More mmcache concerns

[Elizabeth Fong]

Can someone look at http://bugs.debian.org/280864 please?  It is
likely we'll need legal advice to proceed.

Quick summary of the situation:
2001 to 2002? - Dmitry Stogov wrote Turck-MMCache on contract to
Turcksoft St. Petersburg
2002-12-09 - Turck-MMCache released as GPL by Turcksoft with Turcksoft
copyright notice; despite need to be linked against PHP, no license
exception provided, resulting in undistributability of binaries.
2003 - Dmitry Stogov hired by Zend; development on MMCache stops
(presumably because they put him to work on Zend Optimizer, and didn't
want him contributing to a competing project)
2003-11-04 - Last release of MMCache (2.4.6)
2003-12 - Turcksoft pulls its web page offline (see
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.turckware.ru for evidence)
2004-03-02 - Jonathan Oxer uploads first turck-mmcache Debian package to main
2004-11 - Turcksoft's domains expire, and Turcksoft goes completely dead.
2004-12 - eAccelerator forks from MMCache; however, license must
remain GPL (not solving our problems); in addition, copyright notice
ALTERED to remove Turcksoft and replace with Dmitry's name, possibly
resulting in copyright violation

Now, we have an undistributable codebase, due to licensing concerns,
and the holder of the copyright has gone defunct.  The forked project
may be providing good code, but there are doubts about its legality,
as well as the fact that the GPL license issue still remains.

Turck-MMCache has become abandonware, but we likely still have our
hands tied by copyright law.

Jonathan Oxer:
> The big question though (and this is where legal advice may be required)
> is what happens to copyright when the copyright owner ceases to exist?
> According to copyright law the copyright for works made "for hire"
> exists for 95 years from the date of publication or 120 years from the
> date of creation, whichever is shorter.
> It's considered "work for hire" so unless he had a
> contract with Turcksoft to the contrary he is *not* the copyright
> holder.

So... I guess the question is, what _can_ we do?

Elizabeth Fong

Please CC me on replies, as I am not subscribed to debian-legal.

Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?

[MJ Ray]

MJ Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> By the way, the trademark FAQ doesn't tell me how to build without
> including the proprietary logos. Can anyone tell me how?

Spotted another thread (mail is slow here this week) and replaced
the branding dir. Rebuild underway. Still need to replace titlebar?

Re: Hypothetical situation to chew on

[Glenn Maynard]

On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 12:57:49AM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote:
> > I don't think most
> > people find offensive the notion of a sole copyright holder of a GPL-
> > licensed work granting proprietary licenses for a fee.
> 
> It's perfectly legal, AFAIK.

Of course.

> * in many cases it generates the interest to persuade potential
> proprietary-license buyers that the proprietary variant is somewhat
> better or the only alternative (possibly contributing to spread FUD
> about the GNU GPL)

This is a problem with individuals being dishonest, not a flaw of
this particular business model.

> * I fail to see the usefulness (from a downstream recipient's point of
> view) of a proprietary variant, when a technically identical piece of
> software is available under the GNU GPL (the only exceptions are maybe
> libraries and the like...)

This model is most common and most useful with libraries.

> * some of the downstream recipients do not get freedoms, and this does
> not "sound good"

I disagree.  People still have exactly as much freedom to make use of
the GPL work after an additional license is granted to some third party
as they did before.  For example, I don't have less freedom to use MAD
if Nullsoft buys a proprietary license to make use of it in Winamp[1].  (On
the other hand, if it's funding the person doing the development, it may
help ensure its continued development, which actually is in my interest.)

The only case where what you say holds is where the licensee purchasing
the proprietary license would have otherwise used the GPL license and
released source.  Which case--encouraging companies to GPL source, or
funding the further development of the work itself--is more beneficial
is an open question, up to each licensor to decide for himself, of course.
(In this case, I'd say that the future maintenance of MAD benefits me
and my projects far more than would Winamp being released under the GPL,
but it can go either way.)


[1] which, as far as I know, they have not done; this is a purely hypothetical
example

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: Hypothetical situation to chew on

[Nathanael Nerode]

Nathanael Nerode wrote:
>> Yes, this is what SUCKS about current copyright law.  The presumption is 
>>"All  rights reserved unless you have explicit permission".
Josh Triplett wrote:
>Somehow, I doubt you'd say that about a GPL-licensed package with one
>author who wants to grant a proprietary license to make money.  The only
>difference between this situation and that one is that we like the
>license change in one of them. :)

Let me clarify.  :-)

I have few complaints with the treatment of material for which the authors 
*claim* copyright.

My complaint is about material distributed willy-nilly by its authors with 
*no* copyright statements and *no* licensing information.  Clearly the 
authors didn't intend "all rights reserved", but that's what current law 
assumes.

In contrast, pre-1986 (I think) US law specified that works published (== 
deliberately distributed to the public by their authors) without a copyright 
statement went into the public domain.

Note that this email message is subject to copyright, and can't legally be 
reprinted without permission (except for fair use, such as quotation rights).  
Under pre-1986 US law, it would be public domain, because I didn't affix a 
copyright notice.

This change has, frankly, made a freaking mess.  This is why projects have to 
have statements like "By submitting a patch, you agree to license it to us 
under (license of choice)".  Under the old law, submitting a patch of your 
own authorship to a public bug tracking system would be publishing it, and if 
you did so without a copyright notice -- public domain.

ObLicense: Any person may copy and/or distribute this message, with or without 
modification, in perpetuity, without royalty and without additional license.

Re: Trademarks: what is the line?

[MJ Ray]

Gervase Markham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > * or to replace every and each trademarked reference to the work with
> > something else
> Which isn't too hard, given that we have centralised branding files.

I found and replaced the artwork in my local build, from
mozilla/other-licenses/branding but how do I change the
name used in the titlebar and About menu entry?

> Indeed. If you renamed the product, you'd need to change the command and 
> package names also.

Package name probably. I'm using FireWWW here for now.
Command name seems unlikely (see "sendmail").

Re: phpldapadmin 0.9.5, is it free?

[Josh Triplett]

Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> Fabio Tranchitella <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>>Hi,
>>  I'm the maintainer of phpldapadmin, a web-based tool for administering
>>LDAP servers. Actually testing provides phpldapadmin 0.9.4b, which is
>>available on SourceForge and is released with GPL license.
>>
>>  Some days ago the upstream maintainer has released a new version,
>>0.9.5, which not available on http://phpldapadmin.sourceforge.net but
>>only on http://www.phpldapadmin.com. In order to download it, you 
>>have to register into this website and choose "phpldapadmin for 
>>Home Users".
>>
>>Here there is the text grabbed from that page:
>>
>>"""
>>While phpLDAPadmin costs 49.95 for commercial download, we are providing
>>it for free to home users. If you purchase the commercial download, you
>>get the added benefit of support from the original developers.
>>"""
>>
>>Here phpldapadmin seems "free as beer", so you can use it at home but
>>not for commercial purposes. However The upstream tarball contains a
>>LICENSE file which reports the GPL license.
> 
> It sounds like it is Free Software, but the author (or some
> distributor) has decided to charge for support.  It might be polite to
> contact the author himself and ask whether the home download is
> actually licensed to you under the GPL, including the ability to
> modify and distribute the code.

