Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 01:01:35PM -0500, Don Armstrong wrote: On Tue, 11 Mar 2003, David Turner wrote: Actually, there was copying, but not distribution, as I recall. The articles in question were circulated throughout the company so they could be copied by employees. [Hence the interal distribution...] Now, wait a second. According to Nick Phillips, that's just deployment, not distribution. There isn't any such thing as internal distribution. ;-) -- G. Branden Robinson| You don't just decide to break Debian GNU/Linux | Kubrick's code of silence and then [EMAIL PROTECTED] | get drawn away from it to a http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | discussion about cough medicine. pgpg159wPxpnz.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Tue, 11 Mar 2003, David Turner wrote: Actually, there was copying, but not distribution, as I recall. The articles in question were circulated throughout the company so they could be copied by employees. [Hence the interal distribution...] Sure, but it would have had to be substancial enough for fair use to kick in. And there's *still* the other three factors to consider. Could be, but I think we're agreeing that AGU v Texaco doesn't apply to personal in home modification. Don Armstrong -- She was alot like starbucks. IE, generic and expensive. -- hugh macleod http://www.gapingvoid.com/batch3.htm http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu pgpbuHN5GqJ4R.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 2003-03-10 at 15:47, Walter Landry wrote: Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, David Turner wrote: On Fri, 2003-03-07 at 00:19, Anthony Towns wrote: Well, they try to anyway. If there's no copying taking place, I fail to see how it can apply, whether it tries to or not. Because the preparation of derivative works is one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders. Please read 17 USC 106 (2) again. Yet again, it is not enough to cite 17 USC 106 (2), without citing 17 USC 107 and the caselaw based on 17 USC 107. Anthony is quite reasonable in presuming that the current interpretation of Fair Use applies to cases where there is no copying taking place. You are free to disagree, but merely citing 106 is not sufficient. In particular, I thought there was court precedent holding that it is ok for people using proprietary programs to swap patches with each other. It wouldn't make much sense to be able to swap patches if you couldn't apply them. I would be surprised at this. Please give me a cite. Straight from http://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html Patches According to the CONTU Final Report, which is generally interpreted by the courts as legislative history, ``the right to add features to the program that were not present at the time of rightful acquisition'' falls within the owner's rights of modification under section 117. Note that, since it's not copyright infringement for you to apply a patch, it's also not copyright infringement for someone to give you a patch. For example, Galoob's Game Genie, which patches the software in Nintendo cartridges, does not infringe Nintendo's copyrights. ``Having paid Nintendo a fair return, the consumer may experiment with the product and create new variations of play, for personal enjoyment, without creating a derivative work.'' Galoob v. Nintendo, 780 F. Supp 1283 (N.D. Cal. 1991), affirmed, 22 U.S.P.Q.2d 1587 (9th Cir. 1992). See also Foresight v. Pfortmiller, 719 F. Supp 1006 (D. Kan. 1989). Regards, Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: PHPNuke license
Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [Just as a note, debian list policy is to _not_ Cc: individuals unless they explicitly ask for it, or set appropriate MFT:'s. I have done neither, so you need not Cc: me.] On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, David Turner wrote: Anthony is quite reasonable in presuming that the current interpretation of Fair Use applies to cases where there is no copying taking place. I think this is fundamentally unsound, given Texaco. I gave an actual Fair Use analysis in another message. Fortunatly, AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION v. TEXACO INC., 60 F.3d 913 (2nd Cir. 1994) is a rather narrow decision, and applies to a case where there actually was distribution (albiet internal) and where there was institutional, systematic copying.[1] I'm still at a loss as to how you intend for the this decision to apply to the elimination of Fair Use rights of software. Furthermore, I'd hope that RMS and others would prefer that people be able to do with software as they wished in their own homes, so long as they didn't distribute it. I've also read through the whole decision, and I can't see anywhere that it talks about modifications not being fair use. It only talks about copying. In fact, it seems to argue that if there had been modifications (creating a transformative work) then there would be a better defense against the copying. Regards, Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: PHPNuke license
On Mon, 2003-03-10 at 15:47, Walter Landry wrote: Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, David Turner wrote: On Fri, 2003-03-07 at 00:19, Anthony Towns wrote: Well, they try to anyway. If there's no copying taking place, I fail to see how it can apply, whether it tries to or not. Because the preparation of derivative works is one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders. Please read 17 USC 106 (2) again. Yet again, it is not enough to cite 17 USC 106 (2), without citing 17 USC 107 and the caselaw based on 17 USC 107. Anthony is quite reasonable in presuming that the current interpretation of Fair Use applies to cases where there is no copying taking place. You are free to disagree, but merely citing 106 is not sufficient. In particular, I thought there was court precedent holding that it is ok for people using proprietary programs to swap patches with each other. It wouldn't make much sense to be able to swap patches if you couldn't apply them. I would be surprised at this. Please give me a cite. -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
On Mon, 2003-03-10 at 16:50, Glenn Maynard wrote: On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 02:36:51PM -0500, David Turner wrote: Indeed, in the current version, it is *perfectly clear* that mere modification triggers (2)(a) and (2)(c). If it did not, why would (2)(b) specifically mention distribution? Even if it's agreed that the current language restricts modifications that aren't distributed[1], it's far from clear whether this was the intent, or that it's useful. What's the point? It seems like a restriction that has no benefit to freedom at all. Why do I need to date changes for a program I'm not distributing? Of course, if I make changes and don't date them, I might have trouble later on if I change my mind and want to distribute them; but that'd be my own fault. The license certainly can't protect me from my own laziness. The intent is actually to protect downstream people from your mistakes. Consider: person A at corporation X changes something in program P, then quits, and then person B prepares P for distribution, without knowledge of when A made what changes. If the changes are noted when they're made, this can't happen. [1] The fact that there's active debate over this should be proof enough that it's not perfectly clear. Why not get an official position on this, don the sombrero and settle it, so we can at least stop debating the wording? OK, I've asked upstream. Waiting for a response. -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 16:26, Walter Landry wrote: Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [Just as a note, debian list policy is to _not_ Cc: individuals unless they explicitly ask for it, or set appropriate MFT:'s. I have done neither, so you need not Cc: me.] On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, David Turner wrote: Anthony is quite reasonable in presuming that the current interpretation of Fair Use applies to cases where there is no copying taking place. I think this is fundamentally unsound, given Texaco. I gave an actual Fair Use analysis in another message. Fortunatly, AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION v. TEXACO INC., 60 F.3d 913 (2nd Cir. 1994) is a rather narrow decision, and applies to a case where there actually was distribution (albiet internal) and where there was institutional, systematic copying.[1] Actually, there was copying, but not distribution, as I recall. I'm still at a loss as to how you intend for the this decision to apply to the elimination of Fair Use rights of software. Furthermore, I'd hope that RMS and others would prefer that people be able to do with software as they wished in their own homes, so long as they didn't distribute it. I've also read through the whole decision, and I can't see anywhere that it talks about modifications not being fair use. It only talks about copying. Yes, like I said, it's not the exact case I want. But it does talk about copying in the absence of distribution, which is what I was citing it for. In fact, it seems to argue that if there had been modifications (creating a transformative work) then there would be a better defense against the copying. Sure, but it would have had to be substancial enough for fair use to kick in. And there's *still* the other three factors to consider. -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 10:00:29PM -0500, David Turner wrote: The intent is actually to protect downstream people from your mistakes. Please don't be a babysitter. :-/ Consider: person A at corporation X changes something in program P, then quits, and then person B prepares P for distribution, without knowledge of when A made what changes. If the changes are noted when they're made, this can't happen. It's not like the FSF or other GPL-user wouldn't have a cause for action in this case. Once the distribution happens, the restrictions attach. In any event, I am highly skeptical that this intent is realized in even a small minority of cases. People are in general pretty sloppy, especially with 2a). -- G. Branden Robinson|The best place to hide something is Debian GNU/Linux |in documentation. [EMAIL PROTECTED] |-- Ethan Benson http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | pgpHgAaeH7Nhi.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 05:38:55PM -0500, David Turner wrote: I think this is fundamentally unsound, given Texaco. I gave an actual Fair Use analysis in another message. Pardon my language, but fuck Texaco. If your reading of the holdings of the case are correct, I see no reason why this court decision deserves any more of our moral support than the DMCA, CBDTPA, or the Trusted Computing initiative. Copyright cases that erode fair use should in general indicate to the FSF, and other propoponents of Free Software, areas where we need to be sure our licenses are *granting* sufficient permissions for people to enjoy their freedoms -- they should not be treated as great opportunities to turn the screws on the users, and your repeated citation of the Texaco case sounds exactly like that. Does the FSF endorse the erosion of Fair Use rights in the U.S.? If so, why? -- G. Branden Robinson| Debian GNU/Linux | De minimis non curat lex. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | pgp1Ipf0WGuda.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Tue, Mar 11, 2003 at 04:04:12PM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote: On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 05:01:58PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: I do. And so apparently does the RIAA, who feel it's an infringement of copyright for people to put their own ripped audio onto sharable volumes at work, at least once someone who doesn't own an officially sanctioned copy accesses it for the first time. In this case, it's the individual who is doing it on their own behalf, rather than as part of the corporate entity, hence they are distributing. If the company required them as part of their job to rip audio and put it onto internally shared volumes for internal company use, I don't believe that would be distrinbution. I do not think this is a very widely-held understanding of the term distribution. Likewise, the police can bust you for possession with intent to distribute for carrying certain quantities of marijuana, and I don't think the law's assumption is that you necessarily intend to be distributing to general public, or on the open market -- it is enough that you might distribute the stuff privately to your friends. I don't see how you mean to apply this to the situation we're trying to discuss; please elucidate. You're going to have to tell me what part of it you don't understand. I'm saying that at least in some legal contexts, distribution is not limited to corporate activity, nor to public exchanges of goods. I'm not even it's a bad definition, even if sometimes gets applied to evil ends. Nick's wordsmy words deployment private distribution distributionpublic distribution I think my terms afford less ambiguity. What would you call the class of activities that encompasses both deployment *and* distribution? I think you're treading dangerous ground using the word distribution in a context in which the distribution -related elements of copyright law, licenses etc. do not/should not apply. They certainly *do* apply. The only reason the RIAA didn't bust people for making mix tapes for their friends in the 80s was that it was way too hard to enforce their will. But they very much did want to stamp that out. Why do you think audio DAT never took off as a consumer format? SCMS. Whether they *should* is a different matter. But rather than sophistically redefine distribution to exclude actions that *shouldn't* be restricted by Fair Use, I'd rather defend those Fair Use rights. Otherwise the copyright cartels will render our definitions irrelevant anyway, through steady encroachment in the courts and via national legislatures. Does there need to be a word that describes both? Why not? Does there need to be a word that describes the class of activities that encompasses both lobster fishing and travelling to the moon -- they're different, why should there be one word for them? This analogy is absurdly exaggerated. Both deployment and distribution, to use what I think your terms are, involve the transfer of materials (albeit possibly intangible ones) from one party to another -- even if the parties are individuals working for the same company. -- G. Branden Robinson| Human beings rarely imagine a god Debian GNU/Linux | that behaves any better than a [EMAIL PROTECTED] | spoiled child. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Robert Heinlein pgpvHMzCwTC69.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Sat, Mar 08, 2003 at 06:59:18PM -0800, Mark Rafn wrote: On Sat, 8 Mar 2003, John Goerzen wrote: I completely agree with that :-) Recent comments on this list make it clear that 2a and 2c are intended to apply to modifications you make regardless of whether you distribute. I'd Well, I disagree with that interpretation. Just because some people on the list interpret it one way doesn't mean that this interpretation is the one that would necessarily survive a court test. I do agree that the language is ambiguous, and yet it is totally impossible for the GPL to prevent modification of your own copy. In any case, the user of the software already has rights under fair use to modify it, before even agreeing to the license.
