Re: Is the Guile license OSI approved?
David Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Not at all. The exception only means that the license does not apply to certain works. It does not say that those works cannot have any license at Which means that there are no copyright permissions for the library, and therefore those works, as derived works of the library, or at least further copying of them is a breach of the copyright on the library. Licences give permissions to do things that are otherwise illegal. No licence, no permission. I know what they are trying to do, but I suspect, if it ever went to court that there are two possible interpretations, which are at two extremes of the spectrum: 1) as I've given above - unless the library copyright owner decides to renege on their original intentions, using the poor drafting to their advantage, this is more of a fear uncertainty and doubt issue (i.e. lawyers of companies thinking of using the code may tell them that the licence is unsafe) - free software authors have been known to renege in the past; 2) the assumed intent of the paragraph, rather than its letter, are used, in which case it might be possible to defend the use of a token application which exposes all the functionality of the library, but makes the result closed source. Also, in this case, the warranty waiver seems no longer to apply, so the library's author might be sued for consequential loss. The licence needs to: 1) define, as precisely as possible, what is NOT covered by the exception. 2) state the terms of the licence to the library code that applies when the exception does apply, either by a complete alternative licence (maybe BSD like) or by enumerating the GPL clauses that no longer apply (probably has to be down to phrase level). IANAL -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Is the Guile license OSI approved?
Martin Wolters [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote: You can find a few open source projects on the web that use the so called guile license which is the GPL + the following paragraph: As a special exception, if you link this library with other files to produce an executable, this library does not by itself cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public I'm not a lawyer, but, if this quote is correct, I believe it is badly drafted, as it appears to leave such derivative works without any licence at all and therefore illegal. I think theiy are missing the point that licences give permissions, even though licence agreements may impose restrictions in consideration for those permissions. I would say that it should not be accepted until it is redrafted to state what permissions do apply to such derivative works (probably also making it clear where the boundary lies between a trivial wrapper to try and negate the licenec conditions, and a complete program in the sense they intended). -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Is the Guile license OSI approved?
On Friday 30 November 2001 4:23 am, J C Lawrence wrote: On Thu, 29 Nov 2001 17:10:42 -0800 (PST) Andy Tai [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Given the history of Free Software and Open Source (that Open Source is a marketing name (Bruce Perens) or marketing program (Eric Raymond) for Free Software), can there be any question that a software license the Free Software Foundation published is not Open Source? If the FSF published licenses that didn't meet the OSD, then they wouldn't be open source licenses. And in fact the FSF do just that; on their webh site many of their documents are marked: Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved. Which prohibits changing and is thus not an open source license. Yes, tho for political reasons you're unlikely to ever see that response by OSI. It is relatively easy to argue, for instance, that the viral properties of the GPL are excessively restrictive and violate the spirit if not intent of the OSS definition Only in the sense that it's easy to argue that 2 plus 2 is 5. When the OSD was written (in its original incarnation the, DFSG) the GPL was in mind specifically as one of the licenses that should meet this definition. -- *** Philip Hunt *** [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Is the Guile license OSI approved?
On Friday 30 November 2001 02:46 am, David Woolley wrote: Martin Wolters [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] wrote: You can find a few open source projects on the web that use the so called guile license which is the GPL + the following paragraph: As a special exception, if you link this library with other files to produce an executable, this library does not by itself cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public I'm not a lawyer, but, if this quote is correct, I believe it is badly drafted, as it appears to leave such derivative works without any licence at all and therefore illegal. Not at all. The exception only means that the license does not apply to certain works. It does not say that those works cannot have any license at all. In the case of an executable linked to a shared library, merely look at the license of the executable. The shared library will still be under the guile license. -- David Johnson ___ http://www.usermode.org pgp public key on website -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Is the Guile license OSI approved?
Given the history of Free Software and Open Source (that Open Source is a marketing name (Bruce Perens) or marketing program (Eric Raymond) for Free Software), can there be any question that a software license the Free Software Foundation published is not Open Source? FSF may never seek OSI approval for its licenses (the source needs no approval from the derivative), but implicitly any GNU software license is Open Source... --- Martin Wolters [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To whom it may concern: You can find a few open source projects on the web that use the so called guile license which is the GPL + the following paragraph: As a special exception, if you link this library with other files to produce an executable, this library does not by itself cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License. Example project: http://www.gnu.org/software/classpathx/jaxp/ I expect, that software which uses this kind of license is still OSI certified although the license does not appear on the list of OSI approved licenses. Is this a correct assumption? -Martin W. __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! GeoCities - quick and easy web site hosting, just $8.95/month. http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info1 -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: Is the Guile license OSI approved?
On Thu, 29 Nov 2001 17:10:42 -0800 (PST) Andy Tai [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Given the history of Free Software and Open Source (that Open Source is a marketing name (Bruce Perens) or marketing program (Eric Raymond) for Free Software), can there be any question that a software license the Free Software Foundation published is not Open Source? Yes, tho for political reasons you're unlikely to ever see that response by OSI. It is relatively easy to argue, for instance, that the viral properties of the GPL are excessively restrictive and violate the spirit if not intent of the OSS definition -- but then that's an old, well thrashed, and very dead religious war. -- J C Lawrence -(*)Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. [EMAIL PROTECTED] He lived as a devil, eh? http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live. -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