And if so, please ask them to make it clear that the home-use version is
not only for non-commercial use, but simply for those users who don't
need support, such as with the following text:

phpLDAPadmin is Free Software, and you may download an unsupported
version for no charge from our site.  However, you may also purchase a
supported version for $49.95, and you will get the added benefit of
support from the original developers.

- Josh Triplett


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Re: Hypothetical situation to chew on

[Josh Triplett]

Francesco Poli wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 01:38:29 -0500 Glenn Maynard wrote:
>>I don't think most
>>people find offensive the notion of a sole copyright holder of a GPL-
>>licensed work granting proprietary licenses for a fee.
> 
> It's perfectly legal, AFAIK.
> I don't particularly like this business model, but there exist many many
> worse ones...
> 
> The reasons why I don't like this business model are:
> 
> * in many cases it generates the interest to persuade potential
> proprietary-license buyers that the proprietary variant is somewhat
> better or the only alternative (possibly contributing to spread FUD
> about the GNU GPL)

I do agree that such FUD is undesirable and unethical.

> * I fail to see the usefulness (from a downstream recipient's point of
> view) of a proprietary variant, when a technically identical piece of
> software is available under the GNU GPL (the only exceptions are maybe
> libraries and the like...)

I'm not referring to those who sell proprietary licenses to a separate
version of the software; I'm referring to those who use a copyleft
license and sell exceptions for people who want to link their
proprietary software against that copylefted software.

> * some of the downstream recipients do not get freedoms, and this does
> not "sound good"

In the scenario I'm referring to, both versions are identical, so anyone
who wants Free Software will take the GPLed version, and the only people
who purchase proprietary licenses will be those who *want* proprietary
licenses that work with their proprietary software.

- Josh Triplett


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Re: Hypothetical situation to chew on

[Josh Triplett]

Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> Josh Triplett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>Andrew Suffield wrote:
>>
>>>Frankly, I think we were better off in the days when copyright had to
>>>be explicitly claimed.
>>>
>>>Anybody who doesn't know enough to claim it obviously doesn't know
>>>enough to license the damn thing properly either. That would cut out a
>>>lot of the crap we see.
>>
>>I agree entirely.  I also agree with the various proposals to revoke the
>>copyright grant when the copyright holder ceases to care about it.
> 
> Presumably this would result in a formula for copyright maintenance
> similar to that now in place for trademark maintenance.  Personally, I
> would not like to see this happen.

Neither would I.  I'm not suggesting that you must "enforce" your
copyrights in order to keep them; rather, I'm referring to various
proposed fixes such as the Public Domain Enhancement Act, which would
require a token fee (such as $1) after a certain amount of time, and
expire the copyright if the fee is not paid.  This would essentially
require you to periodically renew your copyright registration.

- Josh Triplett


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Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?

[MJ Ray]

Gervase Markham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> So the question is: is the right to call a bit of software by a certain 
> name an "important freedom"? That's definitely debatable. [...]

Is the right to modify the included mozilla logo to signify that it's
a modified version an "important freedom"?

By the way, the trademark FAQ doesn't tell me how to build without
including the proprietary logos. Can anyone tell me how?

Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?

[MJ Ray]

Gervase Markham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> We're happy to say that Debian doesn't tend to ship software that sucks 
> - but you want the freedom to do so, and let others do so. And I 
> understand that. :-)

Do you? We want the freedom to ship software that MF *thinks*
sucks but we don't. After all, one day MF might think it's
sucky to have a browser that doesn't let web sites write
arbitrary data to $HOME... browsers have done stranger...

Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?

[MJ Ray]

Gervase Markham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> However, I don't want to get too far into this conversation until we've 
> established whether you will need new names.

Using MF's trademarks seems to require some sort of licence to
be granted specifically to debian and not to its users. That
seems not to follow DFSG 7 or 8, doesn't it?

Alternatively, if the names are changed to
firebird/tbird/mozzarella or anything else avoiding the MF
trademarks, no extra licences are required. Describing the
heritage in the description line will let users find the
right debian package, while still being honest.

If MF is really going to insist that it gets magic veto rights
over the work of the debian maintainer and users, changing
the name is the easiest solution. If MF want us to use the
trademarks, make that solution easier by relaxing the policy
enough to follow the DFSG. I think it's fine to insist on
prominent marking of differences, but it's too severe to revoke
permission based on random unspecified quality judgements.

> Ideally, I want to get a 
> good understanding of the Debian position on trademarks in general, and 
> then go to Chris Beard and Mitchell Baker (with whom the trademark buck 
> stops) and see what they say. After they've agreed that nothing can be 
> done, if that's their view, then let's talk about alternative names.

IIRC, both branden and myself tried to discuss trademarks with
you and others from MF before. In my discussion, MF people
just stopped answering emails. What new steps will MF take
to reach consensus this time?

Basically, can debian contributors expect any progress?

-- 
MJR/slef  My Opinion Only and maybe not of groups I know

Re: Non-free files in source packages?

[Simon Josefsson]

Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 12:04:44AM +, Lewis Jardine wrote:
>> In the case of data tables, in many jurisdictions, a mere collection of 
>> facts is not copyrightable; the classic example is a telephone directory 
>> (everything in it is an uncreative fact; that there are thousands of 
>> them, which may have taken a lot of effort to gather, is immaterial).
>> 
>> It may be the case that the data could be plucked from the RFC and 
>> freely distributed, albeit only in places that don't allow 'sweat of the 
>> brow' copyrights.
>
> Alternatively, you could try asking the relevant people if they'd grant
> a more permissive license for the data table, in order to encourage the
> wide and correct use of the standard surrounding it.

That is a good suggestion.

I have mailed the RFC authors now.  I'm not convinced they are the
only copyright holders, but it could be a step in the right direction.

Thanks,
Simon

Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?

[Francesco Poli]

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 00:06:12 + Matthew Garrett wrote:

> Francesco Poli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > Exactly.
> > DFSG #8 seems quite clear to me: we do *not* consider Free
> > something that gives all the other important freedoms to Debian
> > only, and not to downstream recipients as well.
> 
> There's some contention over this. Based on the discussion on
> debian-private that led to the DFSG, I think 8 was effectively
> shorthand for ensuring that every freedom enumerated in the DFSG was
> available to any further recipients. Others disagree. I asked Bruce
> about this, but never got a reply.
> 
> Personally, I have no objection to Debian being given freedoms that
> other users don't, providing that everyone obtains rights that satisfy
> the DFSG.

Yes, that's what I meant: my "important freedoms" referred to the ones
enumerated in the other DFSG...
If someone gets one additional freedom, that's fine, as long as nobody
lacks the minimum set of freedoms necessary to call something Free.

Example:

 This work is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2, as
 published by the Free Software Foundation.

 [an so on...]

 As a special exception, the Debian project (and its mirror network) is
 permitted to copy and distribute the Program in object code or
 executable form under the terms of Sections 1, without complying with
 clauses a, b or c of Section 3.

This would be perfectly fine, I think: everyone has enough freedoms (the
ones specified by the DFSG); someone simply has an additional one.