Re: PHPNuke license
On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 08:54:15AM -0600, John Goerzen wrote: In any case, the user of the software already has rights under fair use to modify it, before even agreeing to the license. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/debian-legal-200204/msg00039.html -- Glenn Maynard
Re: PHPNuke license
On Fri, 2003-03-07 at 00:19, Anthony Towns wrote: On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 06:28:06PM -0500, David Turner wrote: On Thu, 2003-03-06 at 17:35, John Goerzen wrote: On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 05:07:13PM -0500, David Turner wrote: Distribution does not, and has never, mattered (see previous message in this thread). I think it's pretty clear that all three subsections of section 2 takes no effect unless distribution has occured. Please read it again -- if that's so, why does (2)(b) specifically mention distribution? (2)(a) and (2)(c) *do* apply even in the absence of distribution. Well, they try to anyway. If there's no copying taking place, I fail to see how it can apply, whether it tries to or not. Because the preparation of derivative works is one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders. Please read 17 USC 106 (2) again. -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
On Fri, 2003-03-07 at 10:43, Branden Robinson wrote: On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 02:08:26AM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: Scripsit Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] You're ignoring 2 itself: 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:[4] Which is ambiguous in itself. It can either mean You may modify provided blah, AND you may copy provided blah. or You may [modify and then copy] provided blah. Such are the wonders of natural language. I'd like to go on record as requesting that the FSF clarify this in future versions of the GNU GPL, such that only distribution of modifications are limited by the license, not modification in and of itself. I do not think this is going to happen, especially given AGPL's (2)(d). Indeed, in the current version, it is *perfectly clear* that mere modification triggers (2)(a) and (2)(c). If it did not, why would (2)(b) specifically mention distribution? Imposing constraints on simple modification[1] is of questionable utility given the difficulty of enforcement, Enforcement should not be too hard. Most violation reports I get are from users of the programs, and some are from employees of violating companies. to say nothing of potential clashes with the principles of Fair Use, I don't see a conflict here. If it happens that removal of (2)(c) and (2)(d) stuff in the absence of any copying or distribution is considered fair use, then those sections won't hold. But I don't think it is, given Texaco. and the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of privacy rights[2]. If the plain language of Article 1, Section 8 doesn't restrict the term of copyright, what makes you think that the ambiguity of Amendment 9 will restrict its scope? And again, Texaco was private too. If you find me a case (and I couldn't find one either way), then we'll talk about the Constitution and Fair Use. Mr. Turner, can you pass this along to the appropriate people? I've already expressed to people here that Debian-legal has serious reservations about (2)(c) and (2)(d). Do you want me to tell Eben that you think section 2, in the absence of distribution, is unenforcable? I doubt that he would agree with you, and you are welcome to -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, David Turner wrote: On Fri, 2003-03-07 at 00:19, Anthony Towns wrote: Well, they try to anyway. If there's no copying taking place, I fail to see how it can apply, whether it tries to or not. Because the preparation of derivative works is one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders. Please read 17 USC 106 (2) again. Yet again, it is not enough to cite 17 USC 106 (2), without citing 17 USC 107 and the caselaw based on 17 USC 107. Anthony is quite reasonable in presuming that the current interpretation of Fair Use applies to cases where there is no copying taking place. You are free to disagree, but merely citing 106 is not sufficient. Don Armstrong -- If you wish to strive for peace of soul, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire. -- Friedrich Nietzsche http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu pgpEOEvRGzjUr.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Fri, 2003-03-07 at 00:19, Anthony Towns wrote: On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 06:28:06PM -0500, David Turner wrote: On Thu, 2003-03-06 at 17:35, John Goerzen wrote: On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 05:07:13PM -0500, David Turner wrote: Distribution does not, and has never, mattered (see previous message in this thread). I think it's pretty clear that all three subsections of section 2 takes no effect unless distribution has occured. Please read it again -- if that's so, why does (2)(b) specifically mention distribution? (2)(a) and (2)(c) *do* apply even in the absence of distribution. Well, they try to anyway. If there's no copying taking place, I fail to see how it can apply, whether it tries to or not. Because the preparation of derivative works is one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders. Please read 17 USC 106 (2) again. Yes... but I can write in the margins of a book as much as I like, or tape over bits of a video recording. Given a legal unmodified copy on disk, can't I modify it as I wish under the first-sale doctrine? I own the drive it's on, after all, and copyright does not in any way infringe my right to dispose of my physical property. -Brian Still not a lawyer. -- Brian T. Sniffen[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/
Re: PHPNuke license
Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, David Turner wrote: On Fri, 2003-03-07 at 00:19, Anthony Towns wrote: Well, they try to anyway. If there's no copying taking place, I fail to see how it can apply, whether it tries to or not. Because the preparation of derivative works is one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders. Please read 17 USC 106 (2) again. Yet again, it is not enough to cite 17 USC 106 (2), without citing 17 USC 107 and the caselaw based on 17 USC 107. Anthony is quite reasonable in presuming that the current interpretation of Fair Use applies to cases where there is no copying taking place. You are free to disagree, but merely citing 106 is not sufficient. In particular, I thought there was court precedent holding that it is ok for people using proprietary programs to swap patches with each other. It wouldn't make much sense to be able to swap patches if you couldn't apply them. Regards, Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: PHPNuke license
On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 02:36:51PM -0500, David Turner wrote: I do not think this is going to happen, especially given AGPL's (2)(d). Indeed, in the current version, it is *perfectly clear* that mere modification triggers (2)(a) and (2)(c). If it did not, why would (2)(b) specifically mention distribution? David, I clearly disagree with that and am on record as doing so. I find your logic that section (2)(b) specifically mentions distribution, thus all of section 2 takes effect on modification to be non-sensical. I fail to see how one follows from the other. The question is whether provided that you also meet all these conditions applies to You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it or copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above or both. In general, in English, you'd assume that the provided.. clause applies the the text most immediately preceding it -- copy and distribute Thus, I read the start of section 2 as saying: You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the program. Additionally, you may copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: I believe you read it as saying: You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the program. You may also copy and distribute such modifictions or work under the terms of Section 1 above. Any modification, copying, or distribution may be done only of you meet all of these conditions: I am at least willing to grant that there is ambiguity. The wording in the paragraph is poor, and leads to this ambiguity.
