your signed agreement to follow GPL in your usage of gcc, if you want. The presence of such a signature would not make GPL stop being a license nor start being a contract. Indeed, they aren't contracts. Agreement is no more necessary to them than if I were to hand you a sandwich. Agreement is necessary for you to gain the grant(s). Interestingly, GPL states this explicitly, even though it doesn't need to: You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. [...] Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions [...] Lex
Re: Draft Summary: MPL is not DFSG free
Matthew Palmer wrote: I'm pretty sure though, that absent a decision from a higher court, a court can choose to hear any case it wants to -- if that court decides to hear your case, either you appear or you're toast. Different courts just have different rules about what constitutes a valid case for them. Yeah, AFAIK, the court where a case is brought gets to decide whether or not venue is appropriate there. -- There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Re: Creative Commons Attribution license element
posted mailed Evan Prodromou wrote: NN == Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: NN Actually, I think most of clause 4b is fine; it's only one NN little bit of it which is troublesome. Thanks for your close attention. This is really helpful. 4b to the extent reasonably practicable, the Uniform Resource 4b Identifier, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated 4b with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright 4b notice or licensing information for the Work; NN Well, I think this is barely free, though it's a little silly. It's probably less silly in light of the mechanism Creative Commons suggests for embedding license info into artifacts with tight space for metadata: http://creativecommons.org/technology/embedding For file formats like MP3/ID3, there's only so much space for rights info. So, CC recommends storing an URL to the full info. One thing that bothers me, though, is how this becomes 'barely free'. I realize that it may be *annoying* or *stupid*, but how is it *non-free*? I understand how *excessive* conditions on modifications may make something non-free, but requiring that a verbatim URL be included with the Work doesn't seem excessive to me. What I meant was simply that many similar, but slightly different, requirements would be non-free. The requirement as is is certainly free. By 'barely free' I guess I was sloppily trying to discourage people from taking it, making a stronger requirement loosely based on it, and then saying But you said the CC clause was free; why isn't this one? Requiring that an arbitrary verbatim URI be conveyed with any derived work is potentially non-free, depending on how arbitrary the URI is. A work derivative of a large number of works could end up having to carry absurd numbers of arbitrary URIs with it. Luckily, this only requires that it be conveyed if the URI refers to the copyright notice or licensing information for the work; and only to the extent reasonably practicable; so it's free. I also am having a problem with understanding how putting limits on the modification of metadata (info about the Work) makes something non-free. Well, there are at least two different issues wrapped up in this (possibly more). Requiring that unmodified metadata be carried around is *not* the same as restricting the creation of modified metadata. Requiring that unmodified metadata be carried around alongside derived works is generally fine IMO *if* the metadata is accurate, really is metadata, and is otherwise not legally problematic. Many licenses have been very sloppy about this, requiring text to be carried around which will not be accurate for reasonable derived works, or which is wholly irrelevant to some reasonable derived works. If the creation of certain types of modified metadata is restricted, the metadata may itself be non-free. The question then becomes (a) whether is is, and (b) how much, if any, non-free metadata is an acceptable load for a free work. This seems to be standard issue with most free licenses (you have to keep copyright notices, When interpreted to include only accurate copyright notices, this is free. you have to distribute the license with the work, The correct license for the work? This is free. you have to keep a change history, This is one of those where it depends on exactly how the requirement is written. You must note your changes? Free. You must reproduce an unmodified, and potentially inaccurate and irrelevant, copy of the upstream ChangeLog? Not free. yadda yadda). I see where restrictions on the content (can't change function names, can't change the ending of the short story) are non-free, but I'm not sure I grok why metadata invariance is. I really need some help getting this straight in my head. What am I missing, here? Hope what I said above helps at least clarify thos issues a little. Now on to the actual nub of the problem at hand. 4b provided, however, that in the case of a Derivative Work or 4b Collective Work, at a minimum such credit will appear where any 4b other comparable authorship credit appears and in a manner at 4b least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit. NN *This* is the problem clause. It's unclear to most of us NN exactly what any other comparable authorship credit means. Yes, I see that. Is it credit for comparable authorship, or comparable credit for authorship? A failure of the appositive! Yup. The any other ... part is kind of difficult, too. Does it mean some other ... (credit has to be somewhere), or every other ... (anytime there's credit, this one has to be there, too)? Indeed. NN With this ambiguity, the at least as prominent requirement NN is then a potential interpretation nightmare. Suppose, for a NN silly and extreme example, you wanted to use a huge hunk of NN material under this
Re: Creative Commons Attribution license element
