Re: Creative Common Copyright Notice in Standalones
On 16 January 2011 13:29, Jan Schenkel janschen...@yahoo.com wrote: It does look like we have have little choice if we want strong protection. Like you, I'm leaning towards the xGPL licenses, combined with a closed commercial license. What worries me about it, is its viral nature in combination with LiveCode. While one could argue that the LiveCode engine doesn't have to be GPL, there are a few murky areas regarding the IDE and Externals. It's somewhat murky - as there are no clear cut cases to set legal precedent. Also the majority of the expertise and online documentation does not cover scripting languages well. Having chased this down, and asked every open source lawyer I can over the last few years, it seems that GPL for scripting languages and closed source engines is fine. The same viral logic that applies in the domain of low level code, should apply also within the domain of the scripting language - that is the see legal principles apply, but these do not extend to the engine or externals. If a stack uses the Geometry manager, and thus needs the revGeometry script to function correctly, should that script also be under a GPL-compatible license? Same question for Externals, can you combine the GPL work with commercial closed externals? So - unless RunRev licensed the Geometry manager / IDE under a GPL compatible license, it would not be possible to publish open source GPL code together with the Geometry manager code. If this were not the case it would make a nonsense of the entire principle of GPL for scripting languages. With regard to externals - you would (in the muddy world of GPL and scripting languages) be OK. This ain't legal advice - just best practice from someone who keeps asking :) ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Creative Common Copyright Notice in Standalones
--- On Sun, 1/16/11, David Bovill da...@vaudevillecourt.tv wrote: On 16 January 2011 13:29, Jan Schenkel janschen...@yahoo.com wrote: It does look like we have have little choice if we want strong protection. Like you, I'm leaning towards the xGPL licenses, combined with a closed commercial license. What worries me about it, is its viral nature in combination with LiveCode. While one could argue that the LiveCode engine doesn't have to be GPL, there are a few murky areas regarding the IDE and Externals. It's somewhat murky - as there are no clear cut cases to set legal precedent. Also the majority of the expertise and online documentation does not cover scripting languages well. Having chased this down, and asked every open source lawyer I can over the last few years, it seems that GPL for scripting languages and closed source engines is fine. The same viral logic that applies in the domain of low level code, should apply also within the domain of the scripting language - that is the see legal principles apply, but these do not extend to the engine or externals. If a stack uses the Geometry manager, and thus needs the revGeometry script to function correctly, should that script also be under a GPL-compatible license? Same question for Externals, can you combine the GPL work with commercial closed externals? So - unless RunRev licensed the Geometry manager / IDE under a GPL compatible license, it would not be possible to publish open source GPL code together with the Geometry manager code. If this were not the case it would make a nonsense of the entire principle of GPL for scripting languages. With regard to externals - you would (in the muddy world of GPL and scripting languages) be OK. This ain't legal advice - just best practice from someone who keeps asking :) Heh, I'm also curious about these things and want to make sure I take the right decision - and the only way to find out is by asking questions :-) So, assuming the Engine and Externals are OK, should we ask RunRev HQ for an official definition of the license of the IDE and script libraries? Hopefully one that is GPL-compatible? Jan Schenkel. = Quartam Reports PDF Library for LiveCode www.quartam.com = As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish at the same time. (La Rochefoucauld) ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Creative Common Copyright Notice in Standalones
On 16 January 2011 15:56, Jan Schenkel janschen...@yahoo.com wrote: Heh, I'm also curious about these things and want to make sure I take the right decision - and the only way to find out is by asking questions :-) So, assuming the Engine and Externals are OK, should we ask RunRev HQ for an official definition of the license of the IDE and script libraries? Hopefully one that is GPL-compatible? I'm talking to Kevin this week about these issues, particularly with regard to Creative Commons licensing of the documentation. I'm trying to work out, and therefore recommend, the best combination of licensing and workflow to match their commercial concerns while enabling as much shared community code creation as possible. There is no official position on this as yet - certainly if you were to write up your needs in this area it would help inform a decision? ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Creative Common Copyright Notice in Standalones