Re: PHPNuke license
On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 02:38:26PM -0500, David Turner wrote: Well, they try to anyway. If there's no copying taking place, I fail to see how it can apply, whether it tries to or not. Because the preparation of derivative works is one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders. Please read 17 USC 106 (2) again. This repeated citing of 17 USC 106 makes me question whether the GPL is really living up to its intent of being applicable outside the US. In any case, my quibble with you is not with 17 USC, but with your interpretation of the text at the start of section 2. -- John
Re: PHPNuke license
On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 02:36:51PM -0500, David Turner wrote: Indeed, in the current version, it is *perfectly clear* that mere modification triggers (2)(a) and (2)(c). If it did not, why would (2)(b) specifically mention distribution? Even if it's agreed that the current language restricts modifications that aren't distributed[1], it's far from clear whether this was the intent, or that it's useful. What's the point? It seems like a restriction that has no benefit to freedom at all. Why do I need to date changes for a program I'm not distributing? Of course, if I make changes and don't date them, I might have trouble later on if I change my mind and want to distribute them; but that'd be my own fault. The license certainly can't protect me from my own laziness. [1] The fact that there's active debate over this should be proof enough that it's not perfectly clear. Why not get an official position on this, don the sombrero and settle it, so we can at least stop debating the wording? -- Glenn Maynard
GPLv3 2(d) (was Re: PHPNuke license)
On Fri, 2003-03-07 at 09:12, Brian T. Sniffen wrote: Wouldn't a requirement that if you make the software available for use to another party, you provide an offer of source to those users make much more sense, and avoid entanglements with the function of the software? That would be impossible under US copyright law, where use isn't one of the 17 usc 106 exclusive rights, while modification is. Public performance is restricted by copyright law; I'd certainly consider an Apache web server to be a public performance of Apache. That is an open question. I understand that one idea for v3 is to write something like, If running software is public performance, you can do it, so long as [ (2)(d)-like thing ]. I haven't sen text on it. In any case, there's another problem I allude to above but didn't mention clearly: the existing requirements for source distribution are very flexible. This proposed 2d imposes technical limitations on functionality. Every time a license tries to use exact technical definitions, it ends up breaking a few years later. Yes, that's a known bug. We welcome suggestions for generalizations. I'd far prefer to see a GPLv3 grant and guarantee more freedom, not less: * Remove technical requirements such as 2c, I agree that (2)(c) as it stands is broken. the object/executable langauge in 3 I have no idea what you are talking about here. the header/Makefile Do you mean that source code should not include Makefiles (the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable)? and OS exceptions in the later section of 3. I do not think you really want to remove the major component exception -- doing so would basically make Free Software impossible on proprietary operating systems. * Remove the strange definition that a work containing nothing both creative and derived from a GPL'd work be considered a derivative of the GPL'd work: that is, remove the definition that linking is modification. It's not in the license now, but clearly state that if you incorporate nothing creative from the GPL's work, you are not a derivative work. This contradicts case law (Microstar v. Formgen, perhaps others I don't know about), and FSF's general goals. * Add public performance to the scope clause in 0, permitting (for example) me to give a lecture on the details of GNUtls, This would probably be public display, since performance is *of* a work, not *about* a work. or to run a web server which presents an interface to Perl. I agree with this generally, modulo what I said above. I can't, however, come up with good text. -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 12:40:58PM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote: On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 11:28:27AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: Why does anyone care about modified copies that don't get distributed? Consider the case where I modify gs (since that's the example I used earlier) and deploy it around my company. How is deploying it not distributing it? Because it's kept entirely within the entity that created it (it being the derivative work based on gs). I don't believe that would generally be counted as distribution. But IANAL etc. I do. And so apparently does the RIAA, who feel it's an infringement of copyright for people to put their own ripped audio onto sharable volumes at work, at least once someone who doesn't own an officially sanctioned copy accesses it for the first time. Likewise, the police can bust you for possession with intent to distribute for carrying certain quantities of marijuana, and I don't think the law's assumption is that you necessarily intend to be distributing to general public, or on the open market -- it is enough that you might distribute the stuff privately to your friends. We may not like the RIAA or marijuana laws, but their interpretation of distribution may end up being the controlling definition. I'm not even it's a bad definition, even if sometimes gets applied to evil ends. Nick's wordsmy words deployment private distribution distributionpublic distribution I think my terms afford less ambiguity. What would you call the class of activities that encompasses both deployment *and* distribution? -- G. Branden Robinson| Debian GNU/Linux | // // // / / [EMAIL PROTECTED] | EI 'AANIIGOO 'AHOOT'E http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | pgpK2XtEDfCEz.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Mon, 2003-03-10 at 15:04, Don Armstrong wrote: On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, David Turner wrote: On Fri, 2003-03-07 at 00:19, Anthony Towns wrote: Well, they try to anyway. If there's no copying taking place, I fail to see how it can apply, whether it tries to or not. Because the preparation of derivative works is one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders. Please read 17 USC 106 (2) again. Yet again, it is not enough to cite 17 USC 106 (2), without citing 17 USC 107 and the caselaw based on 17 USC 107. Anthony is quite reasonable in presuming that the current interpretation of Fair Use applies to cases where there is no copying taking place. I think this is fundamentally unsound, given Texaco. I gave an actual Fair Use analysis in another message. -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
[Just as a note, debian list policy is to _not_ Cc: individuals unless they explicitly ask for it, or set appropriate MFT:'s. I have done neither, so you need not Cc: me.] On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, David Turner wrote: Anthony is quite reasonable in presuming that the current interpretation of Fair Use applies to cases where there is no copying taking place. I think this is fundamentally unsound, given Texaco. I gave an actual Fair Use analysis in another message. Fortunatly, AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION v. TEXACO INC., 60 F.3d 913 (2nd Cir. 1994) is a rather narrow decision, and applies to a case where there actually was distribution (albiet internal) and where there was institutional, systematic copying.[1] I'm still at a loss as to how you intend for the this decision to apply to the elimination of Fair Use rights of software. Furthermore, I'd hope that RMS and others would prefer that people be able to do with software as they wished in their own homes, so long as they didn't distribute it. Don Armstrong 1: http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/60_F3d_913.htm -- Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -- Mark Twain http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu pgpvYDiG9KES7.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 05:01:58PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: Because it's kept entirely within the entity that created it (it being the derivative work based on gs). I don't believe that would generally be counted as distribution. But IANAL etc. I do. And so apparently does the RIAA, who feel it's an infringement of copyright for people to put their own ripped audio onto sharable volumes at work, at least once someone who doesn't own an officially sanctioned copy accesses it for the first time. In this case, it's the individual who is doing it on their own behalf, rather than as part of the corporate entity, hence they are distributing. If the company required them as part of their job to rip audio and put it onto internally shared volumes for internal company use, I don't believe that would be distrinbution. Likewise, the police can bust you for possession with intent to distribute for carrying certain quantities of marijuana, and I don't think the law's assumption is that you necessarily intend to be distributing to general public, or on the open market -- it is enough that you might distribute the stuff privately to your friends. I don't see how you mean to apply this to the situation we're trying to discuss; please elucidate. We may not like the RIAA or marijuana laws, but their interpretation of distribution may end up being the controlling definition. Heh... I'm not even it's a bad definition, even if sometimes gets applied to evil ends. Nick's words my words deploymentprivate distribution distribution public distribution I think my terms afford less ambiguity. What would you call the class of activities that encompasses both deployment *and* distribution? I think you're treading dangerous ground using the word distribution in a context in which the distribution -related elements of copyright law, licenses etc. do not/should not apply. Does there need to be a word that describes both? Does there need to be a word that describes the class of activities that encompasses both lobster fishing and travelling to the moon -- they're different, why should there be one word for them? Cheers, Nick -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 11:28:27AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: Why does anyone care about modified copies that don't get distributed? Consider the case where I modify gs (since that's the example I used earlier) and deploy it around my company. How is deploying it not distributing it? Because it's kept entirely within the entity that created it (it being the derivative work based on gs). I don't believe that would generally be counted as distribution. But IANAL etc. Cheers, Nick -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your lucky number is 3552664958674928. Watch for it everywhere.
Re: GPLv3 2(d) (was Re: PHPNuke license)
On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 09:12:43AM -0500, Brian T. Sniffen wrote: That would be silly, since you could always fall back to v2. The only reason to fear v2 or later is that v3 could be too permissive, not too restrictive. No; if I release software under v2 or later, and a v3 with this clause is released, I have a problem: somebody can take my work, make modifications to it, and distribute it in such a way that I cannot use it. I think you may be ignoring the bit about the license being automatically granted by the original author, not someone down the chain who happens to have modified it. But I don't have time to check the details now. Cheers, Nick -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
Re: PHPNuke license
la, 08-03-2003 kello 00:09, David Turner kirjoitti: It seems to me that there's a lot of stuff that you would want that gateway to strip or abbreviate. You would want to cut all copyright notices. Assuming you would want to, how would you? There is no standard format for copyright notices, and heuristics and fuzzy pattern matching would cut out too much, especially given the existence of many languages. (That's one reason why the service, as actually implemented, didn't do that. I'm the one who implemented it, so I should know. It only stripped out HTML markup.) (This is probably irrelevant to the discussion at hand, but I wished to clarify things and defend a former project of mine.)
Re: PHPNuke license
On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 06:50:54PM -0500, Don Armstrong wrote: On Fri, 07 Mar 2003, John Goerzen wrote: What exactly am I ignoring here? Nothing here seems to require that I distribute modified copies. Perhaps I misunderstood you. What I was getting at is that 2 a-c doesn't apply to modifications you make that you do not distribute. I completely agree with that :-)
Re: PHPNuke license
On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 06:50:54PM -0500, Don Armstrong wrote: What I was getting at is that 2 a-c doesn't apply to modifications you make that you do not distribute. On Sat, 8 Mar 2003, John Goerzen wrote: I completely agree with that :-) Recent comments on this list make it clear that 2a and 2c are intended to apply to modifications you make regardless of whether you distribute. I'd always assumed that the provided you meet all of these conditions refered to the and copy and distribute part of item 2, but appently it applies to both that and You may modify your copy. You may, however, be able to make some modifications under fair use without a permission granted by the license. Interestingly, 2c includes a requirement for a notice that users may redistribute the program, but no requirement that users can actually get a copy of the program to redistribute. -- Mark Rafn[EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.dagon.net/
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 06:14:03PM -0500, David Turner wrote: There's a similar case in the LGPL (finding it is left as an exercise for the reader). In practical terms, I think the FSF pretends these glitches don't exist, and that these aren't violations. And tries to fix them for the next version. I'll add this to my comments on the issue. While I am glad that the FSF is not pursing people that have run afoul of glitches, I should also point out at this point that many people besides the FSF own copyright on GPL-licensed works, and are not necessarily as inclined to be reasonable. All I'm trying to say here is that a quick fix would be nice.
