Apache license and machine-readable copyright
Hi all! I have a couple of packages which contain files with a copyright notice like this: /* * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 * (the License); you may not use this file except in compliance with * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at * * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 * * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software * distributed under the License is distributed on an AS IS BASIS, * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and * limitations under the License. */ I'm not sure how to describe this in a machine-readable copyright record. I've searched around, in debian-legal archive and on the wiki, but couldn't find anything. The notice quoted above doesn't report anything about the copyright holder, so I'm not sure about what to put in the Copyright: field. So far, I've used this form: Files: validator/src/org/openstreetmap/josm/plugins/validator/util/Entities.java Copyright: Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation License: Apache-2.0 Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the License); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at . http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 . Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an AS IS BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License. . On Debian systems the full test of the Apache 2.0 license can be found in the `/usr/share/common-licenses/Apache-2.0' file. Is it correct? If not, what should I write? Thanks, Giovanni. (please, Cc: me, as I'm not subscriber to d-l) -- Giovanni Mascellani g.mascell...@gmail.com Pisa, Italy Web: http://giomasce.altervista.org SIP: g.mascell...@ekiga.net Jabber: g.mascell...@jabber.org / giova...@elabor.homelinux.org GPG: 0x5F1FBF70 (FP: 1EB6 3D43 E201 4DDF 67BD 003F FCB0 BB5C 5F1F BF70) signature.asc Description: Questa è una parte del messaggio firmata digitalmente
Re: License issue on tiny Javascript fragment
On Sunday 15 February 2009 10:49:17 pm Ben Finney wrote: Joe Smith unknown_kev_...@hotmail.com writes: This new version is the very definition of a function too trivial to copyright That's a pretty strong assertion. The “very definition of” as defined where? Or what, exactly, are you claiming? You also seem to be under the misapprehension that “to copyright” is something that a creator does to a work. It's not. Instead, copyright is an automatic monopoly granted *to* the creator; under the Berne convention, nobody decides “to copyright” a work. Or, more briefly: copyright long ago stopped being a verb, and is now a noun. It's now more akin to a very insidious attribute that slithers into just about any human intellectual work usually uninvited, and is very difficult to eradicate completely from the work. Wow... ideological ax to grind? even the variable names and whitespaceing are as non-creative as possible. “Difficult to read” isn't the same thing as “non-creative”. On the contrary; you have demonstrated that someone can creatively decide on different creative expressions of the same work, to the extent that you contrast your expression with one that differs in its uses of variable names and whitespace. He didn't say difficult to read, he pointed out that his variable names are defined by what they do and thus highly functional. It is like writing a book where your characters are named Hero and Villain. You aren't going to be getting a copyright on just the names in the way that J.K. Rowling has with Harry Potter. Moreover, I'm not aware of a valid legal theory that use of variable names or whitespace have any bearing on whether a particular work is subject to copyright. Then you aren't looking very hard. Of course, you already made it perfectly clear how you feel about copyright in general, but one of the central premises they teach you about copyright law in law school is that copyrights can be thin or weak. It's not to say that such a work doesn't have a *some* copyright, it is to say that one has to work VERY HARD to actually infringe it. Thin copyrights generally require verbatim copying to be infringed, where a more substantive copyright is easy to infring via derivative work or the theory whose name I can't remember that says you had access to the original, so you probably used it as a copy. Given all that, I'd be very wary of taking the above quoted claims as having any meaningful application. I must say Ben, you're entire email just drips of hash judgment. Here's a dude, Mr. Joe Smith, who is trying to do something helpful by providing a clean room implementation of the javascript code... doing something, instead of just saying what *ought* to be done like the all previous responders in this thread. Instead of saying thanks, you decide to just tear him to shreds? What sort of a community do you think this should be? Good grief... To Joe, it would be nice if (if you are the original author of the clean-room code you provided) to give explicit notice of the license you are distributing it under so that Colin Turner (the original questioner) can package it up and provide a proper copyright notice. Beyond that, thanks for your efforts. -Sean -- Sean Kellogg e: skell...@gmail.com w: http://blog.probonogeek.org/ Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Apache license and machine-readable copyright
