Re: National Land Survey open data licence - version 1.0 - 1 May 2012
Steve Langasek writes: > Does Finnish law recognize the concept of author's rights (moral rights)? Yes, see section 3 of Tekijänoikeuslaki (Copyright Act). Unofficial translation at http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/1961/en19610404 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87txtgq6l0@niukka.kon.iki.fi
Re: National Land Survey open data licence - version 1.0 - 1 May 2012
On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 11:36:30AM +0300, Timo Juhani Lindfors wrote: > [ Replying to an old thread. For your convenience here's a link to the > original thread: > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2012/05/msg00014.html ] > Francesco Poli writes: > >> > * remove the name of the Licensor from the product or service, if > >> > required to do so by the Licensor. > > I am personally convinced that such a requirement is non-free. > > I think it's very similar to one of the clauses found in CC-v3.0 > > licenses. See for instance my analysis of CC-by-v3.0: > > https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2007/07/msg00124.html > > However, Debian FTP-masters disagree with me on the freeness of > > works released under the terms of CC-v3.0 licenses: > > https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2010/01/msg00084.html > > Hence, it's *possible* (but not granted) that FTP-masters would consider > > the above-discussed section 2.2 as acceptable, unfortunately. > It seems that since CC has such a clause it is getting copied to other > licenses. I heard of one such license this week: > "Helsinki Region Infoshare – data pool licence >1. The licensor (holder of copyright or associated rights in the >licensed material) hereby grants the licensee (user of the licensed >material under the terms of this licence) a global, free of charge, >non-exclusive, permanent licence to copy, disseminate, edit, combine >and otherwise use the licensed material according to the terms and >conditions set out in items 2 and 3 below. The licensed material may >be used for non-commercial and commercial purposes. >2. The original copyright information in the licensed material must >be acknowledged in the manner indicated by the licensor. This >attribution must be deleted if so requested by the licensor. >3. The copyright details of the licensed material must not be >attributed in any way that suggests that the publisher of the >licensed material endorses the user or the use of the data material." > -- http://www.hri.fi/lisenssit/hri-nimea/ > Note that while CC has "to the extent practicable" to shoften the > requirement this softening is not present anymore in "National Land > Survey open data licence" or this "Helsinki Region Infoshare – data pool > licence". > Could this "to the extend practicable" be the key difference why CC > would be considered free but these two new licenses would not? Does Finnish law recognize the concept of author's rights (moral rights)? It appears that the intent of this clause is to reassert a right that is already granted by law in some jurisdictions: the right for their name not to be associated with a mutilated form of their work. If this were a license used by a copyright holder in France or Germany, where I know such moral rights exist, then I believe this clause would be a no-op and should therefore be ignored when evaluating the freeness of the license. When used by a Finnish copyright holder, I'm not sure; this may be an example of a "tentacles of evil" effect from the license. There's also the fact that, as worded, it does *not* refer to the author, it refers to the Licensor who may be a different party. So it's possible that there are some bugs in the wording, of both the CC license and the licenses you cite. I do think, however, that they're compatible in *intent* with the DFSG, which has explicit provisions regarding the integrity of authors' works. Requiring a rename or requiring changes be carried as patches is not conceptually different from requiring removal of attribution. None of these requirements are something we recommend to authors, but they are free. The National Land Survey license does have a pretty major bug that the other two do not, due to differences in wording (another example of why people shouldn't write their own licenses): * remove the name of the Licensor from the product or service, if required to do so by the Licensor. This does *not* say that you must remove the name from the *attribution*. It says you must remove the name, which implies you must remove it from anywhere it appears, including in functional elements. In practice, if someone wanted to package data distributed under this license, they could sanitize that data by proactively removing any occurrences of the Licensor's name first *except* for the credits; once done, this degenerates to the previous case. But it's obviously a hassle to do that. All in all, with respect to these clauses I side with the ftp masters (who have already accepted CC-BY-SA 3.0) and believe they're DFSG-compatible, though I would definitely not recommend any of these clauses. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com
Re: National Land Survey open data licence - version 1.0 - 1 May 2012
On Thu, 25 Oct 2012 11:36:30 +0300 Timo Juhani Lindfors wrote: [...] > Note that while CC has "to the extent practicable" to shoften the > requirement this softening is not present anymore in "National Land > Survey open data licence" or this "Helsinki Region Infoshare – data pool > licence". > > Could this "to the extend practicable" be the key difference why CC > would be considered free but these two new licenses would not? Personally I consider both clauses as non-free restrictions, so, no, in my opinion, the difference is important, but not enough to yield opposite conclusions for the two licenses... -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! . Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE pgpeHISO1qWXC.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: National Land Survey open data licence - version 1.0 - 1 May 2012