In general Jan, I share your aims here, and there is I feel a clear solution, some of which can be addressed by choosing the right license, but I' still like to get clear about some of the things you are trying to do. Maybe we can talk on Skype, as I'm doing quite a lot of work in this area at the moment - and email is maybe better after a good chat? On 11 January 2011 19:54, Jan Schenkel janschen...@yahoo.com wrote: Often library stacks use 'script local' variables to store data, and 'private' commands and functions to hide the innards. Example: Ah OK - got you Now it may sound far-fetched, but suppose some enterprising individual says Hmm, I really like that open source Smurf library, and I'm going to make some money - but I don't want to share back my extensions The only way to force sharing back is to force sharing back = viral GPL clause. There is no non-viral way to do this. And now he can even charge for his ACME Smurf Library. That is of course always possible with open source licenses - though the non-commercial CC content licenses forbid this. As long as he's sharing the 'cracked open' version of Quartam Smurf Library. From my reading of the more liberal FOSS licenses, there is nothing you can do: he's 'sharing his changes' to the Quartam Smurf Library, but morally he is clearly abusing it. Still not quite clear. Do you want people to be able to adapt / improve and change the private handlers? Or do you want these fixed under your control only? I'm assuming you want them open and the changes shared back - so it's his ability to copy and not share back that you want to prevent. Frankly, I don't care so much about that as long as the changes to the library are shared and available, and the license documentation and copyright requirements are upheld. This sounds like the same mix of requirements that I think will work best for a number of developers. That is: 1. Open source libraries that you can use freely, modify, and combine with other peoples source code from the community 2. Ensure that accreditation is given to the main contributors 3. Give the maximum legal protection to the authors - so they can sleep at night But, I think we would agree that we'd also like: - To allow individuals and commercial companies to release software which combines their own closed code along side the above open source - without forcing them to open their code. - But to as strongly as possible encourage authors to feed back useful improvements to the core libraries, and not simply take the benefits without contributing back. It is that latter two points that tend to contradict each other. If you want to allow companies the (non-viral) freedom to release software that uses the library - then you can use a permissive (ie MIT/X11 style) license. But then this contradicts the second intention - and people can easily just take and not go to the trouble of feeding back. In this situation authors can take advantage of dual licensing. I'm not entirely sure, but it feels like this is the contradiction you are wrestling with? As an example of this, I'll be releasing my code under both GPL and a closed commercial license. Educators, hobbyists and members of the community can use all of it for free in commercial or non-commercial apps, but they must publish the full source code of their apps, so that any modifications or additions can be rolled back into core code by the community. This is fully viral. However, anyone wishing to include parts or all of this code in closed apps can do so by taking out a separate closed license, which will come as one of the benefits of taking out an annual subscription to the project. This can be done on a per-project basis, but I also think (for reasons of scale), it will be useful to have a general community owned project in which any commercial revenue is re-invested in new open source code paid directly to freelance members of the community. This community project is what I am working on as part of Live Code TV, with the aim of launching it at the forthcoming conference. A good chunk of it will be the legal framework needed to make this run smoothly, but there will also be a bunch of tools to make the sharing as painless and fun as possible. Stay tuned to LiveCode TV, and drop into ChatRev to get a sneak peak :) ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Creative Common Copyright Notice in Standalones