Giovanni Mascellani g.mascell...@gmail.com wrote: [...] I'm not sure how to describe this in a machine-readable copyright record. I've searched around, in debian-legal archive and on the wiki, but couldn't find anything. The notice quoted above doesn't report anything about the copyright holder, so I'm not sure about what to put in the Copyright: field. So far, I've used this form: Files: validator/src/org/openstreetmap/josm/plugins/validator/util/Entities.java Copyright: Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation License: Apache-2.0 Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. [...] Can you copy the owner names out of the NOTICE file into the Copyright field? Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation is not the copyright holder, so does not conform to http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/CopyrightFormat#head-d1d2adac8db71e98883d5b052e3ad1760b51ed80 which is the specification of MaRCopyright that I know about. Hope that helps, -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: License issue on tiny Javascript fragment
Ben Finney ben+deb...@benfinney.id.au wrote in message news:874oyuq3ki@benfinney.id.au... Joe Smith unknown_kev_...@hotmail.com writes: This new version is the very definition of a function too trivial to copyright That's a pretty strong assertion. The “very definition of” as defined where? Or what, exactly, are you claiming? That was intended to be hyperbole. But, surely if any code could reasonably be claimed to be too trivial for copyright protection to apply, that work could. You also seem to be under the misapprehension that “to copyright” is something that a creator does to a work. It's not. Instead, copyright is an automatic monopoly granted *to* the creator; under the Berne convention, nobody decides “to copyright” a work. I am well aware of that, but trying to use more accurate phrasing like too trivial for copyright protection to apply, made the sentence sound awkward. You are of course correct that I should have used better phrasing here. “Difficult to read” isn't the same thing as “non-creative”. On the contrary; you have demonstrated that someone can creatively decide on different creative expressions of the same work, to the extent that you contrast your expression with one that differs in its uses of variable names and whitespace. Yes, but use of the most trivially functional possible version minimizes the amount of creative content. If I write a phonebook, in which I hand selected the order of names such that they fit an acrostic, that may very well be be subject to copyright. But it is well established that the standard alphabetical ordering is purely functional (non-creative). Moreover, I'm not aware of a valid legal theory that use of variable names or whitespace have any bearing on whether a particular work is subject to copyright. In general no variable names and whitespace should not make a difference, although surely by minimizing the amount of potentially creative content in a work makes it less likely to fall on the side non-trivial, rather than trivial. Normally only on edge cases should variable names or whitespacing make a difference. However the edge between sufficently creative to subject to copyright protection, and innsufciently creative to be subject to copyright protection is certainly not well defined. Therefore, for this purpose, it was decided to err on the side of caution. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Apache license and machine-readable copyright
Il giorno lun, 16/02/2009 alle 17.19 +, MJ Ray ha scritto: So far, I've used this form: Files: validator/src/org/openstreetmap/josm/plugins/validator/util/Entities.java Copyright: Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation License: Apache-2.0 Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. [...] Can you copy the owner names out of the NOTICE file into the Copyright field? Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation is not the copyright holder, so does not conform to http://wiki.debian.org/Proposals/CopyrightFormat#head-d1d2adac8db71e98883d5b052e3ad1760b51ed80 which is the specification of MaRCopyright that I know about. This is exactly the problem: I don't know who these people are. This is happening for two different and independent upstream: they've picked a file from an Apache project un put it into their project. But the problem isn't my upstream, but the Apache Software Foundation, because it's the ASF itself that doesn't revel the people behind the copyright, but rather says licensed to the ASF This is the same license which applies to, for instance, the apache2 software, which is in main. So I don't think this is a legal problem. But I don't know how to fit this situation in the machine-readable copyright format. Should I just discard che Copyright: field? Maybe the copyright format proposal should be amended in order to allow this sort of situations. Regards, Giovanni. -- Giovanni Mascellani g.mascell...@gmail.com Pisa, Italy Web: http://giomasce.altervista.org SIP: g.mascell...@ekiga.net Jabber: g.mascell...@jabber.org / giova...@elabor.homelinux.org GPG: 0x5F1FBF70 (FP: 1EB6 3D43 E201 4DDF 67BD 003F FCB0 BB5C 5F1F BF70) signature.asc Description: Questa è una parte del messaggio firmata digitalmente