[ Replying to an old thread. For your convenience here's a link to the original thread: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2012/05/msg00014.html ] Francesco Poli writes: >> > * remove the name of the Licensor from the product or service, if >> > required to do so by the Licensor. > > I am personally convinced that such a requirement is non-free. > > I think it's very similar to one of the clauses found in CC-v3.0 > licenses. See for instance my analysis of CC-by-v3.0: > https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2007/07/msg00124.html > > However, Debian FTP-masters disagree with me on the freeness of > works released under the terms of CC-v3.0 licenses: > https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2010/01/msg00084.html > Hence, it's *possible* (but not granted) that FTP-masters would consider > the above-discussed section 2.2 as acceptable, unfortunately. It seems that since CC has such a clause it is getting copied to other licenses. I heard of one such license this week: "Helsinki Region Infoshare – data pool licence 1. The licensor (holder of copyright or associated rights in the licensed material) hereby grants the licensee (user of the licensed material under the terms of this licence) a global, free of charge, non-exclusive, permanent licence to copy, disseminate, edit, combine and otherwise use the licensed material according to the terms and conditions set out in items 2 and 3 below. The licensed material may be used for non-commercial and commercial purposes. 2. The original copyright information in the licensed material must be acknowledged in the manner indicated by the licensor. This attribution must be deleted if so requested by the licensor. 3. The copyright details of the licensed material must not be attributed in any way that suggests that the publisher of the licensed material endorses the user or the use of the data material." -- http://www.hri.fi/lisenssit/hri-nimea/ Note that while CC has "to the extent practicable" to shoften the requirement this softening is not present anymore in "National Land Survey open data licence" or this "Helsinki Region Infoshare – data pool licence". Could this "to the extend practicable" be the key difference why CC would be considered free but these two new licenses would not? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/84a9vb2bjl@sauna.l.org
Re: National Land Survey open data licence - version 1.0 - 1 May 2012
Hi Clark and Francesco, Poli writes: > I am convinced that a good Free Software license would be suitable for > releasing data. > Hence, I think that this license, even if it managed to meet the DFSG > (which it does *not*, in my own personal opinion!), would add nothing > useful to the already long list of existing licenses. > It just contributes to license proliferation, which is very bad. Thanks for the comments, I've tried to forward them to the people who wrote the license. I hope they'll adjust the last paragraph of 2.2 but I'm afraid they won't adopt an existing open source license. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/84vcjxzq8z@sauna.l.org
Re: National Land Survey open data licence - version 1.0 - 1 May 2012
On Thu, 10 May 2012 09:07:23 -0400 Clark C. Evans wrote: > Timo, Hi Timo, hi Clark, > > I'm not sure why a open source license wouldn't work? I am convinced that a good Free Software license would be suitable for releasing data. Hence, I think that this license, even if it managed to meet the DFSG (which it does *not*, in my own personal opinion!), would add nothing useful to the already long list of existing licenses. It just contributes to license proliferation, which is very bad. > In any case, here are some comments. > > > 2.2. Duties and responsibilities of the Licensee [...] > > * require third parties to provide the same information when > > granting rights to copies of dataset(s) or products and services > > containing such data and > > This one seems problematic since it would require some sort of > license assent mechanism. Perhaps this requirement could be > softened to be a conditional, if you require acceptance of your > own license, you must require acceptance of this one? I think it really depends on how it should be interpreted. At best, this point could be seen as an attempt to implement a sort of very weak copyleft-like mechanism. A really unclear attempt, though: I don't know how effective it could be considered... At worst, it could be seen as an attempt to make licensees responsible for enforcing some clauses of the license, after redistributing the work to other parties. I think this would be a non-free restriction. > > > * remove the name of the Licensor from the product or service, if > > required to do so by the Licensor. > > How do you comply with this given the other requirements? In a very bad way: you *have* to comply, *when* the Licensor tells you to do so. Even after your product or service has been initially released. I am personally convinced that such a requirement is non-free. I think it's very similar to one of the clauses found in CC-v3.0 licenses. See for instance my analysis of CC-by-v3.0: https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2007/07/msg00124.html However, Debian FTP-masters disagree with me on the freeness of works released under the terms of CC-v3.0 licenses: https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2010/01/msg00084.html Hence, it's *possible* (but not granted) that FTP-masters would consider the above-discussed section 2.2 as acceptable, unfortunately. I hope this may help. -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! . Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE pgpsk5dxRVXya.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: National Land Survey open data licence - version 1.0 - 1 May 2012
Timo, I'm not sure why a open source license wouldn't work? In any case, here are some comments. > 2.2. Duties and responsibilities of the Licensee > > Through reasonable means suitable to the distribution medium > or method which is used in conjunction with a product containing > data or a service utilising [sic] data covered by this licence [sic] > or while distributing data, the Licensee shall: > > * mention the name of the Licensor, the name of the dataset(s) > and the timewhen the National Land Survey has delivered the > dataset(s) (e.g.: contains data from the National Land Survey > of Finland Topographic Database 06/2012) > * provide a copy of this licence or a link to it, as well as It seems that these are OK, since these notices could be placed into an "About" box or similar structure? > * require third parties to provide the same information when > granting rights to copies of dataset(s) or products and services > containing such data and This one seems problematic since it would require some sort of license assent mechanism. Perhaps this requirement could be softened to be a conditional, if you require acceptance of your own license, you must require acceptance of this one? > * remove the name of the Licensor from the product or service, if > required to do so by the Licensor. How do you comply with this given the other requirements? Best, Clark -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1336655243.8135.140661073725377.2c87d...@webmail.messagingengine.com