-- 
  Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
..
  Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4
 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12  31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4


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Re: Hypothetical situation to chew on

[Francesco Poli]

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 01:38:29 -0500 Glenn Maynard wrote:

> I don't think most
> people find offensive the notion of a sole copyright holder of a GPL-
> licensed work granting proprietary licenses for a fee.

It's perfectly legal, AFAIK.
I don't particularly like this business model, but there exist many many
worse ones...

The reasons why I don't like this business model are:

* in many cases it generates the interest to persuade potential
proprietary-license buyers that the proprietary variant is somewhat
better or the only alternative (possibly contributing to spread FUD
about the GNU GPL)

* I fail to see the usefulness (from a downstream recipient's point of
view) of a proprietary variant, when a technically identical piece of
software is available under the GNU GPL (the only exceptions are maybe
libraries and the like...)

* some of the downstream recipients do not get freedoms, and this does
not "sound good"

-- 
  Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
..
  Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4
 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12  31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4


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Re: Non-free files in source packages?

[Simon Josefsson]

Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>> Do Debian consider it problematic if source packages include, say,
>> RFCs, which, if I understand correctly, are considered non-free by
>> Debian otherwise?
>
> Yes. As soon as such cases are found by somebody who knows and cares,
> bugs will be filed, and the maintainer will have to remove those data
> from the .orig.tar.gz we distribute.

Post-sarge, I assume?

>> Otherwise, how do Debian handle the situation when the RFC is parsed,
>> and become part of the implementation?
>
> Such software is not DFSG-free and will have to go into non-free at
> best...
>
>> In other words, where the GPL require that you distribute the RFC
>> because it is the preferred "source code" to make modifications to.
>
> ... but if the rest of the code is GPL-licensed, the net result is
> that the package cannot be legally distributed at all (which is
> completely independent of the DFSG).

This interpretation appears to be the consensus in the free software
world.  Thanks for re-inforcing it.

Thanks,
Simon

Re: Non-free files in source packages?

[Simon Josefsson]

Andrew Suffield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 12:11:20AM +0100, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>> Have Debian evaluated the new RFC copying conditions?  Quoting
>>  section 3.3:
>> 
>>a. To the extent that a Contribution or any portion thereof is
>>   protected by copyright and other rights of authorship, the
>>   Contributor, and each named co-Contributor, and the organization
>>   he or she represents or is sponsored by (if any) grant a
>>   perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide
>>   right and license to the ISOC and the IETF under all intellectual
>   
>
> A license that is not even granted to us, let alone the rest of the
> world, is of no use to us. If this is really the only license provided
> then we can't even redistribute the things - only the ISOC and IETF
> can do that. It appears that rfc 3667 does not refer to us at all (see
> section 7.5).
>
> Somebody should check whether older rfcs have a similar problem. Did
> anybody actually grant a license to *us* to distribute them at all?

I agree with you.

I have been trying to illuminate the IETF about that part of the
license, with little success.

As far as I can tell, members of the IETF IPR working group doesn't
understand what RFC 3667 is saying, as illustrated by the RFC editor's
summary of RFC 3667 in [1], that paint a completely different picture,
or they just don't care.

I'm told the FSF lawyers are looking at this, and the preliminary
message I got, was that they agree with our interpretation.

I believe it would be useful for the Debian community to let the IETF
know about Debian's position on this.  Preparing a statement and
posting it to the IETF IPR working group seem appropriate, and would
be appreciated.

Thanks,
Simon

[1] http://www.rfc-editor.org/copyright.html

Re: Non-free files in source packages?

[Simon Josefsson]

Lewis Jardine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Simon Josefsson wrote:
>
>> Don Armstrong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> 
>>>On Wed, 05 Jan 2005, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>>>
Otherwise, how do Debian handle the situation when the RFC is
parsed, and become part of the implementation?  In other words,
where the GPL require that you distribute the RFC because it is the
preferred "source code" to make modifications to.
>>>
>>>The above situation is one where the work is not distributable at all
>>>until the depenency on the RFC is removed, as the RFC itself cannot be
>>>distributed under the terms of the GPL.
>> That is a clear answer.  Alas, in some situations, it may be
>> difficult
>> to remove that dependency.  For example, Libidn derive data tables
>> from RFC 3454.
>
> In the case of data tables, in many jurisdictions, a mere collection of 
> facts is not copyrightable; the classic example is a telephone directory 
> (everything in it is an uncreative fact; that there are thousands of 
> them, which may have taken a lot of effort to gather, is immaterial).
>
> It may be the case that the data could be plucked from the RFC and 
> freely distributed, albeit only in places that don't allow 'sweat of the 
> brow' copyrights.

There may be a flaw in comparing the RFC 3454 tables with a telephone
directory:

The tables have been carefully composed, as a sub-set of the full
Unicode database.

The creative process may be the selection of characters that have
certain properties, which are to be handled as explained in the
document.  Finding the final tables took a long time.

I think it could be argued that these tables, composed they way they
were, have an artistic value, and hence copyrightable.

Thanks,
Simon

Re: Non-free files in source packages?

[Glenn Maynard]

On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 12:04:44AM +, Lewis Jardine wrote:
> In the case of data tables, in many jurisdictions, a mere collection of 
> facts is not copyrightable; the classic example is a telephone directory 
> (everything in it is an uncreative fact; that there are thousands of 
> them, which may have taken a lot of effort to gather, is immaterial).
> 
> It may be the case that the data could be plucked from the RFC and 
> freely distributed, albeit only in places that don't allow 'sweat of the 
> brow' copyrights.

Alternatively, you could try asking the relevant people if they'd grant
a more permissive license for the data table, in order to encourage the
wide and correct use of the standard surrounding it.

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: Non-free files in source packages?

[Lewis Jardine]

Simon Josefsson wrote:


Don Armstrong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:



On Wed, 05 Jan 2005, Simon Josefsson wrote:


Otherwise, how do Debian handle the situation when the RFC is
parsed, and become part of the implementation?  In other words,
where the GPL require that you distribute the RFC because it is the
preferred "source code" to make modifications to.


The above situation is one where the work is not distributable at all
until the depenency on the RFC is removed, as the RFC itself cannot be
distributed under the terms of the GPL.



That is a clear answer.  Alas, in some situations, it may be difficult
to remove that dependency.  For example, Libidn derive data tables
from RFC 3454.


In the case of data tables, in many jurisdictions, a mere collection of 
facts is not copyrightable; the classic example is a telephone directory 
(everything in it is an uncreative fact; that there are thousands of 
them, which may have taken a lot of effort to gather, is immaterial).


It may be the case that the data could be plucked from the RFC and 
freely distributed, albeit only in places that don't allow 'sweat of the 
brow' copyrights.


--
Lewis Jardine
IANAL, IANADD

Re: Non-free files in source packages?

