Re: Dissident test (was re: CDDL)
On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 08:38:19PM -0400, Catatonic Porpoise wrote: Marco d'Itri wrote: This might fail the Dissident test (and thus discriminate against Which is not part of the DFSG, so it does not matter. The Dissident test is a test for DFSG #5, so it does matter. See: http://wiki.debian.net/?DissidentTest http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html Can we go back to interpreting the DFSG and the licence in real terms, instead of blindingly trying to apply random strange tests ? Do we really all agree that a licence is non-free if we don't allow anonymous modifications ? If so, please say : This clause doesn't allow anonymous modification, and thus we consider it non-free. And not speak about dissidents, desert islands and other such. Now, i believe this falls in the same category as the choice-of-venue clause, and namely that the DFSG #5 was drafted in order to not discriminate against specific group of people, as in : people born on halloween are the fruit of evil, and thus are excluded by this licence. (or whatever). Instead of going with very subtle and roundabout wys, and using discrimination for any random thing, like discrimination against poor people or people who want to be anonymous, which should, if we decide to go this way, be explicitly mentioned in the DFSG, instead of trying to deturn one of the guidelines into any random interpretation. Now, to the anonymous modification clause in itself. First it applies only to distribution of anonymous modifications, and more to the point, to integration of those anonymous modifications into mainline patches. My own interpretation of this CDDL clause is that the ai, of it is to maintian the copyright situation pure, in order to avoid SCO-like disasters over the code base. The same kind of practice is involved with the current handling of the mainline linux tree. What does this mean for someone who wants to make an anonymous contributions ? Well, since the contribution is anonymous, neither can his licence be revoked, nor anything can happen to him. If we discover who he is, the code is not anonymous anymore and the problem is solved. The only real problem is that the people caring about purity of code want to include such a patch, which is something they will not be able to do, in order to maintain the tracability of the copyright situation of the code. furthermore, how can you comply with 3.2 : You represent that You believe Your Modifications are Your original creation(s) and/or You have sufficient rights to grant the rights conveyed by this License. If you are not able to tell your own name ? And how will you then be able to respond someone suing us pretending we stole their code if we have no tracability information over who wrote it. So, in the post-SCO world, not only is the right of anonymous modifications not a DFSG violation, but i believe we would do well in explicitly forbiding integration in debian of anonymous code. Friendly, Sven Luther -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 05:54:34PM +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote: On Sep 09, George Danchev [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Debian has always been full of software licensed that way ;-) Now you want (unintentially) to leave possible holes thru new 'a-la sco insane cases' to enter the scene... all over the world. Not now. Debian (and I think every other distribution) has been distributing software with this kind of licenses for years, without any apparent ill effect on users. And do not forget that there are many places (e.g. California) which allow big companies (e.g. the MPAA or Adobe) to sue there people from other states or countries (e.g. people accused to violate the DMCA) without even the need for a license... If you look at the big picture, choice of venue clauses are not much important. Erm, Matt Pavlovich *won* that appeal to the California supreme court; distribution of allegedly infringing material over the Internet is *not* sufficient to give the California courts jurisdiction over a case. But accepting a choice of venue clause is. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.debian.org/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: CDDL
On Thu, Sep 08, 2005 at 07:28:46PM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: [License follows as inline MIME foo] html2text is a piece of crap. At the same time, I'd like to experiment with an idea I've been toying with for a slightly more (informally) directed approach to license analysis, that should prove harder to derail with long pointless tangents and more immune to revisionism by the hecklers. We've tried several attempts at summarising the conclusions on this list in the past, but they've always floundered because ultimately, they did not reflect the way that we do things. We *don't* produce a detailed description of what's wrong with a license, we just discuss it on a mailing list. The problem with that is that it's hard to follow for people not involved. The idea is basically this: since we can't realistically impose a conventional debate structure on a mailing list, turn it around and realise that we don't need to bother. Some basic rules of form can be applied after the event, and then we just look at the result and see what actual valid conclusions the discussion produced, if any. Here's what I have in mind: http://people.debian.org/~asuffield/licenses/cddl/summary.html It's essentially a record of what happened, arranged in the logical structure of the arguments made. At the same time, it's a summary of the conclusion, and a hit list of the things you have to disprove if you want to change the outcome. It's intended to be kept roughly up to date as the discussion progresses. It is not intended to replace documents like http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statement.html although it may be a useful resource in writing them. I'll take typographical corrections, and restatements of a point to improve clarity, but if you have anything new to add, you should be making your case to the list. This is just a record, not a new forum for debate. [This is by way of a working prototype; I have a whole bunch of things I still want to do to present the information in a more useful manner, and my approach to duplicated points is currently flawed so some mails in the thread aren't currently represented here. I'm planning to fix this sometime in the next week. Also it looks like crap. I'm not planning to fix that]. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -- | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