Re: License issue on tiny Javascript fragment
Joe Smith unknown_kev_...@hotmail.com writes: Ben Finney ben+deb...@benfinney.id.au wrote in message news:874oyuq3ki@benfinney.id.au... Joe Smith unknown_kev_...@hotmail.com writes: This new version is the very definition of a function too trivial to copyright That's a pretty strong assertion. The “very definition of” as defined where? Or what, exactly, are you claiming? That was intended to be hyperbole. In an area that is so riddled with absurd realities as copyright law, hyperbole is often indistinguishable from an earnest attempt at accurate description. So, intentional hyperbole is a risky way to communicate an understanding of copyright law. But, surely if any code could reasonably be claimed to be too trivial for copyright protection to apply, that work could. I wouldn't think so. In writing it, you made a number of creative decisions that could have been made differently, and hence it's a creative work. “Difficult to read” isn't the same thing as “non-creative”. On the contrary; you have demonstrated that someone can creatively decide on different creative expressions of the same work, to the extent that you contrast your expression with one that differs in its uses of variable names and whitespace. Yes, but use of the most trivially functional possible version minimizes the amount of creative content. I don't think the word “creative” means, in copyright law, what you think it means. (Mind you, it might not mean what *I* think it means either, and I'd love to be edifimaculated by our actual lawyers.) In normal language we say that a work is “creative” as a kind of contrast with “dull” or “mainstream”, and I think that's the meaning you're intending above. But that meaning doesn't seem relevant. My understanding is that a work meets the copyright-law meaning of “creative” if, in creating it, decisions of expression were made that could have been made differently to achieve an equivalent result. The resulting expression might be terribly exciting or it might be yawn-worthy, but the creativity that concerns copyright law is in the creative *process*, as judged by the fixed expression. Or, in other words: just because an expression is dull (or otherwise fails the common-usage meaning of “creative”), doesn't impact whether it meets the definition of “creative” for determining the applicability of copyright. If I write a phonebook, in which I hand selected the order of names such that they fit an acrostic, that may very well be be subject to copyright. But it is well established that the standard alphabetical ordering is purely functional (non-creative). Yes. I agree with your conclusion in this new example, by my argument above. I don't see that your Javascript example is non-creative by the same argument. -- \ “I got some new underwear the other day. Well, new to me.” —Emo | `\ Philips | _o__) | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: License issue on tiny Javascript fragment
Sean Kellogg skell...@gmail.com writes: On Sunday 15 February 2009 10:49:17 pm Ben Finney wrote: Moreover, I'm not aware of a valid legal theory that use of variable names or whitespace have any bearing on whether a particular work is subject to copyright. Then you aren't looking very hard. Of course, you already made it perfectly clear how you feel about copyright in general, but one of the central premises they teach you about copyright law in law school is that copyrights can be thin or weak. It's not to say that such a work doesn't have a *some* copyright, it is to say that one has to work VERY HARD to actually infringe it. Thin copyrights generally require verbatim copying to be infringed, where a more substantive copyright is easy to infring via derivative work or the theory whose name I can't remember that says you had access to the original, so you probably used it as a copy. That's very interesting. I'm intrigued to know of such a distinction being taught to copyright law students; it sounds like exactly the sort of mapping to the real world that would be good to see more of in these laws. What basis does this have in the law itself, for those of us without benefit of such instruction? Given all that, I'd be very wary of taking the above quoted claims as having any meaningful application. I must say Ben, you're entire email just drips of hash judgment. I'm glad Joe took my message in the spirit which I intended, rather than this mis-reading. To Joe, it would be nice if (if you are the original author of the clean-room code you provided) to give explicit notice of the license you are distributing it under so that Colin Turner (the original questioner) can package it up and provide a proper copyright notice. Beyond that, thanks for your efforts. The main point of Joe's message was that he explicitly *doesn't* think copyright applies to the small Javascript work as he presented it. What reason, then, would you present for claiming (as you here imply) that copyright *does* apply to that work? -- \ “The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days | `\later you're hungry again.” —George Miller | _o__) | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