[Andrew Suffield]

On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 12:11:20AM +0100, Simon Josefsson wrote:
> Have Debian evaluated the new RFC copying conditions?  Quoting
>  section 3.3:
> 
>a. To the extent that a Contribution or any portion thereof is
>   protected by copyright and other rights of authorship, the
>   Contributor, and each named co-Contributor, and the organization
>   he or she represents or is sponsored by (if any) grant a
>   perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide
>   right and license to the ISOC and the IETF under all intellectual
  

A license that is not even granted to us, let alone the rest of the
world, is of no use to us. If this is really the only license provided
then we can't even redistribute the things - only the ISOC and IETF
can do that. It appears that rfc 3667 does not refer to us at all (see
section 7.5).

Somebody should check whether older rfcs have a similar problem. Did
anybody actually grant a license to *us* to distribute them at all?

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
 `. `'  |
   `- -><-  |


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Re: Hypothetical situation to chew on

[Andrew Suffield]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 01:36:46PM -0800, Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> The classical forms of intellectual property -- copyright, patent,
> trademark, and trade secrets -- were developed to protect very
> different kinds of "intangible assets".

That's a myth, spread by a propaganda campaign run by large
corporations over the past few decades. They want people to believe it
so that they can claim moral authority for the continued protection of
these assets.

Before printing was invented, effectively all books were controlled by
the church, because the only way to produce them in any quantity was
to have monks copy them out. The church therefore controlled the
content of all books, and they used this to great political effect
(dissenting opinions were not permitted). This was before the
separation of church and state.

When printing came along in the 15th century, the church was afraid
that this loss of control over the creation of books would lead to
spreading dissent against them. They pressed for, and got,
restrictions in law granting them control over what books were
printed. The purpose here was censorship, pure and simple.

Over time, the church's political influence was reduced. Governments
began to grant permission to other groups to control the printing of
books. These were the first publishers.

This process culminated in 1710, with the enactment of the Statute of
Anne in the UK, marking the first form of copyright as we know it
today. It permitted anybody to print anything, with certain
restrictions designed to protect the revenue stream of the publishers
(essentially the ones we have now, time limit 28 years). It also
prohibited the charging of prices "conceived to be too high or
unreasonable". No prizes for guessing why that last part was in there
(British law at the time was mainly concerned with reacting to
observed problems, rather than trying to second guess possible future
problems).

Copyright was not designed to protect assets. It was designed to take
them away. Rights of authors did not enter into it, nor was there any
'trade' of rights between publishers and the people (another popular
myth). The purpose of copyright in its modern form was to grant the
people the right to copy works, which they did not previously have.

Everything since then has been the publishers trying to claw back some
part of what they lost. They've been fairly successful, and have
mostly regained their position of power.

[I've skipped a fair number of details, but those are the significant
highlights]

Patents follow a fairly similar story; they began as monopolies on a
certain trade, prohibiting anybody else from competing with a
specified person, this time created by the state rather than the
churce, as a method of raising funds. Widespread abuse led to them
being locked down in 1624 by the Statute of Monopolies (again in the
UK), which was the beginning of the modern patent system.

Again, it was to take assets away, not protect them.

Trademarks are essentially unrelated. They began as a way of marking
some property as yours (think of branding cattle), with prohibitions
on altering them introduced as basic anti-theft measures. They then
developed into the current system of branding sometime between the
10th and 15th centuries (I forget the details of when and how, but it
was started in the UK again - did we invent *all* of this crap?).

Trade secrets are a modern (20th century) perversion, but they're also
a US perversion. They aren't considered property in Commonwealth
countries. Breaking into your competitor's offices and stealing their
files is theft, but there's no law against obtaining them via means
that would otherwise be legal (except in the US and a few countries
who duplicated their insanity). They're probably the only one designed
to protect assets.

> In the US, the DMCA and UCITA amount to attempts to create a new form
> of intellectual property specific to software and digital media.  I
> happen to think they are very poor public policy in their details. 
> But I'd prefer a well-thought-out "digital rights" legal formula over
> distortions to the existing mechanisms.  The way it is now -- stealth
> amendments bought by software and media giants, regulatory capture at
> the USPTO, DRM arms races, and widespread contempt for the law -- is
> no good.

That's no surprise, since the system was never designed to cope with
this sort of thing. Given its position in history, the intent was
probably to continue to introduce new laws to stop this kind of crap
as it came up; that was the prevailing approach to legislation at the
time. But the political landscape shifted to favour the large
corporations, so that never happened.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
 `. `'  |
   `- -><-  |


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Re: Non-free files in source packages?

[Henning Makholm]

Scripsit Simon Josefsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> Are there any policies surrounding what may go into the source
> packages, that Debian distribute, as far as license is concerned?

Yes. Everything in our source packages have to be DFSG-free, just as
everything in binary packages does.

> Do Debian consider it problematic if source packages include, say,
> RFCs, which, if I understand correctly, are considered non-free by
> Debian otherwise?

Yes. As soon as such cases are found by somebody who knows and cares,
bugs will be filed, and the maintainer will have to remove those data
from the .orig.tar.gz we distribute.

> Otherwise, how do Debian handle the situation when the RFC is parsed,
> and become part of the implementation?

Such software is not DFSG-free and will have to go into non-free at
best...

> In other words, where the GPL require that you distribute the RFC
> because it is the preferred "source code" to make modifications to.

... but if the rest of the code is GPL-licensed, the net result is
that the package cannot be legally distributed at all (which is
completely independent of the DFSG).

-- 
Henning Makholm   "The great secret, known to internists and
 learned early in marriage by internists' wives, but
   still hidden from the general public, is that most things get
 better by themselves. Most things, in fact, are better by morning."

Re: Non-free files in source packages?

[Simon Josefsson]

Don Armstrong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On Wed, 05 Jan 2005, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>> Are there any policies surrounding what may go into the source
>> packages, that Debian distribute, as far as license is concerned?
>
> Yes. The source packages for things that are in main and contrib must
> satisfy the DFSG.

Thanks.

>> Do Debian consider it problematic if source packages include, say,
>> RFCs, which, if I understand correctly, are considered non-free by
>> Debian otherwise?
>
> Post-sarge, RFCs with the traditional "no modification" license will
> be non-free and will need to be moved from the orig.tar.gz and/or the
> diff.gz.

To be perfectly clear, by the "no modification" license, are you
referring to the following license?  This was copied from RFC 3454.

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002).  All Rights Reserved.

   This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
   others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
   or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
   and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
   kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
   included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
   document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
   the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
   Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
   developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
   copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
   followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
   English.

   The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
   revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.