On Mon, 2011-01-10 at 12:46 -0800, Jan Schenkel wrote: --- On Sat, 1/8/11, David Bovill da...@vaudevillecourt.tv wrote: [snip] Thanks for taking the time to respond - my interest is in real business models built around licenses, or other legal innovations - and not the politics :)** Well, now that the topic has come up, I have a few questions regarding open source licenses which the community may provide better insight into. Let's assume I want to make available a new Quartam Smurf Library for LiveCode, as open source. Ignore the Intellectual Property rights of Peyo for a second, it's just the first thing I could think of - I'll leave it up to the psychologists on this list to examine my insanity from that :-) Anyway, Quartam Smurf Library offers a set of commands and functions to do with Smurfs. Let's say it covers the original 100 Smurfs. I want to give the rest of the community the opportunity to add support for the newer Smurfs that were added afterwards. The library has a number of 'core' commands and functions that are scripted as 'private' and are used by all 'public' commands and functions for the initial 100 Smurfs. My main goals: - to make sure that I get proper attribution for my work - to make sure that anyone who uses the library shares their modifications with the rest of the community - to run an open community around the library to incorporate the welcome changes into new versions of the library - to also accommodate those LiveCode-using developers whose corporate policy prevents them from using anything GPL/LGPL/AGPL, by offering it in a commercial license as well My main concerns: - it needs to cover Desktop, Mobile, Server and Web plug-in deployments - it shouldn't be a viral license that requires the whole program to be open source under the same license, just the modifications and extensions of the library - it should prevent commercial 'wrapping' of the library (*) (*) what I mean by wrapping: some devious individual could decide to make a derivative version of Quartam Smurf Library, exposing just those core 'private' commands and functions by making them 'public' - thus enabling them to write a 'wrapper' library which is closed source and commercial, not sharing their extensions but making a profit of the work of the contributors. In short, I'm willing to share my initial work, but others should also share their modifications and extensions with the community. So far I haven't found the right license for this. - MIT is too liberal for this, I think - GPL is viral so out of the question - LGPL is close but its goal conflicts with Server and Web plug-in - AGPL has also turned out to be viral, after re-reading it a few times - MPL might be a candidate, but I'm not sure if it covers all the concerns Can you guys and gals help me out? Thanks in advance for the feedback! Jan Schenkel. = Quartam Reports PDF Library for LiveCode www.quartam.com Jan, If this is a new work which does not rely on other works, leaving you unencumbered by the terms of some other prior license, then you are free to take your terms to an IP attorney and have him or her create a license that imposes your terms and your terms alone. In this case, there is no need to handicap yourself or to accept any terms you really don't find desirable. While the idea of using an established license has some merit if we believe (imagine) that it means they are well understood, accepted and adhered to, it's foolish to view any of them as some kind of Holy Grail, particularly if your circumstances don't seem appropriate. Warren ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Creative Common Copyright Notice in Standalones
Hi Jan _ I don't quite get the exact nature of the private public distinction you are making - si the source code visible, or are you referring to a license distinction. From a casual reading it looks a bit like there is a contradiction in there somewhere - but that most of what you want can be got with dual licensing. On 10 January 2011 20:46, Jan Schenkel janschen...@yahoo.com wrote: --- On Sat, 1/8/11, David Bovill da...@vaudevillecourt.tv wrote: [snip] Thanks for taking the time to respond - my interest is in real business models built around licenses, or other legal innovations - and not the politics :)** Well, now that the topic has come up, I have a few questions regarding open source licenses which the community may provide better insight into. Let's assume I want to make available a new Quartam Smurf Library for LiveCode, as open source. Ignore the Intellectual Property rights of Peyo for a second, it's just the first thing I could think of - I'll leave it up to the psychologists on this list to examine my insanity from that :-) Anyway, Quartam Smurf Library offers a set of commands and functions to do with Smurfs. Let's say it covers the original 100 Smurfs. I want to give the rest of the community the opportunity to add support for the newer Smurfs that were added afterwards. The library has a number of 'core' commands and functions that are scripted as 'private' and are used by all 'public' commands and functions for the initial 100 Smurfs. My main goals: - to make sure that I get proper attribution for my work - to make sure that anyone who uses the library shares their modifications with the rest of the community - to run an open community around the library to incorporate the welcome changes into new versions of the library - to also accommodate those LiveCode-using developers whose corporate policy prevents them from using anything GPL/LGPL/AGPL, by offering it in a commercial license as well My main concerns: - it needs to cover Desktop, Mobile, Server and Web plug-in deployments - it shouldn't be a viral license that requires the whole program to be open source under the same