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Re: Dissident test
Sven Luther writes: On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 08:38:19PM -0400, Catatonic Porpoise wrote: Marco d'Itri wrote: This might fail the Dissident test (and thus discriminate against Which is not part of the DFSG, so it does not matter. The Dissident test is a test for DFSG #5, so it does matter. See: http://wiki.debian.net/?DissidentTest http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html Can we go back to interpreting the DFSG and the licence in real terms, instead of blindingly trying to apply random strange tests ? Can we please not interpret DFSG#5 as saying A license may not discriminate against any person or group of persons unless somebody thinks such discrimination is acceptable? DFSG#5 is very plain and very broad: it prohibits discrimination against *any* person or group. If you think it should be narrowed, propose an amendment to the SC. Michael Poole -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
Scripsit [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco d'Itri) So finally we are up to the good old every restriction is a discrimination argument. Even if in the last two years it has become popular among some debian-legal@ contributors while the rest of the project was not looking, I believe that it is based on a misunderstanding of the meaning of DFSG #5. For what it's worth, I do not believe that DFSG #5 is a sensible reason to consider choice-of-venue clauses non-free. The sensible reason to consider choice-of-venue clauses non-free is the following general principle: A license can only be free if one can always accept the license without losing any right that one had before one received the license. (Those who think that licenses are not contracts and do not need to be accepted, feel free to substitue use the rights granted instead of accept). This is, in my opinion, the natural and direct extension of the explicit language that a license cannot require royalties or other fees to be paid in exchange for the rights described in the DFSG. Plain and simple, if it requires that you give up *anything* that you already had before, then it's not free. A choice-of-venue clause is a demand that I give up my right to have the specified foreign court automatically throw out a nuisance suit citing lack on the grounds of personal jurisidiction. Without the license I have this right; with it I don't. To try to shoehorn such a fundamental principle into the much more specific DSFG#5 just to please some literal-minded apologists who want the DFSG to be an objective ruleset rather than a set of guidelines, is just silly. -- Henning Makholm The Central Intelligence Agency is committed to protecting your privacy and will collect no personal information about you unless you choose to provide that information to us. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Dissident test
quote who=Michael Poole date=Sun, Sep 11, 2005 at 08:55:31AM -0400 Sven Luther writes: On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 08:38:19PM -0400, Catatonic Porpoise wrote: Marco d'Itri wrote: This might fail the Dissident test (and thus discriminate against Which is not part of the DFSG, so it does not matter. The Dissident test is a test for DFSG #5, so it does matter. See: http://wiki.debian.net/?DissidentTest http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html Can we go back to interpreting the DFSG and the licence in real terms, instead of blindingly trying to apply random strange tests ? Can we please not interpret DFSG#5 as saying A license may not discriminate against any person or group of persons unless somebody thinks such discrimination is acceptable? DFSG#5 is very plain and very broad: it prohibits discrimination against *any* person or group. If you think it should be narrowed, propose an amendment to the SC. The language in the DSFG tends to be very plain and broad and absolute but *everyone's* interpretation is nuanced. DFSG#3 says, the license must allow modifications and derived works, and this list has argued long and hard over what that means. There seems to be consensus around the idea that this does not mean the right to modify the text of the license or the copyright statement and there's disagreement about things like advertising clauses and the GPL(2)(c) which are restrictions on modifications that many people consider free. You seem to be making a call for interpreting the DFSG literally. I think this is impossible. We should stay as close to the spirit of the DFSG and we should rely on the text as our best clue. However, things will *always* come down to human judgment calls at one point or another. Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mako.cc/ signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Sun, Sep 11, 2005 at 04:23:42PM +0200, Henning Makholm wrote: Scripsit [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco d'Itri) So finally we are up to the good old every restriction is a discrimination argument. Even if in the last two years it has become popular among some debian-legal@ contributors while the rest of the project was not looking, I believe that it is based on a misunderstanding of the meaning of DFSG #5. For what it's worth, I do not believe that DFSG #5 is a sensible reason to consider choice-of-venue clauses non-free. The sensible reason to consider choice-of-venue clauses non-free is the following general principle: A license can only be free if one can always accept the license without losing any right that one had before one received the license. (Those who think that licenses are not contracts and do not need to be accepted, feel free to substitue use the rights granted instead of accept). This is, in my opinion, the natural and direct extension of the explicit language that a license cannot require royalties or other fees to be paid in exchange for the rights described in the DFSG. Plain and simple, if it requires that you give up *anything* that you already had before, then it's not free. A choice-of-venue clause is a demand that I give up my right to have the specified foreign court automatically throw out a nuisance suit citing lack on the grounds of personal jurisidiction. Without the license I have this right; with it I don't. To try to shoehorn such a fundamental principle into the much more specific DSFG#5 just to please some literal-minded apologists who want the DFSG to be an objective ruleset rather than a set of guidelines, is just silly. So, what do you propose a new DFSG rule addition for the above principle ? Friendly, Sven Luther -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Dissident test