   This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
   "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
   TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
   BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
   HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
   MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Have Debian evaluated the new RFC copying conditions?  Quoting
 section 3.3:

   a. To the extent that a Contribution or any portion thereof is
  protected by copyright and other rights of authorship, the
  Contributor, and each named co-Contributor, and the organization
  he or she represents or is sponsored by (if any) grant a
  perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, world-wide
  right and license to the ISOC and the IETF under all intellectual
  property rights in the Contribution:

  (A)  to copy, publish, display and distribute the Contribution as
   part of the IETF Standards Process or in an Internet-Draft,

  (B)  to prepare or allow the preparation of translations of the
   Contribution into languages other than English,

  (C)  unless explicitly disallowed in the notices contained in a
   Contribution [as per Section 5.2 below], to prepare
   derivative works (other than translations) that are based on
   or incorporate all or part of the Contribution, or comment
   upon it, within the IETF Standards Process.  The license to
   such derivative works not granting the ISOC and the IETF any
   more rights than the license to the original Contribution,

  (D)  to reproduce any trademarks, service marks or trade names
   which are included in the Contribution solely in connection
   with the reproduction, distribution or publication of the
   Contribution and derivative works thereof as permitted by
   this paragraph.  When reproducing Contributions, the IETF
   will preserve trademark and service mark identifiers used by
   the Contributor of the Contribution, including (TM) and (R)
   where appropriate, and

  (E)  to extract, copy, publish, display, distribute, modify and
   incorporate into other works, for any purpose (and not
   limited to use within the IETF Standards Process) any
   executable code or code fragments that are included in any
   IETF Document (such as MIB and PIB modules), subject to the
   requirements of Section 5 (it also being understood that the
   licenses granted under this paragraph (E) shall not be deemed
   to grant any right under any patent, patent application or
   other similar intellectual property right disclosed by the
   Contributor under [IETF IPR]).

   b. The Contributor grants the IETF and ISOC permission to reference
  the name(s) and address(es) of the Contributor(s) and of the
  organization(s) s/he represents or is sponsored by (if any).

>> Otherwise, how do Debian 

Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?

[Henning Makholm]

Scripsit Brian Masinick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> If they don't like the way we package Thunderbird or any of the
> other packages,

If you'd read the thread you'd have found that the Mozilla people are
quite happy with Debian's packages of their software. The stumbling
block is that they can't promise to also like what any of our users
may arbitrarily do to the packages we distribute.

That is reasonable for their point of view, and an objective appraisal
of the situation may well conclude that it is our adherence to our
principles that will force us to change the names, and not that the
position of Mozilla is particularly disagreeable in isolation. Which,
of course, does not make our principles any less valid.

> I recommend using really generic names for each of the packages,
> then refer to the Mozilla names in the descriptions, such as:

> Debian Web browser based on Mozilla Firefox
> Debian Email client based on Mozilla Thunderbird
> Debian browser suite based on Mozilla

No, no, no. Generic package names are bad, unless they are already
very firmly established. We don't want somebody packaging a
NextStep-native browser as simply "browser", and we equally don't want
a package with Mozilla's browser to be labeled with such blandness
either.

And in particular, we do not want to imply that one of the wide
variety of web browsers or email clients we ship, all packaged using
upstream sources created outside the project, is _the_
Debian-recommended tool of choice for that function.

For my own part, I'm sure thunderbird is a good email client for
people who like it (and do not need to do much of their mail business
through a low-bandwidth ssh connection), but I use mutt and intend to
continue doing that, and I would not at all be amused if our
thunderbird was named in a way that implied that my choice was "less
Debian" than the other.

> I have a hard time believing that after all this time they want people
> to get away from their names, but if that's really what they want, let's
> do it.

Read the thread. _They_ would basically like us to keep using the
names. _We_ do not want to keep their names if it needs to be on a
Debian-specific exception.

-- 
Henning Makholm  # good fish ...
# goodfish, goodfish ...
 # good-good FISH! #

Re: phpldapadmin 0.9.5, is it free?

[Andreas Barth]

* Fabio Tranchitella ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [050105 20:50]:
> Here there is the text grabbed from that page:
> 
> """
> While phpLDAPadmin costs 49.95 for commercial download, we are providing
> it for free to home users. If you purchase the commercial download, you
> get the added benefit of support from the original developers.
> """

As far as I know, sourceforges policy is to host only software free for
everybody. Though their policy is not the same as ours, I think this
violates even their policy.


Cheers,
Andi
-- 
   http://home.arcor.de/andreas-barth/
   PGP 1024/89FB5CE5  DC F1 85 6D A6 45 9C 0F  3B BE F1 D0 C5 D1 D9 0C

Re: Non-free files in source packages?

[Don Armstrong]

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005, Simon Josefsson wrote:
> Are there any policies surrounding what may go into the source
> packages, that Debian distribute, as far as license is concerned?

Yes. The source packages for things that are in main and contrib must
satisfy the DFSG.
 
> Do Debian consider it problematic if source packages include, say,
> RFCs, which, if I understand correctly, are considered non-free by
> Debian otherwise?

Post-sarge, RFCs with the traditional "no modification" license will
be non-free and will need to be moved from the orig.tar.gz and/or the
diff.gz.

> Otherwise, how do Debian handle the situation when the RFC is
> parsed, and become part of the implementation?  In other words,
> where the GPL require that you distribute the RFC because it is the
> preferred "source code" to make modifications to.

The above situation is one where the work is not distributable at all
until the depenency on the RFC is removed, as the RFC itself cannot be
distributed under the terms of the GPL.


Don Armstrong

-- 
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its
freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it
values more, it will lose that, too.
 -- W. Somerset Maugham

http://www.donarmstrong.com  http://rzlab.ucr.edu


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Re: phpldapadmin 0.9.5, is it free?

[Brian Thomas Sniffen]

Fabio Tranchitella <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Hi,
>   I'm the maintainer of phpldapadmin, a web-based tool for administering
> LDAP servers. Actually testing provides phpldapadmin 0.9.4b, which is
> available on SourceForge and is released with GPL license.
>
>   Some days ago the upstream maintainer has released a new version,
> 0.9.5, which not available on http://phpldapadmin.sourceforge.net but
> only on http://www.phpldapadmin.com. In order to download it, you 
> have to register into this website and choose "phpldapadmin for 
> Home Users".
>
> Here there is the text grabbed from that page:
>
> """
> While phpLDAPadmin costs 49.95 for commercial download, we are providing
> it for free to home users. If you purchase the commercial download, you
> get the added benefit of support from the original developers.
> """
>
> Here phpldapadmin seems "free as beer", so you can use it at home but
> not for commercial purposes. However The upstream tarball contains a
> LICENSE file which reports the GPL license.

It sounds like it is Free Software, but the author (or some
distributor) has decided to charge for support.  It might be polite to
contact the author himself and ask whether the home download is
actually licensed to you under the GPL, including the ability to
modify and distribute the code.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen   [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Non-free files in source packages?

[Simon Josefsson]

Hi.  I'm not that familiar with the Debian policies, but I hope
someone here can explain something for me.

Are there any policies surrounding what may go into the source
packages, that Debian distribute, as far as license is concerned?

Do Debian consider it problematic if source packages include, say,
RFCs, which, if I understand correctly, are considered non-free by
Debian otherwise?

If not, what is the difference between distributing the RFCs in source
packages and in the base-system?  Perhaps RFCs can finally become part
of the base system, by distributing them as a source package?

Otherwise, how do Debian handle the situation when the RFC is parsed,
and become part of the implementation?  In other words, where the GPL
require that you distribute the RFC because it is the preferred
"source code" to make modifications to.

Thanks,
Simon

Re: Hypothetical situation to chew on

[Michael K. Edwards]

Josh Triplett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Andrew Suffield wrote:
> > Frankly, I think we were better off in the days when copyright had to
> > be explicitly claimed.
> >
> > Anybody who doesn't know enough to claim it obviously doesn't know
> > enough to license the damn thing properly either. That would cut out a
> > lot of the crap we see.
> 
> I agree entirely.  I also agree with the various proposals to revoke the
> copyright grant when the copyright holder ceases to care about it.