license, just the modifications and extensions of the library - it should prevent commercial 'wrapping' of the library (*) (*) what I mean by wrapping: some devious individual could decide to make a derivative version of Quartam Smurf Library, exposing just those core 'private' commands and functions by making them 'public' - thus enabling them to write a 'wrapper' library which is closed source and commercial, not sharing their extensions but making a profit of the work of the contributors. In short, I'm willing to share my initial work, but others should also share their modifications and extensions with the community. So far I haven't found the right license for this. - MIT is too liberal for this, I think - GPL is viral so out of the question - LGPL is close but its goal conflicts with Server and Web plug-in - AGPL has also turned out to be viral, after re-reading it a few times - MPL might be a candidate, but I'm not sure if it covers all the concerns Can you guys and gals help me out? Thanks in advance for the feedback! Jan Schenkel. = Quartam Reports PDF Library for LiveCode www.quartam.com = As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish at the same time. (La Rochefoucauld) ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Creative Common Copyright Notice in Standalones
Hi Richard - a few minor points / corrections: On 8 January 2011 00:17, Richard Gaskin ambassa...@fourthworld.com wrote: As a practical example I would not be able to submit my code libraries or code I have form other people to the revIgnitor project, as the license was hand crafted. Ralf changing the license to a GPL compatible license made everything start to work nicely. That may work well for you, but that means for me I can't use revIgniter as an embedded system in a closed-source product. Not that I have an immediate need for that, but I'd considered using revIgniter for a project recently, but that project has a likelihood to fork into an embedded proprietary component down the road, so GPL stuff would be challenging to consider. That's not true, you can use revIgnitor in a closed, or embedded contexrt because the (GPL-compatible) Apache 2 license allows this (as would the GPL-compatible MIT/X11 license). That was Ralf's intention. Not sure but you may be mistaking what is meant by GPL compatible (see link)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_compatibility- it is not the same as GPL! It just means that GPL projects are able to use the code from any of the GPL compatible licensed code bases. In this way the MetaCard project uses a GPL compatible license. The same will go with other projects that seek to make compilations of open code. A mosaic of poorly thought out licenses will cause real problems. Anything poorly thought out will cause problems. :) There are scenarios for meaningful sharing that aren't addressed by GLP-compatible licenses, so while it would be desirable if there were fewer licenses in the world, the diversity of needs seems to require equally diverse terms to describe them. Richard, could you be more specific - apart from the lack of a non-commercial option you can get with CC, I have not come across any scenarios that you can't address using GPL-compatible licenses. If you could give an example it would be real useful to me, as it is a main focus of my work - thanks :) ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Creative Common Copyright Notice in Standalones
David Bovill wrote: On 8 January 2011 00:17, Richard Gaskin wrote: There are scenarios for meaningful sharing that aren't addressed by GLP-compatible licenses, so while it would be desirable if there were fewer licenses in the world, the diversity of needs seems to require equally diverse terms to describe them. Richard, could you be more specific - apart from the lack of a non-commercial option you can get with CC, I have not come across any scenarios that you can't address using GPL-compatible licenses. If you could give an example it would be real useful to me, as it is a main focus of my work - thanks :) Short answer: For some projects it may be desirable, or even necessary, to prevent forking. Long answer: Writing code requires the most valuable non-renewable resource on the planet: time. Time always carries a cost. At a minimum, a developer must eat, keep a roof over their head, and keep the electricity flowing into their machine while they write. Recognizing that even free code requires a material cost to produce, open source can be seen as a rich man's game: because the software is given away, the money to pay for it must come from some other source. Many FOSS advocates argue that compensation for code can come from support and training services. But that position overlooks the counterproductive nature of such revenue streams: they disincentivise quality. If you give software away for free and seek compensation for your expenses incurred while making it through support and training, you have no incentive to enhance the product's usability. On the contrary, if you were to achieve the ideal of making a software so good that requires no support or