On Sun, Sep 11, 2005 at 11:40:41AM -0400, Benj. Mako Hill wrote: You seem to be making a call for interpreting the DFSG literally. I think this is impossible. We should stay as close to the spirit of the DFSG and we should rely on the text as our best clue. However, things will *always* come down to human judgment calls at one point or another. So, is the spirit of the DFSG #5 to forbid choice-of-venue clauses, or the anonymous contributions of the infamous dissident test ? And who is to interpret the spirit of the different DFSG clauses :) Friendly, Sven Luther -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: GPL, yet again. (The kernel is a lot like a shared library)
On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 02:32:13PM -0700, Michael K. Edwards wrote: Michael On 9/9/05, Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Michael I am acutely disinterested in that debate because it's long and Michael boring, but there's a lot of law professors who like it and think that Michael the GPL does work. I suggest you go argue with them instead. Michael Michael Name one other than Mr. Moglen. Larry Lessig? Larry Rosen? Séverine Dussollier? Etienne Montero? Dave MacGowan? Pam Samuelson? -- Yorick Cool Chercheur au CRID Rempart de la Vierge, 5 B-5000 Namur Tel: + 32 (0)81 72 47 62 /+32 (0)81 51 37 75 Fax: + 32 (0)81 72 52 02 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: UMORIA licensing review
UMORIA 5.4, however, was released after the copyright law change. Anyway, it contains additional copyright notices (Christopher J. Stuart, Joseph Hall, etc.). They have not relicensed their work. So it appears that UMORIA 5.4 is not yet free software. Joseph Hall has released his portions of the code into the Public Domain. What follows is a mail from him regarding the line-of-sight code in Umoria. Original Message Subject: Re: umoria code? From:Joseph [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date:Sun, September 11, 2005 10:22 am To: Ben Asselstine [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Perhaps somewhere the fact that I released it to the public domain must have been lost. -j
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Sun, 11 Sep 2005 16:23:42 +0200 Henning Makholm wrote: [...] For what it's worth, I do not believe that DFSG #5 is a sensible reason to consider choice-of-venue clauses non-free. The sensible reason to consider choice-of-venue clauses non-free is the following general principle: A license can only be free if one can always accept the license without losing any right that one had before one received the license. (Those who think that licenses are not contracts and do not need to be accepted, feel free to substitue use the rights granted instead of accept). This is, in my opinion, the natural and direct extension of the explicit language that a license cannot require royalties or other fees to be paid in exchange for the rights described in the DFSG. Plain and simple, if it requires that you give up *anything* that you already had before, then it's not free. You are right, DFSG#1 is more suitable than DFSG#5 to conclude that choice-of-venue is non-free. -- :-( This Universe is buggy! Where's the Creator's BTS? ;-) .. Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpq0jLgwTlmO.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: CDDL
It doesn't seem at all reasonable to me. It could harm those who have an agreement to offer support as an agent of an upstream non-initial developer (like Epson service centre or whatever), and maybe otherwise. Why should this licence be allowed to restrict business relationships? That is very true, and an unfortuante concequence of not thinking things out. However, The stituation might be resolvable by changing the agent contract to explicit overide CDDL. No idea how that would be treated in court though. It also seems strange that one of the inital developers would have a warrenty agent which could offer warenties on software the inital developer states (via the licence) that they are not interested in offering warentee, or having anybody offer warenty themselves. Remmeber that the CDDL is a by-file licence, and thus the inital developer could have placed their code in a different file with a licence without such a clause. At best, it makes some agent deals into lawyerbombs, because it's not clear which terms would win out if both exist (and I think it would be the copyright agreement that beats the commercial agreement, with law going in its current direction). Restricting support deals for main could have awkward consequences for companies who supply debian-based services. This clause could have been worded differently (in the absence of other agreements... perhaps) but it wasn't. Please reconsider whether it discriminates against licensed support agents. Debian is not a legal entity. There are no warenty agent contracts. Most support services that exist for Debian that offer things like warenties do it only as an agent of themselves, so i don't see the problem. Most Debian Developers (AFAIK) are not interested in third parties offering warrenty on their behalf. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
Francesco Poli [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry, but it doesn't work that way, AFAICT. The DFSG are guidelines to determine whether a *right-holder* gives enough permissions to *licensees*, not whether *Debian* gives enough permissions to *right-holders*. That doesn't appear to be part of the social contract. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Dissident test
Michael Poole [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: DFSG#5 is very plain and very broad: it prohibits discrimination against *any* person or group. If you think it should be narrowed, propose an amendment to the SC. The GPL plainly discriminates against people who live in areas where software patents are enforced. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Dissident test
Matthew Garrett writes: Michael Poole [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: DFSG#5 is very plain and very broad: it prohibits discrimination against *any* person or group. If you think it should be narrowed, propose an amendment to the SC. The GPL plainly discriminates against people who live in areas where software patents are enforced. How so? Is this any different than the putative discrimination of any license that refuses to indemnify users subject to other, bizarre, local laws? Michael Poole -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