Evan Prodromou wrote: AS == Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Me One thing that bothers me, though, is how this becomes 'barely Me free'. AS Freedom is a binary test; a work is either free, or it is AS not. There is no partially free or semi-free. So barely AS free is free, but very close to the line; make this any AS stronger and it will be non-free. I understood that part. The part I don't understand is, what line does the URL requirement get close to? What is the line between acceptable modification restrictions and unacceptable ones? I'll try to present one dimension of modification restrictions, being what type of content those restrictions require to remain in the modified version: 1. No restrictions on modifications whatsoever. 2. Restrictions to make sure that downstream users get the following 4 things: copyright notices, license notification, changelogs, warranty disclaimers. If accurate for the derived work, only. :-) 3. Restrictions to make sure that downstream users get general information about the work (metadata), including the above 4 things, but maybe perhaps some others. Examples: original author name, original work title, original metadata URL, bug-reporting site or address, main download site URL. If accurate for the derived work, only. :-) 4. Restrictions that protect certain parts of the work itself (e.g., invariant sections). 5. Restrictions that prevent any modification of the work whatsoever. I'd posit that our line for free-vs.-non-free is between 3 and 4 here. If accurate for the derived work, only. :-) You might look at the Apache License 2.0 for the language about NOTICES which was put in specifically to avoid requiring the presence of inaccurate and irrelevant notices. Me Would it be non-free because it's not possible for the licensee Me to comply because the license is vague? AS Licenses which are vague are particularly nasty, because you AS can go with the obvious interpretation, and then get sued by AS the copyright holder who turns out to have a different AS one. Certainly we've had some copyright holders applying AS strange interpretations to apparently free licenses before AS now. To provide reasonable assurance to our users that AS everything in main is free, we have to take the most AS pessimistic interpretation, and see if that is free. Cool. So, if I can redirect back to the Attribution license, we have a worst-case interpretation with the Attribution license, where the author's credits have to be listed in _every_ place other credits are given, even if those places are possibly inconvenient (file name, work title). Don't forget prominence. They have to be listed just as prominently as any other credits, in those places, as well. The only safe way, given the licence vaguesness, is to list all credits with precisely equal prominence, regardless of the contributions of the different people. Even though it's vague (could mean some places, could mean all places), our New Math set theory teaches us that if we give credit in all places, we will have also have given credit in some places. So, by giving credit in _all_ places, we can comply. Now, given the all places idea: is that non-free? It may suck, but is it non-free? Yes, because it a requirement which causes a prohibitive burden on the creator of derivative works. It actually prevents giving appropriate credit; it may forbid reasonable titles for the work; etc. -- There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Re: Draft Summary: MPL is not DFSG free
Lex Spoon wrote: Brian Thomas Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: *snip* Almost all free licenses are not contracts. I cannot think of any Free license which *is* a contract, but there might, I suppose, be one out there. Given American law requires an exchange, I can't see how. What do you mean? In order to gain the licenses GPL grants you, you must comply with all of the terms. Some of those terms require that you perform in some way, e.g. by distributing source code. Actually, as far as I can tell, they don't. They grant permission to do specific things which you otherwise have no permission to do (such as distributing source code). Interestingly, every restriction in the GPL I could find is merely a restriction on what activities it permits you to do; they do not restrict your outside activities. If you accept the license, the things you are then permitted to do are a *strict superset* of the things you were permitted to do before. It restricts redistribution. Without the license, you have no permission to distribute at all. It restricts creation of derivative works. Without the license, you have no permission to create any. And their distribution. Without the license, you have no permission to distribute any. (There might be a different situation if you already had the GPL-licensed work under a *different* license which granted different permissions, neither a superset nor a subset of the GPL permission; the interaction might be tricky to work out and might mean that the GPL required you to give up some of the other permissions, though I doubt it.) snip Agreement is necessary for you to gain the grant(s). Interestingly, GPL states this explicitly, even though it doesn't need to: You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. [...] Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions [...] Yeah, that's contract-like language, true. -- There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Re: Draft Summary: MPL is not DFSG free
Lex Spoon [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Brian Thomas Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You think it's beneficial. Reasonable people might disagree. Thus, while you might accept such a contract, it's not a free license. It is always beneficial to receive software under a free license. I disagree; obtaining software under a DFSG-compliant license agreement is not necessarily a benefit. Some people feel that the advertising clause of BSD is a hindrance, for example, but that does not make the BSD license agreement become non-free. Then those people can ignore the BSD license and the code they received and go on with their lives. They haven't lost anything. They don't even have to look at the code. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