training, ironically you risk killing the project because you'd no longer be able to afford to work on it. So the uability-minded developer has four alternatives: 1. An egalitarian model, in which those who derive material benefit from a project contribute materially to the project equally. This is more or less how most proprietary commercial products support themselves, with licensing fees. 2. Draw from retained earnings acquired from other directly-compensated work. This is the rich man, the man who has made enough money to enjoy the leisure of working thousands of hours for free. 3. Find a sponsor who has a strategic reason for compensating you. Here the rich man is the sponsor, like IBM pouring millions into Linux development because it provides them leverage against Microsoft. This not at all altruism, but of solid business value (see Spolsky's Strategy Letter V: Commoditize Your Compliments). 4. Find either direct compensation through advertising on the project's home page, or through strategic value for yourself by using the project to enhance the positioning of your consultancy. This last option requires that you prevent forking: Imagine that you spend a thousand hours making a truly useful product, and decide to share it under the GPL. You spend another hundred hours building an attractive and usable home page for it, and use your best marketing experience to evangelizing it so it can be as useful to as many people as possible. You're able to justify this all of this expense because you believe that you can either drive enough traffic to your site to earn the money need to support the project through advertising, or because the traffic will provide opportunities to grow your consulting business. Like IBM with Linux, you've found your own strategic benefit to giving away code, a way of having the project pay for itself without requiring license fees. But suppose, as often happens in life, your need to keep a roof over your head means that you need to take a break from the project shortly after launch. So while you've just provided tremendous value to the community, for at least a couple months you simply aren't wealthy enough to keep giving it your primary focus, and need to spend some time earning money through other means before you'll have accrued enough to be able to afford to resume enhancing the project. In the meantime, I recognize the value of what you've done and would like to have the same value at my own site. So rather than contribute new features to the code base hosted at your site, I simply fork the project and host it at my own. To justify this to the community, I might spend as much as 50 hours adding a new feature or two to your work, just enough to make it worthwhile for the traffic to come to my site instead of yours. So you spent 1100 hours building a project from scratch and making a name for it, and I get most of the benefit of that work for a fraction of the effort. Had you chosen a Creative Commons license instead of GPL, you would have been able to share your work just as broadly to as many people as before, but you would also have had the option of requiring that any additions to the code base be contributed to
Re: Creative Common Copyright Notice in Standalones
Just keeping to the parts: On 8 January 2011 15:51, Richard Gaskin ambassa...@fourthworld.com wrote: Had you chosen a Creative Commons license instead of GPL, you would have been able to share your work just as broadly to as many people as before, but you would also have had the option of requiring that any additions to the code base be contributed to the main project, rather than allowing forked derivatives. I'm not sure what you mean here - are you talking about the No Derivatives option http://creativecommons.org/licenses/? While this prevents creating a derived work, it does nothing to stop someone hosting the content on their site - as in your example? I've not explored the use cases of the No-Derivative clauses that much - as the only ones I've come across it artists wanting to keep control of the integrity of the work - but you've got me intrigued. What is it that you want to prevent - other than someone hosting the content? I just can;t get my head around the business use case that relates to the license here. On forking in general, that does come up a lot, and so far in all the business cases I've seen. while the possibility of a fork certainly frightens many people, I have actually never seen a clear cut case of it damaging a commercial project - that is I've not seen any real world examples of individual or companies having their work forked and losing out - it has in all the cases I've looked at turned out that the main developer keeps the community, except in cases in which the developer moves on to other work - in which case the code would have died without the possibility of low friction forking. Indeed the main developer has nearly always benefited by being commercially valuable to competitors due to their position in the community and knowledge of the people and code base - so they end up getting a good deal from what otherwise would have been a hostile