GPLv3 2(d) (was Re: PHPNuke license)
David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Can we please, please, please start another thread to discuss this?! done that's enough reason for me to stop releasing code under version 2 or later of the GNU GPL: the persistent spectre that future versions will prohibit certain sorts of functional modifications. That would be silly, since you could always fall back to v2. The only reason to fear v2 or later is that v3 could be too permissive, not too restrictive. No; if I release software under v2 or later, and a v3 with this clause is released, I have a problem: somebody can take my work, make modifications to it, and distribute it in such a way that I cannot use it. Even if he gives me the source code, I can't make use of his modifications without upgrading the licensing of my code to v3. If I'm going to give people the freedom to take my code and make it non-free[1], I might as well just put it under an MIT license. Wouldn't a requirement that if you make the software available for use to another party, you provide an offer of source to those users make much more sense, and avoid entanglements with the function of the software? That would be impossible under US copyright law, where use isn't one of the 17 usc 106 exclusive rights, while modification is. Public performance is restricted by copyright law; I'd certainly consider an Apache web server to be a public performance of Apache. In any case, there's another problem I allude to above but didn't mention clearly: the existing requirements for source distribution are very flexible. This proposed 2d imposes technical limitations on functionality. Every time a license tries to use exact technical definitions, it ends up breaking a few years later. I'm not nearly as worried about the HTTP requirement as I am about the definition of computer network. Is my USB keyboard/mouse a network? How about my Bluetooth keyboard? When I'm interacting through an anonymizing mix-net, there's a decent chance I'm not online when the other side is. Are we interacting through a network? What about a web client which responds to certain server requests for its source[2]: it may not have any way to hear a request from the server, and if it's used as the skeleton for an embedded control system, all that junk needs to go along with it. I'd far prefer to see a GPLv3 grant and guarantee more freedom, not less: * Remove technical requirements such as 2c, the object/executable langauge in 3, the header/Makefile and OS exceptions in the later section of 3. * Remove the strange definition that a work containing nothing both creative and derived from a GPL'd work be considered a derivative of the GPL'd work: that is, remove the definition that linking is modification. It's not in the license now, but clearly state that if you incorporate nothing creative from the GPL's work, you are not a derivative work. * Add public performance to the scope clause in 0, permitting (for example) me to give a lecture on the details of GNUtls, or to run a web server which presents an interface to Perl. -Brian Footnotes: [1] That is, modify and distribute it in non-free ways. [2] Admittedly, an odd case. -- Brian T. Sniffen[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 06:36:08PM -0500, Don Armstrong wrote: On Thu, 06 Mar 2003, David Turner wrote: On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 14:19, John Goerzen wrote: BUT -- (2)(c) ONLY takes effect if the user is distributing the source to a modified program AND that program is intractive. No! (2)(c) doesn't contain the first part of that -- it doesn't require distribution! See my other messages in this thread. You're ignoring 2 itself: 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:[4] What exactly am I ignoring here? Nothing here seems to require that I distribute modified copies. In fact, the [1] you cited agrees with me. Additionally, fair use itself limits even the applicability of the copyright, as explained in [1] [2] and [3]. Don Armstrong 1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200303/msg00121.html 2: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200303/msg00168.html 3: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200303/msg00261.html 4: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html -- There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. Bach http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
GPLv3 2(d) (was Re: PHPNuke license)
David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: * d) If the Program as you received it is intended to interact with users through a computer network and if, in the version you received, any user interacting with the Program was given the opportunity to request transmission to that user of the Program's complete source code, you must not remove that facility from your modified version of the Program or work based on the Program, and must offer an equivalent opportunity for all users interacting with your Program through a computer network to request immediate transmission by HTTP of the complete source code of your modified version or other derivative work. It definitely does seem to me that if this can be done via a public performance restriction that would be much better. You may want to narrow the scope of public performance a bit (should apache or an ftpd be included?) -- define a term to cover the sort of public performances you're interested in. Then say that this sort of performance triggers the redistribution bit (written offer for source or distributed on the web, etc.). Possibly throw in the quine-like functionality as an optional way of satisfying that requirement. If the term used (public use, say) is defined a smidge too broadly that shouldn't be too terribly much of a problem. I may not like having to provide a link to the apache source when I put up a web page, but especially if I can satisfy that by pointing to the original location if I haven't changed it, I don't think it's a terrible burden. Nonetheless, defining this term is probably the hard part. I'm guessing that that's at least in part what you're trying to avoid by leaving it up to the original author to include the quine-like functionality. This scheme has the (profound, imho) advantage that it does not restrict the functionality (or text/source) of the derivative work. Otherwise you get into the game of trying to predict and account for later development and technology. If there's one thing that's obvious looking at the history of good intentions expressed in licenses, it's that predicting the future is a losing game no matter how you play it. IANAL, so I'm happy to be educated if this isn't workable for some reason. -- Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
Re: PHPNuke license
On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 02:08:26AM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: Scripsit Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] You're ignoring 2 itself: 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:[4] Which is ambiguous in itself. It can either mean You may modify provided blah, AND you may copy provided blah. or You may [modify and then copy] provided blah. Such are the wonders of natural language. I'd like to go on record as requesting that the FSF clarify this in future versions of the GNU GPL, such that only distribution of modifications are limited by the license, not modification in and of itself. Imposing constraints on simple modification[1] is of questionable utility given the difficulty of enforcement, to say nothing of potential clashes with the principles of Fair Use, and the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of privacy rights[2]. Mr. Turner, can you pass this along to the appropriate people? [1] that is, modification that is not combined with some other activity germane to copyright [2] It's right there in Amendment IX; it's not my fault if some people are too stupid or too conservative[3] to notice it. [3] sorry for the redundancy in this statement -- G. Branden Robinson|The basic test of freedom is Debian GNU/Linux |perhaps less in what we are free to [EMAIL PROTECTED] |do than in what we are free not to http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |do. -- Eric Hoffer pgpe65lHk5oJZ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: GPLv3 2(d) (was Re: PHPNuke license)
Scripsit Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] received, any user interacting with the Program was given the opportunity to request transmission to that user of the Program's complete source code, you must not remove that facility from your modified version of the Program or work based on the Program, and [...] It definitely does seem to me that if this can be done via a public performance restriction that would be much better. A public-performance restriction will still be non-free in my eyes, but it will not be quite as bad as a modification restriction. Assuming that one can meaningfully compare badness beyond the non-free label, that is. -- Henning Makholm Al lykken er i ét ord: Overvægtig!
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, 2003-03-06 at 21:06, Richard Braakman wrote: On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 04:26:08PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: Here's a disastrous consequence. [...] In this context (but not directly on-topic), I'd like to tell about a little service we had running at Wapit, where I worked on Kannel[1]. It was a limited facility for web browsing via SMS. You'd send it a message like www debian.org and it would fetch http://debian.org/, strip out all the tags, and send the contents back to you, in the form of one or more SMS messages. There was a limit of 9 messages for one page, I think. Over here an SMS message can only hold 140 bytes, usually holding 160 7-bit characters. If you want more, you have to send more of them, and generally pay for each one. The typical GPL blurb would use up a whole message, costing money (probably around $0.05) and annoying the user. It seems to me that there's a lot of stuff that you would want that gateway to strip or abbreviate. You would want to cut all copyright notices. Incidentally, it's probable that that service as-is violates a lot of copyright notices, by rebroadcasting the pages without permission. -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
On Fri, 07 Mar 2003, John Goerzen wrote: What exactly am I ignoring here? Nothing here seems to require that I distribute modified copies. Perhaps I misunderstood you. What I was getting at is that 2 a-c doesn't apply to modifications you make that you do not distribute. Don Armstrong -- Dropping non-free would set us back at least, what, 300 packages? It'd take MONTHS to make up the difference, and meanwhile Debian users will be fleeing to SLACKWARE. And what about SHAREHOLDER VALUE? -- Matt Zimmerman in [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu pgp17l6biRIWR.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Steve Langasek wrote: You believe there is *no* ambiguity regarding the words reads commands interactively when run and started running for [...] interactive use, that this is always limited to cases where a single invocation of an executable program presents an interactive interface? I believe that NOTHING is completely unambiguous, but that the above definition is ordinary enough that alternate interpretations require a lot of stretching. If you believe this interpretation of interactivity would imply that Debian includes infringing software, I suspect you've misunderstood the scope of my argument. Perhaps so. However, it seems likely that this proposed definition would make almost all software interactive. How this affects other GPL software that's been modified without considering 2c I can't say. I am only talking about the instance of a web app which, though it exists as a series of discrete scripts that communicate with the user through a stateless HTTP connection, presents a unified interactive session. Sure, but why limit it to web apps? Almost all apps communicate with the user in some manner. How is delivering a blob of HTML to a renderer in response to a query any different from delivering a blob of text to a logfile watcher in response to a syslog() call? Or delivering email to a user by writing some files in response to a cron invocation? -- Mark Rafn[EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.dagon.net/
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 12:47:59PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 04:35:02PM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote: Consideration of the scenario of use of a modified but undistributed version of a program within the modifying organisation would also lead one to conclude that our interpretation of 2 as a whole is desirable, and likely to be the intention of the license's author(s). Why does anyone care about modified copies that don't get distributed? Has it occurred to anyone how difficult it would be to enforce such a restriction? How is the copyright holder to know that such modification has even happened? Consider the case where I modify gs (since that's the example I used earlier) and deploy it around my company. It seems reasonable to require that I don't remove the copyright notice and warranty disclaimer in the situation. I feel pretty strongly that no restrictions *at all* should attach to modification per se, but only to distribution of modifications. Do you still feel the same way in the situation above, or were you just focusing on your personal situation? What I do in the privacy of my own home is not any copyright holder's damn business. Good grief, I'd hate to think... ;) Cheers, Nick -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your boss climbed the corporate ladder, wrong by wrong.
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 01:18:22PM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote: I've read it. In a nutshell, I don't know of any reasonable person that would define object code as the output of tr a-z A-Z on a text file. Nice to meet you. :) That is, I'm perfectly willing to accept that as an example of object code if the only alternative is to call it source code. As a result, the output of tr a-z A-Z may be either source code *or* object code, *depending on the intent of the party making this change*. else that the GPL doesn't permit distribution of. I'm happy to be generous and say that it's object code in this case. I guess we have source form, object form and encoded or translated form. The former is suitable for creation and editing, the second for direct use in the intended function of the work, and the latter for neither -- rather it is a form which may or may not be useful in any particular way (e.g. reducing storage requirement), but it does retain the original meaning of the source form. Thinking about it a little further, I guess there are two subtypes of encoded form; reversible and non-reversible. Distribution of reversible encoded forms should be allowed (e.g. gzipped tarballs), non-reversible probably not (e.g. obfuscation). Cheers, Nick -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] You have been selected for a secret mission.
Re: PHPNuke license
David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I have heard that the ASP phenomenon is one motivation for a GNU GPL v3; I'd be very curious to know what changes the FSF is making to specifically target the ASP problem. *fsf hat on* The Affero license (AGPL, http://www.affero.org/oagpl.html) should give you a good idea, although we of course intend to be more general in GPLv3. I think there's a comment address somewhere where you can mail your comments about the AGPL. The major change is section (2)(d), which says, in short, If the program has quine-like functionality to give you a link to the running source code, you can't remove it. Oh my God, what a Horror that will be. So if I take a webserver and hack in a poorly written database interface with a hardcoded password, I'd have to reveal that password to all users. Essentially, this is a prohibition on poorly-done modifications... that's enough reason for me to stop releasing code under version 2 or later of the GNU GPL: the persistent spectre that future versions will prohibit certain sorts of functional modifications. Wouldn't a requirement that if you make the software available for use to another party, you provide an offer of source to those users make much more sense, and avoid entanglements with the function of the software? -Brian -- Brian T. Sniffen[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 05:27:54PM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote: As a result, the output of tr a-z A-Z may be either source code *or* object code, *depending on the intent of the party making this change*. else that the GPL doesn't permit distribution of. I'm happy to be generous and say that it's object code in this case. I guess we have source form, object form and encoded or translated form. The former is suitable for creation and editing, the second for direct use in the intended function of the work, and the latter for neither -- rather it is a form which may or may not be useful in any particular way (e.g. reducing storage requirement), but it does retain the original meaning of the source form. Thinking about it a little further, I guess there are two subtypes of encoded form; reversible and non-reversible. Distribution of reversible encoded forms should be allowed (e.g. gzipped tarballs), non-reversible probably not (e.g. obfuscation). You're free to create new classes of works that are neither source nor object if you choose, but if you do, the GPL gives you no rights to distribute them; just as saying that something is not software doesn't make it DFSG-compliant. Think of the case of an autoconf-generated configure script. This certainly fits certain definitions of obfuscation, but it's also to our advantage to be able to distribute such a script because of its value as a form of executable object code. The same applies to automake-generated Makefile.in files, despite the fact that these are not directly executable but rather represent a human-readable intermediary state. I think it's to our advantage to identify all GPL-covered works as either source or object, given the GPL's own definitions of these terms. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer pgpPUYAk5Rb2K.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
Scripsit David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] The major change is section (2)(d), which says, in short, If the program has quine-like functionality to give you a link to the running source code, you can't remove it. I sincerely hope that the FSF is not contemplating to add such a clause to the GPL. It would mean that one couldn't modify such a program such that it didn't talk to the net anymore (instead offering its services exclusively on the command line, or whatever). -- Henning Makholm We can build reactors, we can melt ice. Or engineers can be sent north for re-education until they *do* understand ice.