Presumably this would result in a formula for copyright maintenance
similar to that now in place for trademark maintenance.  Personally, I
would not like to see this happen.

In an era when "grab bags" of content can be published on the cheap,
automatic copyright helps protect the authors of works of modest size
and commercial value.  In an "enforce it or lose it" regime, one could
not easily offer individual poems, essays, or other minor artworks for
publication in periodicals and anthologies while retaining the
exclusive right to publish one's own collected works later.

The classical forms of intellectual property -- copyright, patent,
trademark, and trade secrets -- were developed to protect very
different kinds of "intangible assets".  Arguably, none of them is
really the right answer for software, especially open source software.
 Copyright lasts too long and is too inflexible in the area of "joint
authorship"; patent gives too strong a monopoly and isn't applicable
to the bulk of software value creation unless the bar for originality
is set absurdly low; trademark protects the distribution channel but
not the creation; and trade secret protection only applies to things
that aren't shown to outsiders (hardly appropriate for free software).

In the US, the DMCA and UCITA amount to attempts to create a new form
of intellectual property specific to software and digital media.  I
happen to think they are very poor public policy in their details. 
But I'd prefer a well-thought-out "digital rights" legal formula over
distortions to the existing mechanisms.  The way it is now -- stealth
amendments bought by software and media giants, regulatory capture at
the USPTO, DRM arms races, and widespread contempt for the law -- is
no good.

In the best of all possible worlds, the same kind of work that went
into the DFSG (a most admirable set of quality criteria for free
software licenses) would be invested in a "square deal" standard for
commercial licenses.  (My idea of a "square deal" would disallow
anti-reverse-engineering clauses, acknowledge "doctrine of first sale"
rights to transfer or sell one's copy privately, and set a reasonable
standard for authorizing and tracking concurrent use.)  Perhaps such a
standard could give one-sided "model legislation" like UCITA a run for
its money.

Cheers,
- Michael

phpldapadmin 0.9.5, is it free?

[Fabio Tranchitella]

Hi,
  I'm the maintainer of phpldapadmin, a web-based tool for administering
LDAP servers. Actually testing provides phpldapadmin 0.9.4b, which is
available on SourceForge and is released with GPL license.

  Some days ago the upstream maintainer has released a new version,
0.9.5, which not available on http://phpldapadmin.sourceforge.net but
only on http://www.phpldapadmin.com. In order to download it, you 
have to register into this website and choose "phpldapadmin for 
Home Users".

Here there is the text grabbed from that page:

"""
While phpLDAPadmin costs 49.95 for commercial download, we are providing
it for free to home users. If you purchase the commercial download, you
get the added benefit of support from the original developers.
"""

Here phpldapadmin seems "free as beer", so you can use it at home but
not for commercial purposes. However The upstream tarball contains a
LICENSE file which reports the GPL license.

I've packaged phpldapadmin and I'm ready-to-upload it, but I'd like your
opinion on this issue: can this website influence the freedom of
phpldapadmin or it has no meaning?

Thanks in advance for your help,
Fabio.

PS: Please CC, I'm not subscribed to this list.

-- 
Fabio Tranchitella http://www.kobold.it
Studio Tranchitella Assoc. Professionale   http://www.tranchitella.it
_
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Re: Mozilla name suggestions

[Christian Höltje]

I'm in favor of just calling what they are.  Having to explain which
"thunderbird" or "firefox" is the web browser is annoying.
How about:
  mailbird
  webbird
or
  mailfox
  webfox

or something similar incorporating what they are.  I like cute
names, but sometimes it's tough on people.

Ciao!

-- 
Duct tape is like the force.  It has a light side, and a dark side, and it
holds the universe together ...
-- Carl Zwanzig

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Re: Is the LLVM Release License DFSG-compatible?

[Al Stone]

On Wed, 2005-01-05 at 06:20 +, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> Al Stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > The remainder of LLVM is covered by the LLVM Release License
> > (see http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/releases/1.4/LICENSE.TXT) which is
> > actually the University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License.
> > The University of Illinois/NCSA (UI/NCSA) license is very similar
> > to the MIT or BSD license, and software distributed under the
> > UI/NCSA license is OSI Certified Open Source Software (please
> > see http://www.opensource.org/licenses/UoI-NCSA.php).
> 
> It's generally easier if you include a copy of the license, but having
> looked at this one I can't see any problem - it's basically 3 clause
> BSD. The only issue I can think of is the mention of third party code -
> have you checked the licenses of the subtrees named at the bottom of the
> license?

Ah, of course, that was silly of me not to.  My apologies for not
including the license to begin with.  I also did not realize that
evolution was not including the right mail headers for replies.
You learn something new every day...

I did check the "licenses" of the subtrees.  With one exception,
these were notes on who actually owned the copyright to the works,
and not new or different licenses.  The exception was for the bzip2
library, which contained the following (again, BSD-like):


This program, "bzip2" and associated library "libbzip2", are
copyright (C) 1996-2002 Julian R Seward.  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.

2. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must
   not claim that you wrote the original software.  If you use this
   software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product
   documentation would be appreciated but is not required.

3. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must
   not be misrepresented as being the original software.

4. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote
   products derived from this software without specific prior written
   permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS
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 THE AUTHOR 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.

Julian Seward, Cambridge, UK.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
bzip2/libbzip2 version 1.0.2 of 30 December 2001


Thanks for all the feedback.

-- 
Ciao,
al
--
Al Stone  Alter Ego:
Linux & Open Source Lab   Debian Developer
Hewlett-Packard Company   http://www.debian.org
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: Hypothetical situation to chew on

[Gervase Markham]

Nathanael Nerode wrote:



If not, what procedure would be needed to make the software DFSG-free?
I'm going to guess clean-room rewrite of all of the documentation, and
of any code that could be affected?


Not *quite*.  But close.

(1) Every piece of code must be audited to determine the copyright holders.


While I'm here, I should point out that we are in the process of doing 
this for Mozilla to relicense under MPL/GPL/LGPL. It's taken 3 1/2 years 
so far. I'm happy to give advice to anyone who wants to do it for their 
own package.


Gerv

Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free ?

[Gervase Markham]

Brian Masinick wrote:
"mozilla _wants_ us to make some changes to the thunderbird package in 
order to

not infringe their trademarks."

I think plenty of dialog with Mozilla is a good idea.  If they don't 
like the

way we package Thunderbird or any of the other packages,


I should point out again that (given the discussions I've had with the 
Thunderbird maintainer) we are almost certainly going to be happy with 
what Debian itself does.



Debian Web browser based on Mozilla Firefox
Debian Email client based on Mozilla Thunderbird
Debian browser suite based on Mozilla


As someone raised earlier, isn't this just replacing one trademark 
problem with another (Debian)?


Those also aren't particularly wieldy names for a title bar or package ;-)


I have a hard time believing that after all this time they want people
to get away from their names, but if that's really what they want, let's
do it.  