takeover of competitive product. I would really like to hear examples of companies or individuals having lost out commercially by having their code forked - maybe there are cases but people just keep quiet about them? I have experience of many projects not working out, but these have always been down to a failure of attracting developers, or related issues often as a result of taking a half-open approach. I can see stopping others from benefiting commercially (the non-commercial option) as preventing the type of revenue loss you mention - for instance through advertising revenue, but the GPL type clauses force projects to contribute back to the main project, which in practice is sufficient to prevent destructive forking for active projects? Thanks for taking the time to respond - my interest is in real business models built around licenses, or other legal innovations - and not the politics :)** ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Creative Common Copyright Notice in Standalones
On 7 January 2011 16:25, Richard Gaskin ambassa...@fourthworld.com wrote: One of the reasons so many developers like the Creative Commons license is that there are many flavors to cover a broader range of specific usage rights than GPL, and certainly X11, affords. The goals of sharing code can cover a broad spectrum, from those of the purist like rms or those of companies who earn their living with proprietary code like Apple, with a nearly infinite variety of needs in between. So while I can appreciate the desire to have the smallest possible number of FOSS licenses in use, I can understand when a developer may find them inadequate for their particular needs. For my own needs, I'm disappointed that CC isn't recommended for code. I'd release more FOSS code if it were sanctioned for such use (I may even still, since others have ignored the caveat and use CC for code anyway). I share your concerns, and thoughts on this. I've looked long and hard at licensing, and tired as you suggest to use CC licenses for code, but I could not get it to work, and aside from a few causl individual uses I don't know of any projects that do this. I do think it is strange that there still is not a software license with a CC-type non-commercial clause in it, even after many years of popular use for creative content - seems strange. The main issue for us here is about mixing code projects together in ways in which the code can be used in clear ways for commercial and non-commercial projects - removing the uncertainty. Let's just make sure the code bases can be mixed together. If someone uses a strange - CC style license, which is not GPL compatible, then I won't be able to combine it with code that uses other licenses in any legally robust way. As a practical example I would not be able to submit my code libraries or code I have form other people to the revIgnitor project, as the license was hand crafted. Ralf changing the license to a GPL compatible license made everything start to work nicely. The same will go with other projects that seek to make compilations of open code. A mosaic of poorly thought out licenses will cause real problems. ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Creative Common Copyright Notice in Standalones
David Bovill wrote: The main issue for us here is about mixing code projects together in ways in which the code can be used in clear ways for commercial and non-commercial projects - removing the uncertainty. Let's just make sure the code bases can be mixed together. If someone uses a strange - CC style license, which is not GPL compatible, then I won't be able to combine it with code that uses other licenses in any legally robust way. For some that may be a feature. If you want GPL, use GPL. MIT seems even more liberal, all the sharing without the forced openness downstream. And then there's even public domain, the freest of all. As a practical example I would not be able to submit my code libraries or code I have form other people to the revIgnitor project, as the license was hand crafted. Ralf changing the license to a GPL compatible license made everything start to work nicely. That may work well for you, but that means for me I can't use revIgniter as an embedded system in a closed-source product. Not that I have an immediate need for that, but I'd considered using revIgniter for a project recently, but that project has a likelihood to fork into an embedded proprietary component down the road, so GPL stuff would be challenging to consider. The same will go with other projects that seek to make compilations of open code. A mosaic of poorly thought out licenses will cause real problems. Anything poorly thought out will cause problems. :) There are scenarios for meaningful sharing that aren't addressed by GLP-compatible licenses, so while it would be desirable if there were fewer licenses in the world, the diversity of needs seems to require equally diverse terms to describe them. -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com LiveCode Journal blog: http://LiveCodejournal.com/blog.irv ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