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 12:48:07AM -0800, Mark Rafn wrote:
I am only talking about the instance of a web app which, though it
exists as a series of discrete scripts that communicate with the user
through a stateless HTTP connection, presents a unified interactive
session.
Sure, but why limit it to web apps? Almost all apps communicate with the
user in some manner. How is delivering a blob of HTML to a renderer in
response to a query any different from delivering a blob of text to a
logfile watcher in response to a syslog() call? Or delivering email to a
user by writing some files in response to a cron invocation?
interactive
programming A term describing a program whose input and
output are interleaved, like a conversation, allowing the
user's input to depend on earlier output from the same run.
The interaction with the user is usually conducted through
either a text-based interface or a {graphical user interface}.
Other kinds of interface, e.g. using {speech recognition}
and/or {speech synthesis}, are also possible.
I am not interacting with syslogd when it writes to a log file. I am not
interacting with cron when it sends me email. These examples lack the
critical feature of *interleaving*. However, I do interact with a
website.
--
Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer
pgp7ezDcVPnB8.pgp
Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 05:44:54PM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote:
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 12:47:59PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
Why does anyone care about modified copies that don't get distributed?
Consider the case where I modify gs (since that's the example I used earlier)
and deploy it around my company.
How is deploying it not distributing it?
deploy
v 1: place troops or weapons in battle formation
2: to distribute systematically or strategically; The U.S.
deploys its weapons in the Middle East
distribute
v 1: administer or bestow, as in small portions; administer
critical remarks to everyone present; dole out some
money; shell out pocket money for the children; deal
a blow to someone [syn: {administer}, {mete out}, {deal},
{parcel out}, {lot}, {dispense}, {shell out}, {deal out},
{dish out}, {allot}, {dole out}]
2: distribute or disperse widely; The invaders spread their
language all over the country [syn: {spread}] [ant: {gather}]
3: make available; The publisher wants to distribute the book
in Asia
4: give out freely [syn: {give away}, {give out}, {hand out}]
5: cause to be distributed; This letter is circulating among
the faculty [syn: {circulate}, {pass around}, {pass on}]
6: cause to become widely known; spread information;
circulate a rumor; broadcast the news [syn: {circulate},
{circularize}, {circularise}, {disseminate}, {propagate},
{broadcast}, {spread}, {diffuse}, {disperse}, {pass
around}]
7: to arrange in a stack or pile; stagger the chairs in the
lecture hall [syn: {stack}, {stagger}]
--
G. Branden Robinson| I had thought very carefully about
Debian GNU/Linux | comitting hara-kiri over this, but
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | I overslept this morning.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Toshio Yamaguchi
pgpSnb8R5osXA.pgp
Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
Scripsit Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] Well, note that a lot of other GPL software (including all GNU text/code processing tools I'm familiar with) specifically exempts the output from being regarded as a derivative work of the processing tool. For bison, gcc and the like, there may be enough originality in the structuring of the output to support a copyright claim. I don't think that originality in the structuring of the output can support a copyright claim. The structuring of the output is not a function of the compiler author's *expressive* choice (which is what copyright protects) but a function of his *functional* choice (which copyright does not protect). Bison does need an exemption, because the output of bison happens to be, *verbatim*, a C source file written by bison's authors, with some machine-generated constant definitions insterted in place of the dollar sign. That C source does fall under copyright protection. I'm not sure what the current status of the exemption for GCC is, but I think it used to be there because the compiler sometimes injects into the instruction constant code snippets that were hand-coded by the compiler authors instead of generated by compile-time selection of individual instruction. Templates for function entry/exit code would be one example, as would the helper routines in libgcc1, which are inserted when one uses gcc to *link* one's program. It is probably not legally clear whether those code snippets are nontrivial enough to enjoy copyright protection - but the exemption makes it clear that even in jurisdictions that consider them so, the GCC authors will claim no copyright on the compiled code for that reason. -- Henning MakholmIt's kind of scary. Win a revolution and a bunch of lawyers pop out of the woodwork.
Re: PHPNuke license
Scripsit David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] Also, I think it's about time we made up our minds one way or the other about the GNU FDL. The latter is an issue that we need to resolve internally first. I thought Debian had decided that invariant sections, as they are now, are definitively non-free? I think it would be fairer to say that we have a consensus that we definitively don't like them. Nobody has quite taken the last step to actually say that they are definitively non-free and begin acting on that judgement. Mostly because it takes a few deep breaths before one actually begins filing 'serious' bugs against emacs-21 and gcc-3.0-doc, claiming that they are not free. -- Henning MakholmManden med det store pindsvin er kommet vel ombord i den grønne dobbeltdækker.
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 05:35:19PM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote: Similarly, I would argue that, if you derive benefit from using the PHP-Nuke engine to assemble your homepage into its final form for presentation, it is not *wholly* original.[1] Even if it is no longer a derivative work of the PHP-Nuke copyrighted default homepage, it might legally be a derivative work of the PHP-Nuke engine itself. I think in this case, you might be able to make that argument about the theme in use. I don't think the engine outputs much, if any, identifiable code; it's all from the theme. Note that many third parties publish PHPNuke themes, so the author's claim gets even more flimsy as you switch to other themes.
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 12:48:07AM -0800, Mark Rafn wrote: Sure, but why limit it to web apps? Almost all apps communicate with the user in some manner. How is delivering a blob of HTML to a renderer in response to a query any different from delivering a blob of text to a logfile watcher in response to a syslog() call? Or delivering email to a user by writing some files in response to a cron invocation? On Thu, 6 Mar 2003, Steve Langasek wrote: I am not interacting with syslogd when it writes to a log file. You are claiming that multiple requests to a program, while each is clearly non-interactive, should be called interactive if, over the group of them, there is some common thread (debug output from various runs of a test, for instance). You're interacting with syslogd. I am not interacting with cron when it sends me email. Sure you are, if it sends you mail based on some input (a file in your homedir, or a mail you sent to it). Or at least if it sends you multiple mails and reads your input in between. Certainly, under your definition, any GPL mailing list software would be required to include a 2c notification in e-mails. It's hard to see why an inetd would be exempted (I can make two requests and get two results, both based on my request input). -- Mark Rafn[EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.dagon.net/
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 01:50:49PM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote: I'm not sure you've answered the question I meant to ask. Let me try to rephrase: if debian-legal finds that such a requirement from upstream is a legitimate clarification of the GPL (rather than an additional restriction imposed on top of the GPL), do you think it's appropriate for debian-legal to reject a piece of GPL software whose author imposes this restriction, given that the GPL is explicitly grandfathered into the DFSG? You say grandfathered a lot :) I don't agree that DFSG#10 is a grandfather clause. It clearly lists those licenses as *examples* of free licenses, not as exceptions to the earlier guidelines. In effect, it tells us that an interpretation of the DFSG that would rule out the GPL is probably wrong. (However, I think the Artistic License was added to that list by mistake. IIRC, perl is distributed under a dual license because Ian Murdock asked for that, in order to be able to distribute perl as part of Debian. This predates both the DFSG and my involvement with Debian, though, so I don't know the details.) I can't answer your actual question yet, I'll have to think about it some more. In particular, I'd like to see your hypothetical actually resolved one way or another, and then we can look at the arguments that resolved it and see how far they go. I think it is always appropriate to assume the license on a piece of software is exactly what the copyright holder states that it is; if nothing else, this avoids unnecessary lawsuits. If the GPL is involved, we should also make sure that the copyright holder isn't mixing the creatively-GPL code with real GPL code from other sources. Richard Braakman
Re: PHPNuke license
On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 14:23, John Goerzen wrote: On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 12:50:13PM -0500, David Turner wrote: of these two cases would be (2)(c) cases. Recall that (2)(c) says, ...when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement ... Apache is started in the most ordinary way via the apachectl or /etc/init.d/apache scripts. A PHPNuke is started in exactly the same way on most systems. In fact, that very command starts it. I'm confused about the distinction. OK, then I see no problem with PHPNuke doing the same thing. Interestingly, I don't think (2)(c) would forbid a modified PHPNuke to print the copyright notice to a printer (or console) in the server room, instead of on the web page the user sees. The more I look at the clause, the more convinced I am that its sole purpose is to torture me. Heh, I think more than just you are being tortured :-) This would be a quite workable solution, and one that I find a lot more difficult to argue with. One can still debate the interactivity, but the key is that the act of distribution is now moved elsewhere to the conventional ways, which makes a lot more sense to me. Distribution does not, and has never, mattered (see previous message in this thread). I have a hard time figuring out what that purpose is, at this point. Could you ask one of the people that drafted that (Stallman?) on our behalf? I would rather propose to him improved wording for GPLv3. -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 14:19, John Goerzen wrote: On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 12:36:18PM -0500, David Turner wrote: That sounds ludicrous and farfetched to me, given that both statements, by themselves, are already farfetched in this circumstance. (2)(c) concerns the act of modification. Altering the program to remove copyright notices is modification. This is not ludicrous nor farfetched. The only question. then, is whether the program is interactive. Dictionary.com says of interactive: BUT -- (2)(c) ONLY takes effect if the user is distributing the source to a modified program AND that program is intractive. No! (2)(c) doesn't contain the first part of that -- it doesn't require distribution! See my other messages in this thread. 2 /Computer Science/. Of or relating to a program that responds to user activity. By that definition, Apache is interactive, as is the Linux kernel. Sure, and I don't see a problem considering them interactive. Now, I guess you could say grep responds to SIGKILL being sent, but that *does* seem far-fetched. programming A term describing a program whose input and output are interleaved, like a conversation, allowing the user's input to depend on earlier output from the same run. And here is depends on what is a run. A cookie-less HTTP request would be a run in itself. There is no interleaving there. I suppose you could claim that a HTTP/1.1 session with keep-alives and cookies is a run, but it's again a little farfetched. I actually think that, from an operational definition, it is a run. If I start a grep, make my laptop hibernate (presuming that functionality, (dumping the contents of RAM to disk, turning completely off, and restoring them on wake-up) were available with Free Software), wait a week, and wake it up, are there two runs? I don't think so. -- -Dave Turner GPL Compliance Engineer Support my work: http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=novalisp=FSF
Re: PHPNuke license
Scripsit David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 14:23, John Goerzen wrote: On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 12:50:13PM -0500, David Turner wrote: of these two cases would be (2)(c) cases. Recall that (2)(c) says, ...when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement ... Apache is started in the most ordinary way via the apachectl or /etc/init.d/apache scripts. A PHPNuke is started in exactly the same way on most systems. In fact, that very command starts it. I'm confused about the distinction. OK, then I see no problem with PHPNuke doing the same thing. But apache *doesn't* do the same thing. I.e. it does not insist on on adding its own copyright blurp to every HTML page it serves to a user. -- Henning Makholm What has it got in its pocketses?