No, we don't want people to get away from the names. But we do want a 
way of ensuring that they are a mark of quality in trademark terms.


Gerv

Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?

[Gervase Markham]

Michael K. Edwards wrote:

So the question is: is the right to call a bit of software by a certain
name an "important freedom"? That's definitely debatable. The name you
use to refer to a bit of software doesn't affect its function.


It can, especially in the case of a web browser; consider web servers
that verify that the client claims to be a sufficiently new Mozilla or
IE before sending DHTML.


That's a bit different - no one's arguing that the MoFo should have any 
control over the UserAgent string of any browser, even one Debian ships, 
just because it contains the word "Mozilla". Such an effort would be 
both counter-productive and laughable.


Exactly what the app is called is a more difficult question. There's a 
long tradition of ln -s /usr/bin/exim sendmail, but you could also argue 
that if someone downloads and installs Debian or a derivative and types 
"firefox", the trademark holder should be making sure they get a Firefox 
they have checked for quality in a trademark sense.



It looks to me like there's a real storm brewing over trademark
enforcement in open source space.  At least in most US jurisdictions,
trademark law applies an "enforce it or lose it" standard, and one of
the key criteria in judging whether a company takes its trademark
seriously is whether it exercises quality assurance over third parties
to which it has (explicitly or implicitly) licensed the right to
distribute goods or services marked with its trademark.


I think it's absolutely right to raise the wider issue.


In a hypothetical situation where Debian is the dominant distribution
channel for Software X, performs QA functions, and handles the bulk of
bug reports, the upstream for Software X could actually lose ownership
of the trademark to Debian.  Even when the distributor relationship is
non-exclusive, a failure to exercise QA authority over the Debian
channel could weaken Mozilla's ability to enforce the trademark on
other channels.  (Imagine "Mozilla Firefox, MS Authorized Edition"
with the crippling limitations of your choice.)


Or even just "Mozilla Firefox" distributed in an official-looking manner 
rom www.firefoxbrowser.info with added spyware or bank login capture.



So the Mozilla folks are being responsible in setting out the limits
of the license to use their trademarks as part of the MPL, rather than
leaving the issue unaddressed and then springing it on people in
court.  


We're not actually doing it as part of the MPL - we want to keep 
trademark licensing separate from code licensing. The MPL doesn't speak 
about trademarks except to say that it itself doesn't give you any 
rights to them.



I think it would be a good idea to work out a modus vivendi
with them, such that the names of Debian-packaged Mozilla products are
unchanged, and designated persons from Mozilla have the right to file
RC bugs that the maintainer isn't allowed to downgrade.  That at least
preserves the forms of trademark defense, at a rather minimal cost in
freedom.


One principle that we were originally working with in our trademark 
policy is "QA in retrospect" - i.e. we let you do roughly what you want, 
but if the packages are of a consistent low standard, we get to pull the 
trademark and you have to change the name.


Now at the beginning of the thread, there were some objections raised to 
this idea - but is it better than more intrusive forms of trademark control?


GErv

Re: LCC and blobs

[Tollef Fog Heen]

* Matthew Garrett 

| You have argued that drivers don't really depend on firmware, but
| instead depend on the hardware expressing the correct interface. As an
| example, we can compare maria-vis, which depends on the graphviz
| package. maria-vis is in contrib, because it depends on graphviz, which
| is in non-free. But by your argument, it doesn't actually depend on
| graphviz - it merely depends on something that presents a correctly
| functioning graphviz interface. This could be a piece of non-free code,
| but it could also be a piece of free code, an interface to a remote
| application server, or a userspace application to drive hardware that
| kicks intelligent rodents until they draw the correct graph. There's no
| intrinsic dependency on the non-free code. But since the non-free code
| is currently the only solution that /does/ express the correct
| interface, there exists a dependency on non-free code.

However, if somebody writes a graphviz-client which just pushes the
dot file over the network to graphviz.example.com on some port and
gets a postscript file back, it can go into main.  No matter what
software said server is running.  Correct?

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen,''`.
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are  : :' :
  `. `' 
`-  

Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?

[Josh Triplett]

Matthew Garrett wrote:
> Right. Material that doesn't provide all the DFSG-required freedoms on
> to recipients other than Debian isn't free. But I don't think DFSG 8 is
> intended to prevent Debian (or some other class of people) from having
> /extra/ freedoms, as long as everyone else has at least an acceptable
> base level.

I agree, but I also think that in cases where attaining those freedoms
requires those downstream from Debian to go to a great deal of effort,
Debian should go ahead and make that effort rather than leaving it to
others.

(However, it sounds like Mozilla may not be one of those cases.)

- Josh Triplett


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Re: Hypothetical situation to chew on

[Matthew Palmer]

On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 11:34:47PM -0800, Josh Triplett wrote:
> Andrew Suffield wrote:
> > Frankly, I think we were better off in the days when copyright had to
> > be explicitly claimed.
> > 
> > Anybody who doesn't know enough to claim it obviously doesn't know
> > enough to license the damn thing properly either. That would cut out a
> > lot of the crap we see.
> 
> I agree entirely.  I also agree with the various proposals to revoke the
> copyright grant when the copyright holder ceases to care about it.

Apply that to patents as well, and you've got my vote.

If it's going to be "Intellectual Property" (hack, spit!) then it should be
treated like property -- if you don't maintain it, then squatters can take
it and you have no rights to it any more.

- Matt


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Re: Hypothetical situation to chew on

[Josh Triplett]

Glenn Maynard wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 10:25:49PM -0800, Josh Triplett wrote:
>>>Yes, this is what SUCKS about current copyright law.  The presumption is 
>>>"All 
>>>rights reserved unless you have explicit permission".
>>
>>Somehow, I doubt you'd say that about a GPL-licensed package with one
>>author who wants to grant a proprietary license to make money.  The only
>>difference between this situation and that one is that we like the
>>license change in one of them. :)
> 
> I assume you mean "with many authors, one of which wants to ...", and
> not "with only one author, who wants to ...".  I don't think most
> people find offensive the notion of a sole copyright holder of a GPL-
> licensed work granting proprietary licenses for a fee.

That's exactly what I meant; I just used a bad phrasing of the
statement.  What I meant was "a GPL-licensed package (no statement about
the total number of authors), with one author who wants to ..."; in
retrospect, the interpretation "a GPL-licensed package with (only) one
author" is far more natural given the way I stated it.  Thanks for the
correction.

I certainly don't find the other interpretation offensive; on the
contrary, it seems like a highly successful business model for Free
Software.

- Josh Triplett


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Re: Hypothetical situation to chew on

[Josh Triplett]

Andrew Suffield wrote:
> Frankly, I think we were better off in the days when copyright had to
> be explicitly claimed.
> 
> Anybody who doesn't know enough to claim it obviously doesn't know
> enough to license the damn thing properly either. That would cut out a
> lot of the crap we see.

I agree entirely.  I also agree with the various proposals to revoke the
copyright grant when the copyright holder ceases to care about it.