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 16:55, Mark Rafn wrote: On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Steve Langasek wrote: Let's see if we can build consensus around a few points. Does anyone here hold the position that requiring the copyright notice on the front page would not be DFSG-free, if that's a valid interpretation of the GPL? I believe this is not free unless it can be removed when the page is changed by the site administrator enough not to be considered a derivative work of the PHP-Nuke copyrighted default homepage. This fails DFSG9 - it's contaminating my wholly-original homepage. Actually, if you swap out the templates, the copyright statement must still be displayed (somewhere) -- recall that (2)(c) triggers on modification. But even if you choose to display it on every page, it simply doesn't apply to your original web page. Some of the BSD licenses say you have to include them in your (otherwise wholly original) documentation -- they clearly don't contamiate the doco, any more than a script containing the text rm -rf / erases every file you own (since it could contain that text in an echo or comment). Does anyone believe the GPL unambiguously *dis*allows that interpretation? I do. 2c applies to running of the program Please re-read (2)(c). It restricts the *modification* of the program. -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 05:07:13PM -0500, David Turner wrote: Distribution does not, and has never, mattered (see previous message in this thread). I think it's pretty clear that all three subsections of section 2 takes no effect unless distribution has occured.
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, 2003-03-06 at 17:26, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: By that definition, Apache is interactive, as is the Linux kernel. Sure, and I don't see a problem considering them interactive. Now, I guess you could say grep responds to SIGKILL being sent, but that *does* seem far-fetched. I think this is ludicrous. The GPL does not speak of interactive programs, but of a program which normally reads commands interactively when run. Linux does not read commands interactively, and Apache does not. And, indeed, PHPNuke does not. D'oh! That'll teach me to not check the license every time. You're right. -- -Dave Novalis Turner Free Software Licensing Guru Support my work: http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=novalisp=FSF signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 23:43, Glenn Maynard wrote: On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 10:13:18PM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote: Then perhaps we have a license bug here. The text of 2(c) *only* provides an exemption if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement. This means that if either the Program itself is non-interactive or the Program normally prints such an announcement is true, you must comply with 2(c) for interactive works based on the Program. I don't see that any other reading is possible. If the program is uninteractive, you don't need the announcement. If you then turn the program into an interactive one, it's now an interactive program that does not normally print such an announcement. I'm just not seeing the problem. I can't put my FSF hat on for this: Let's see if I can do it step-by-step: 1. I write an application which links against and therefore is derived from some GPL'd library. 2. What gives me the right to alter the library in this way? Section 2. 3. But I must also obey (2)(a) and (2)(c) (and (b) if I distribute it). 4. (2)(c) kicks in because the modified program reads commands interactively. 5. There's an exception. 6. The exception doesn't apply, because the Program itself (the GPL'd library) isn't itself interactive. 7. Just about every user of GNU readline is violating the GPL. 8. Huh? There's a similar case in the LGPL (finding it is left as an exercise for the reader). In practical terms, I think the FSF pretends these glitches don't exist, and that these aren't violations. And tries to fix them for the next version. I'll add this to my comments on the issue. David, does the FSF have an opinion on this? AFAIK, nobody here has even considered it before. For example, does the FSF take issue with people using GPL-licensed libraries with GPL-compatibly licensed software without adding a GPL blurb? (Which I believe would be a side-effect of Steve's interpretation, though I'm not entirely sure.) I've never heard of it, can't imagine it happening, and personally would not participate in it (indeed, I would probably quit in disgust) (I'm dropping the readline example, since readline might be argued to be interactive itself, and that just confuses things; but I can't think of another GPL-licensed library by the FSF off of the top of my head.) Yeah, it's silly to say that Readline doesn't read commands interactively. -- -Dave Turner GPL Compliance Engineer Support my work: http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=novalisp=FSF -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, 2003-03-06 at 17:35, John Goerzen wrote: On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 05:07:13PM -0500, David Turner wrote: Distribution does not, and has never, mattered (see previous message in this thread). I think it's pretty clear that all three subsections of section 2 takes no effect unless distribution has occured. Please read it again -- if that's so, why does (2)(b) specifically mention distribution? (2)(a) and (2)(c) *do* apply even in the absence of distribution. -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 5. There's an exception. 6. The exception doesn't apply, because the Program itself (the GPL'd library) isn't itself interactive. 7. Just about every user of GNU readline is violating the GPL. The GPL'd library (readline) *is* interactive, so the exception *does* apply. You can't say that Readline-as-distributed is *and* that it isn't. Pick one. Either way, a program linking against it need not, on that account, print out a no-warranty notice.
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 03:32:46PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: The GPL'd library (readline) *is* interactive, so the exception *does* apply. Like I mentioned, that was just a poor example; pick any clearly uninteractive GPL-licensed library. -- Glenn Maynard
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 11:58, Steve Langasek wrote: Let's see if we can build consensus around a few points. Does anyone here hold the position that requiring the copyright notice on the front page would not be DFSG-free, if that's a valid interpretation of the GPL? Since I think something more narrowly tailored could effectively serve the same interest, I hold that it's probably not DFSG-free. But I would change my mind if I can't find a way to rewrite (2)(c) to work effectively without this (I think I can). Does anyone believe the GPL unambiguously *dis*allows that interpretation? I don't think so. But I do think it ambiguously diallows it -- that is, I wouldn't want to be in court trying to enforce that interpretation. -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, 06 Mar 2003, David Turner wrote: On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 14:19, John Goerzen wrote: BUT -- (2)(c) ONLY takes effect if the user is distributing the source to a modified program AND that program is intractive. No! (2)(c) doesn't contain the first part of that -- it doesn't require distribution! See my other messages in this thread. You're ignoring 2 itself: 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:[4] Additionally, fair use itself limits even the applicability of the copyright, as explained in [1] [2] and [3]. Don Armstrong 1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200303/msg00121.html 2: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200303/msg00168.html 3: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200303/msg00261.html 4: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html -- There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. Bach http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu pgpf5kraBSNWR.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, 2003-03-06 at 18:32, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 5. There's an exception. 6. The exception doesn't apply, because the Program itself (the GPL'd library) isn't itself interactive. 7. Just about every user of GNU readline is violating the GPL. The GPL'd library (readline) *is* interactive, so the exception *does* apply. You can't say that Readline-as-distributed is *and* that it isn't. Pick one. Either way, a program linking against it need not, on that account, print out a no-warranty notice. Er, readline is a bad example, of course. Pretend we're talking about some other GPL'd library, like libiberty. So, libiberty-as-you-got-it, the Program, isn't interactive. So, the exception doesn't apply. You end up with an interactive program (the modified program). So, (2)(c) as a whole applies. Notice that (2)(c) is talking about two separate programs. -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
Glenn Maynard [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 03:32:46PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: The GPL'd library (readline) *is* interactive, so the exception *does* apply. Like I mentioned, that was just a poor example; pick any clearly uninteractive GPL-licensed library. Hrm. Yes, I agree.
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, 2003-03-05 at 20:39, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: OTOH, the Affero bit is staying AFAIK, and I hope that Debian can accept that. We had a discussion on proper interpretation of #3 brewing, and I would be happy for it to brew some more (although I'll have to take off my FSF hat, of course). By is staying, do you mean that the decision is made and nobody can say anything about it? *no fsf hat, of course* If Debian decided that it couldn't accept it, and I had tried as hard as I could to change its collective mind (assuming my noncollective mind hadn't been changed in the process), I would push for its removal. But I bet Debian can accept it. The reason I dislike the Affero bit is that it is a further restriction on freedom. I stand for freedom. I like freedom. I learned about freedom from RMS, but he has apparently decided that freedom is no longer all it's cracked up to be. Is there any value in complaining about the Affero bit, or is the FSF just going to insist on this? I want to discuss it, but not in this thread. Start a new one. As with the FDL, this is very like an anti-flag burning rule. I believe in the values that the American flag supposedly stands for (freedom, principally), and accordingly I would not engage in flag burning. Those who want to ban flag-burning want to take away freedom in the name of preserving a symbol of freedom. Please don't turn everything into an FDL issue. The AGPL can be evaluated independently of the invariant section nonsense. -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
Can we please, please, please start another thread to discuss this?! On Thu, 2003-03-06 at 09:25, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I have heard that the ASP phenomenon is one motivation for a GNU GPL v3; I'd be very curious to know what changes the FSF is making to specifically target the ASP problem. *fsf hat on* The Affero license (AGPL, http://www.affero.org/oagpl.html) should give you a good idea, although we of course intend to be more general in GPLv3. I think there's a comment address somewhere where you can mail your comments about the AGPL. The major change is section (2)(d), which says, in short, If the program has quine-like functionality to give you a link to the running source code, you can't remove it. Oh my God, what a Horror that will be. So if I take a webserver and hack in a poorly written database interface with a hardcoded password, I'd have to reveal that password to all users. Essentially, this is a prohibition on poorly-done modifications... No, it's a notice that if you do a modification poorly, you'll pay for it. But you would know this in advance. that's enough reason for me to stop releasing code under version 2 or later of the GNU GPL: the persistent spectre that future versions will prohibit certain sorts of functional modifications. That would be silly, since you could always fall back to v2. The only reason to fear v2 or later is that v3 could be too permissive, not too restrictive. Wouldn't a requirement that if you make the software available for use to another party, you provide an offer of source to those users make much more sense, and avoid entanglements with the function of the software? That would be impossible under US copyright law, where use isn't one of the 17 usc 106 exclusive rights, while modification is. -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, 6 Mar 2003, David Turner wrote: Does anyone believe the GPL unambiguously *dis*allows that interpretation? I do. 2c applies to running of the program Please re-read (2)(c). It restricts the *modification* of the program. 2c requires that, when modifying the program, you add behavior that applies to running the program (specifically when started running ... in the most ordinary way. Even if it's decided that delivering webpages is interactive use of a program (and I disagree with this position), it's very hard to argue that making a request is running the program. It's at most interacting with a running program. -- Mark Rafn[EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.dagon.net/
Re: PHPNuke license
David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: * d) If the Program as you received it is intended to interact with users through a computer network and if, in the version you received, any user interacting with the Program was given the opportunity to request transmission to that user of the Program's complete source code, you must not remove that facility from your modified version of the Program or work based on the Program, and must offer an equivalent opportunity for all users interacting with your Program through a computer network to request immediate transmission by HTTP of the complete source code of your modified version or other derivative work. This is yet another invariant section; if the program has feature X, you are not allowed to remove feature X. Here's a disastrous consequence. Suppose the program as I received it is a general purpose net audio widget, and it does have a provision to request a copy of the source code. I want to modify the program into a voice-mail agent that will answer my phone. I find that the cataloging and control features of the widget are just what I need for this task. But whoops! The telephone system is a computer network, and so now my answering machine has to tell people hit 3 to receive a copy of the source. And indeed, how in God's name am I supposed to provide the person calling me an HTTP of the source code? And, the real killer, it fails the Chinese dissident test rather massively. Thomas
Re: PHPNuke license
Scripsit David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Thu, 2003-03-06 at 11:39, Henning Makholm wrote: I sincerely hope that the FSF is not contemplating to add such a clause to the GPL. Why don't you read the actual (2)(d), That's what I did. and propose changes: Pipe it through sed /./d? -- Henning Makholm Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit.
Re: PHPNuke license
Scripsit Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] You're ignoring 2 itself: 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:[4] Which is ambiguous in itself. It can either mean You may modify provided blah, AND you may copy provided blah. or You may [modify and then copy] provided blah. Such are the wonders of natural language. -- Henning Makholm I've been staying out of family conversations. Do I get credit for that?
Re: PHPNuke license
Scripsit David Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Thu, 2003-03-06 at 09:25, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: that's enough reason for me to stop releasing code under version 2 or later of the GNU GPL: the persistent spectre that future versions will prohibit certain sorts of functional modifications. That would be silly, since you could always fall back to v2. No, not if someone else used the or later bit to make modifications and release them only under a (hypothetical) non-free v3. -- Henning Makholm And when we retire, we will write the gospels.
Re: PHPNuke license
On Fri, 07 Mar 2003, Henning Makholm wrote: Which is ambiguous in itself. Duly noted. I've been conviently ignoring the ambiguity (for now). Suffice it to say that between the abiguity and USC Title 17 Section 107 [not to mention the impraticality of finding someone who modifies without distributing] you're pretty much talking about this section (or the license in it's entirety) applying only when you're distributing. Don Armstrong -- If you wish to strive for peace of soul, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire. -- Friedrich Nietzsche http://www.donarmstrong.com http://www.anylevel.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu pgpgGWputW2nq.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 04:26:08PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: Here's a disastrous consequence. [...] In this context (but not directly on-topic), I'd like to tell about a little service we had running at Wapit, where I worked on Kannel[1]. It was a limited facility for web browsing via SMS. You'd send it a message like www debian.org and it would fetch http://debian.org/, strip out all the tags, and send the contents back to you, in the form of one or more SMS messages. There was a limit of 9 messages for one page, I think. (Example of actual use: you're trying to go to a party, but you've forgotten the route and the host's contact information. You know the host's nickname, however, so you can find their homepage at iki.fi.) Over here an SMS message can only hold 140 bytes, usually holding 160 7-bit characters. If you want more, you have to send more of them, and generally pay for each one. The typical GPL blurb would use up a whole message, costing money (probably around $0.05) and annoying the user. There's lots of other things you can do with SMS, and probably all of them are more useful than this :) We thought of a service for randomly selecting a restaurant to go to with a group of friends, based on various parameters. Other companies have implemented various games, which are definitely interactive. There's a service for particpitating in IRC-like chatting systems, where users use SMS to send and an idle TV channel to read. I think it's clear that the GPL 2(c) requirement is a real problem in such contexts, and the Affero send the whole source requirement is completely impossible. I'll stop here, before I write several more pages about WAP (which uses HTTP directly), and browsing with small-screen low-bandwidth PDAs :-) I think that the GPL 2(c) and proposed 2(d) requirements create significant technical problems in some contexts, and that for that reason they make the software less free. Richard Braakman [1] Kannel is a free WAP and SMS gateway. See http://www.kannel.org/
Re: PHPNuke license
On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 10:47:26AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: I'd really rather punt on this, as a real court might, and not rule on this until an issue comes before us where it is the only thing standing between a package and Debian main. (I think the legal slang for this is, the issue is not yet ripe.) In particular because, given the GPL's or any later version clause, the problem might (we hope) just go away. Cheers, Nick -- Nick Phillips -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Keep it short for pithy sake.
Re: PHPNuke license
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 08:12:31PM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote: However, PHPNuke's interpretation is broader: it insists that the blurb be in the footer of each page, not just the main page. Even if we can can't determine the above, can we agree that it's not a reasonable interpretation to apply it to the output of each page (akin to outputting the blurb for every command issued to gdb)? I agree that this is not a reasonable interpretation of the GPL, and that it is not DFSG-free. I'm not sure where we could go from there; asking them to change it to only the main page is pointless if that's 1: still ambiguous and/or 2: still of questionable DFSG-freeness. Even if that's DFSG-free, it's still probably a bad idea to ask them to change to that if it's still a questionable interpretation of the GPL. Let's see if we can build consensus around a few points. Does anyone here hold the position that requiring the copyright notice on the front page would not be DFSG-free, if that's a valid interpretation of the GPL? Does anyone believe the GPL unambiguously *dis*allows that interpretation? Does anyone believe that this interpretation is sufficiently wrong-headed that it should not be considered valid, in spite of statements from the copyright holder or a court ruling? -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer pgptNJQMvucdn.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 01:55:22PM -0800, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: This simple approach appeals to me, not least because it makes the GNU GPL more easily applicable to things that aren't software: source form = preferred form for modification of the Work object form = any other form of the Work It seems foolish for us to declare this definitively when I don't think we've thought through all the possible consequences. I do think that what you say is the right idea; I'm just not confident that we won't realize someday that there really is some third category. Well, let's get to thinkin', then. I've still got a DFCL to write (;-)) and this issue is important. -- G. Branden Robinson| If God had intended for man to go Debian GNU/Linux | about naked, we would have been [EMAIL PROTECTED] | born that way. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | pgpPbMfvMOzTz.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 14:20, John Goerzen wrote:
There is a clear and distinct difference between the grep in ls | grep
'^some.regexp$' | xargs rm, and PHPNuke!
Where is the difference between your example ls/grep/xargs and my example
PHPNuke pipeline?
PHPNuke is interactive. Grep isn't. Please recall the definition of
interactive is:
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (09 FEB 02) [foldoc]:
interactive
programming A term describing a program whose input and
output are interleaved, like a conversation, allowing the
user's input to depend on earlier output from the same run.
The interaction with the user is usually conducted through
either a text-based interface or a {graphical user interface}.
Other kinds of interface, e.g. using {speech recognition}
and/or {speech synthesis}, are also possible.
This is in contrast to {batch} processing where all the input
is prepared before the program runs and so cannot depend on
the program's output.