- Josh Triplett


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Re: Hypothetical situation to chew on

[Glenn Maynard]

On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 10:25:49PM -0800, Josh Triplett wrote:
> > Yes, this is what SUCKS about current copyright law.  The presumption is 
> > "All 
> > rights reserved unless you have explicit permission".
> 
> Somehow, I doubt you'd say that about a GPL-licensed package with one
> author who wants to grant a proprietary license to make money.  The only
> difference between this situation and that one is that we like the
> license change in one of them. :)

I assume you mean "with many authors, one of which wants to ...", and
not "with only one author, who wants to ...".  I don't think most
people find offensive the notion of a sole copyright holder of a GPL-
licensed work granting proprietary licenses for a fee.

-- 
Glenn Maynard

Re: Hypothetical situation to chew on

[Andrew Suffield]

On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 10:25:49PM -0800, Josh Triplett wrote:
> Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >>So here's a hypothetical situation; say the current upstream maintainer
> >>was to announce in a very public place, with Cc's to all known
> >>contributor e-mail addresses, his intent to change the licence of the
> >>code to GPL-2 (including documentation) and give a full list of
> >>everything that would fall under it.  And then was to give a period (say
> >>28 days) for objections to be raised.
> >>
> >>If none were raised, could they then change the licence?
> > 
> > No.
> > 
> > :-P
> > 
> > Yes, this is what SUCKS about current copyright law.  The presumption is 
> > "All 
> > rights reserved unless you have explicit permission".
> 
> Somehow, I doubt you'd say that about a GPL-licensed package with one
> author who wants to grant a proprietary license to make money.  The only
> difference between this situation and that one is that we like the
> license change in one of them. :)

Frankly, I think we were better off in the days when copyright had to
be explicitly claimed.

Anybody who doesn't know enough to claim it obviously doesn't know
enough to license the damn thing properly either. That would cut out a
lot of the crap we see.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
 `. `'  |
   `- -><-  |


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Re: mozilla thunderbird trademark restrictions / still dfsg free?

[Matthew Garrett]

Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 12:06:12AM +, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>> There's some contention over this. Based on the discussion on
>> debian-private that led to the DFSG, I think 8 was effectively shorthand
>> for ensuring that every freedom enumerated in the DFSG was available to
>> any further recipients. Others disagree. I asked Bruce about this, but
>> never got a reply.
> 
> Just to be clear: except for the "clear" part, you're agreeing with Francesco,
> right?

Right. Material that doesn't provide all the DFSG-required freedoms on
to recipients other than Debian isn't free. But I don't think DFSG 8 is
intended to prevent Debian (or some other class of people) from having
/extra/ freedoms, as long as everyone else has at least an acceptable
base level.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Is the LLVM Release License DFSG-compatible?

[Matthew Garrett]

Al Stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> The remainder of LLVM is covered by the LLVM Release License
> (see http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/releases/1.4/LICENSE.TXT) which is
> actually the University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License.
> The University of Illinois/NCSA (UI/NCSA) license is very similar
> to the MIT or BSD license, and software distributed under the
> UI/NCSA license is OSI Certified Open Source Software (please
> see http://www.opensource.org/licenses/UoI-NCSA.php).

It's generally easier if you include a copy of the license, but having
looked at this one I can't see any problem - it's basically 3 clause
BSD. The only issue I can think of is the mention of third party code -
have you checked the licenses of the subtrees named at the bottom of the
license?

Thanks,
-- 
Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Is the LLVM Release License DFSG-compatible?

[Glenn Maynard]

On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 09:26:00PM -0700, Al Stone wrote:
> Please 'reply all' on any replies as I don't normally subscribe
> to debian-legal, and it will also document the discussion along
> with the ITP.

Note that if you want to receive a CC on list mail, you should include
your own address in the Mail-Followup-To header.

> I've filed an ITP for LLVM -- the Low-Level Virtual Machine, a
> compiler toolset that provides a C and C++ compiler.  More info
> on LLVM can be found at http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu.  The ITP is
> #239415.
> 
> LLVM licensing is a little more complicated than most packages,
> but I still believe it to be DFSG-compatible and eligible for
> being in main.
> 
> Part of LLVM (the C front-end) is borrowed directly from GCC
> and distribution of the C front-end used by LLVM is covered 
> under the same licensing as GCC.
> 
> The remainder of LLVM is covered by the LLVM Release License
> (see http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu/releases/1.4/LICENSE.TXT) which is
> actually the University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License.
> The University of Illinois/NCSA (UI/NCSA) license is very similar
> to the MIT or BSD license, and software distributed under the
> UI/NCSA license is OSI Certified Open Source Software (please
> see http://www.opensource.org/licenses/UoI-NCSA.php).
> 
> Being paranoid about this sort of stuff, I also examined a fairly
> large random sample of the files (there are ~22K files in the
> source tree and I sampled roughly 500 of them).  Those files all
> either contained the proper licensing text or were covered by
> by a file containing the proper text.  I also used an experimental
> text comparison tool to examine all files and feel very confident
> that the source files are all properly covered by the licenses
> above in some way.
> 
> So, based on my understanding of the DFSG, and my understanding
> of the licensing, I believe this package will be fully DFSG-
> compatible.  What say you all?

In order to archive the actual license under discussion (as remote
links can change or die, even versioned ones) for future reference,
as well as to aid quoting, the full text of the license follows:

---
==
LLVM Release License
==
University of Illinois/NCSA
Open Source License

Copyright (c) 2003, 2004 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
All rights reserved.

Developed by:

LLVM Team

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal with
the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to
use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do
so, subject to the following conditions:

* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
  this list of conditions and the following disclaimers.

* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
  this list of conditions and the following disclaimers in the
  documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

* Neither the names of the LLVM Team, University of Illinois at
  Urbana-Champaign, nor the names of its contributors may be used to
  endorse or promote products derived from this Software without specific
  prior written permission.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
CONTRIBUTORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS WITH THE
SOFTWARE.

==
Copyrights and Licenses for Third Party Software Distributed with LLVM:
==
The LLVM software contains code written by third parties.  Such software will
have its own individual LICENSE.TXT file in the directory in which it appears.
This file will describe the copyrights, license, and restrictions which apply
to that code.

The disclaimer of warranty in the University of Illinois Open Source License
applies to all code in the LLVM Distribution, and nothing in any of the
other licenses gives permission to use the names of the LLVM Team or the
University of Illinois to endorse or promote products derived from this
Software.

The following pieces of software have additional or alternate copyrights,
licenses, and/or restrictions:

Program

Re: Hypothetical situation to chew on

[Josh Triplett]

Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>So here's a hypothetical situation; say the current upstream maintainer
>>was to announce in a very public place, with Cc's to all known
>>contributor e-mail addresses, his intent to change the licence of the
>>code to GPL-2 (including documentation) and give a full list of
>>everything that would fall under it.  And then was to give a period (say
>>28 days) for objections to be raised.
>>
>>If none were raised, could they then change the licence?
> 
> No.
> 
> :-P
> 
> Yes, this is what SUCKS about current copyright law.  The presumption is "All 
> rights reserved unless you have explicit permission".

Somehow, I doubt you'd say that about a GPL-licensed package with one
author who wants to grant a proprietary license to make money.  The only
difference between this situation and that one is that we like the
license change in one of them. :)

- Josh Triplett


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