--
-Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668
On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters
of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:41:50PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 01:31:16PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote: I think it boils down to this. When I run a KDE app, I think it's reasonable to ensure that the About box maintains a reference to the original author for modified versions. Or the splash screen for bc. Or an interactie OfflineIMAP. I don't think all of these are the same thing. I don't like splash screens, but I will tolerate them as long as I'm not forbidden from removing them. You can always remove things for yourself. About boxes are fine, but I am not sure it is wise to permit a Free Software license to forbid people from removing them. It makes perfect sense to remove an About box if, for instance, one is converting an application into a library. I agree. (2)(c) should only apply when an application is run interactively. If you make an application into a library, it'd never be run interactively, so its relevance should disappear. I know I haven't worded this quite right, but you get the idea. Brief blurbs about copyright, licensing, and lack of warranty are fine as long as they don't intrude on an output stream that I might be able to feed into another tool for processing. Material intended for human consumption should not be rammed down the throats of simple tools. Yup, and I'd say it's not being run interactively in this case, so 2c shouldn't apply. I personally favor strict interpretation of licenses, with some cognizance of historical precedent, and a liberal interpretation of the DFSG, such that it can be read broadly to exclude licenses. I think this is a far better approach for preserving users' freedom than the converse -- and preserving users' freedom is in fact the explicit purpose of the DFSG. I agree with you, but I'm not sure you are encouraging a strict interpretation of the GPL in some of your other messages :-) Of course, we need to beware that the historical precedent that counts, when it comes to determining what exactly a license permits, is case law and not online discussions. For deciding whether a license is DFSG-free, that's another matter entirely. -- John
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 10:58:34AM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote: On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 08:12:31PM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote: I'm not sure where we could go from there; asking them to change it to only the main page is pointless if that's 1: still ambiguous and/or 2: still of questionable DFSG-freeness. Even if that's DFSG-free, it's still probably a bad idea to ask them to change to that if it's still a questionable interpretation of the GPL. Let's see if we can build consensus around a few points. Does anyone here hold the position that requiring the copyright notice on the front page would not be DFSG-free, if that's a valid interpretation of the GPL? Requiring an appropriate notice on the front page may not be too onerous. I don't see it as being DFSG-nonfree as proper attribution is already considered a reasonable exception to DFSG 3. However, I would define an appropriate notice as not being specific text. Therefore, a license that requires specific wording should be thrown out, however a license that allows you to modify it as appropriate (e.g. to say who owns the copyright to the system you see, who should be contacted if this interactive web application breaks, and that there is a warranty offered by Acme ASP Inc.) It should probably be formatted in such a way that it is not misleading, deceptive, or hidden; if it exists. Does anyone believe the GPL unambiguously *dis*allows that interpretation? No. It does not explicitly disallow this interpretation. Of course, it also does not unambiguously allow this interpretation either. Does anyone believe that this interpretation is sufficiently wrong-headed that it should not be considered valid, in spite of statements from the copyright holder or a court ruling? This interpretation of the GPL seems reasonable. However, I would like to remind that PHP-Nuke's author has not interpreted the GPL in this manner at all. Simon
Re: PHPNuke license
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 05:15:58PM -0500, David Turner wrote: OTOH, the Affero bit is staying AFAIK, and I hope that Debian can accept Can you give a reference so I can find out what the Affero bit is? -Dave Turner GPL Compliance Engineer Now THERE'S a title I'd like to have :-) -- John
Re: PHPNuke license
On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:28:02PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote: On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:33:00PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: Just FYI, I share your feelings. I think 2c is the worst wart on the GNU GPL. Agreed. Unfortunately, I strongly suspect the FSF is interested in having more warts like this in GNU GPL v3, not fewer. I've seen you mention this before in this thread and must say it sounds alarming. Could you provide some background and references to back up that suspicion? I'd rather have solid facts to back up my FUD :-) It's the result of some informal, oral conversations with some people at the FSF. As a result: 1) I can't remember which things I've been told in confidence; 2) I don't wish to violate the confidences of these people, whom I like and respect; 3) Direct, formal requests for more information about future plans are known to have gone answered by the FSF (recall the GNU FDL 1.2 draft situation); 4) I still need some avenue for attempting to draw attention to what I would perceive as missteps that I on the part of the FSF. Hopefully you can understand my predicament. I'd really like to see more in the way of round-table discussions between the FSF and the Debian Project, especially since I feel that philosophically we have far more similarities than differences. In any case, has anyone advocated fewer rather than more warts to the powers that be at FSF? I haven't yet figured out a good strategy for this. I don't think it would be good for the Debian Project to send the FSF any ultimatums about future revisions we won't accept. At the same time we can't afford to be blindsided by license changes which we'd consider unacceptable; any maybe the FSF can't afford that, either; I don't know how important Debian is to them as an ally and a friendly distributor of their work. If elected DPL, I will likely be making overtures to the FSF -- perhaps we could each delegate an ambassador to the other organization. Also, I think it's about time we made up our minds one way or the other about the GNU FDL. The latter is an issue that we need to resolve internally first. All of the above is one reason I'm very happy to have Mr. Turner on this list. -- G. Branden Robinson| No math genius, eh? Then perhaps Debian GNU/Linux | you could explain to me where you [EMAIL PROTECTED] | got these... PENROSE TILES! http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Stephen R. Notley pgpGQYyOTSMle.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 12:16:23PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: In a nutshell, I don't know of any reasonable person that would define object code as the output of tr a-z A-Z on a text file. Nice to meet you. :) That is, I'm perfectly willing to accept that as an example of object code if the only alternative is to call it source code. But what I was trying to get at is, outside the context of the GPL, would anyone writing a general definition of object code consider the output of tr a-z A-Z to fit it? I think that the answer is pretty clearly no. I grant your opinion above is correct, but I don't think it's quite relevant to the point I'm trying to make. What I'm trying to say is that object code has a certain well-known definition outside the context of the GPL. The GPL does not define what object code is. Therefore, legally speaking, the normal and conventional definition is what applies. Now, an author could explicitly state that for the purpose of this license, object code means the output of tr. That, I think, would be a lot more reasonable. I believe the author of some fonts did just that recently. But lacking such a statement, I don't think that a court -- expert witness or not -- would find that tr output is included in the common definition of object code. If a court looks at this, and sees object code, can we really know in advance if they would use the normal definition or this liberal one? I suspect they would use the normal one, which is another problem. What if we had a license like the GPL that used source form instead of source code, transformed form instead of object code and executable form, and Work instead of Program? That would make all the difference, I think. Of course, to the people pondering that change, the ramifications of the more generalized term should be carefully considered. If the license iteself defined object form that way, that'd be one thing. (It'd be confusing, but we could evaluate it only one way.) But it doesn't define object code at all. The FSF does provide a hint, by saying object code or executable form in two places. They probably figured an expert witness or two would be able to dispose of the issue should it ever reach court. True, but my output of tr is neither object nor executable, so I don't think it helps with this particular example. -- John
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 04:35:02PM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote: Consideration of the scenario of use of a modified but undistributed version of a program within the modifying organisation would also lead one to conclude that our interpretation of 2 as a whole is desirable, and likely to be the intention of the license's author(s). Why does anyone care about modified copies that don't get distributed? Has it occurred to anyone how difficult it would be to enforce such a restriction? How is the copyright holder to know that such modification has even happened? The only practical purpose this could serve would be to inflate damages in the event one were suing a party for copyright infringement under the GPL, and determined during civil discovery that someone had modified a GPL'ed work in a way that *would* have violated (2)(c), had they distributed that modified version. And this practical purpose is just an expression of rancorousness. I feel pretty strongly that no restrictions *at all* should attach to modification per se, but only to distribution of modifications. What I do in the privacy of my own home is not any copyright holder's damn business. -- G. Branden Robinson|To Republicans, limited government Debian GNU/Linux |means not assisting people they [EMAIL PROTECTED] |would sooner see shoveled into mass http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |graves. -- Kenneth R. Kahn pgpkQlhbdVPWY.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 12:45:47PM -0500, David Turner wrote: On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 14:20, John Goerzen wrote: There is a clear and distinct difference between the grep in ls | grep '^some.regexp$' | xargs rm, and PHPNuke! Where is the difference between your example ls/grep/xargs and my example PHPNuke pipeline? PHPNuke is interactive. Grep isn't. Please recall the definition of interactive is: Ever get the feeling this conversation is going in circles? :-) My example was trying to show how PHPNuke is interactive. You're saying my example is wrong because the difference between PHPNuke and grep is that PHPNuke is interactive. Seems like an un-bridgable chasm to me :-) In any case, I maintain that PHPNuke does not meet the following part of this definition: programming A term describing a program whose input and output are interleaved, like a conversation, allowing the user's input to depend on earlier output from the same run. In each run, PHPNuke receives a single request and sends a single result. There is no interleaving. Now, you could argue that with session cookies, etc. that makes all the difference, but unless PHPNuke is broken without them, I don't think that argument works. -- John
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 12:16:23PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:26:17PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote: On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:31:17PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: Can you remind me of the advantages of NOT interpreting as object form as any form other than the preferred form for modification? For the detailed description, see http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200303/msg00131.html I've read it. In a nutshell, I don't know of any reasonable person that would define object code as the output of tr a-z A-Z on a text file. Nice to meet you. :) That is, I'm perfectly willing to accept that as an example of object code if the only alternative is to call it source code. Let us consider the output of tr a-z A-Z as _not_ source code nor object code. This implies that it is not exempted by section 2, and also not exempted by section 3. So it's not a particularly useful definition since you would be bound by pure copyright law, and you'd never be able to redistribute. Of course, this becomes really silly because I know a lot of people that run source code through such tranformation tools as uuencode, tar, and gzip. Simon
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 11:55:07AM -0600, John Goerzen wrote: On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:41:50PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: About boxes are fine, but I am not sure it is wise to permit a Free Software license to forbid people from removing them. It makes perfect sense to remove an About box if, for instance, one is converting an application into a library. I agree. (2)(c) should only apply when an application is run interactively. If you make an application into a library, it'd never be run interactively, so its relevance should disappear. I know I haven't worded this quite right, but you get the idea. Here's an interesting GPL puzzle. Say you completely remove the interactive functionality of a program that uses (2)(c). This means that you can remove that entire chunk of code anyway. Someone uses your code and prepares a derivative work that is interactive. Is this new author required to put in an appropriate notice? He knows that one used to exist because you have clearly marked your changes in the appropriate source files. Simon
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 12:47:59PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 04:35:02PM +1300, Nick Phillips wrote: Consideration of the scenario of use of a modified but undistributed version of a program within the modifying organisation would also lead one to conclude that our interpretation of 2 as a whole is desirable, and likely to be the intention of the license's author(s). Why does anyone care about modified copies that don't get distributed? Has it occurred to anyone how difficult it would be to enforce such a restriction? How is the copyright holder to know that such modification has even happened? Oh... Let's say you run an ASP service that uses GNU Hello World to display the appropriate greeting. Making a modification without respecting all of 2(a), 2(b), and 2(c) would be in violation of the GPL as it currently stands. Since the copyright holder has the exclusive right to modification under U.S. copyright law, I see this as a flaw in the wording of the GPL; not a malicious legal trap set by the FSF. Simon
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 01:10:15PM -0500, Simon Law wrote: On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 11:55:07AM -0600, John Goerzen wrote: On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:41:50PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: About boxes are fine, but I am not sure it is wise to permit a Free Software license to forbid people from removing them. It makes perfect sense to remove an About box if, for instance, one is converting an application into a library. I agree. (2)(c) should only apply when an application is run interactively. If you make an application into a library, it'd never be run interactively, so its relevance should disappear. I know I haven't worded this quite right, but you get the idea. Here's an interesting GPL puzzle. Say you completely remove the interactive functionality of a program that uses (2)(c). This means that you can remove that entire chunk of code anyway. Someone uses your code and prepares a derivative work that is interactive. Is this new author required to put in an appropriate notice? He knows that one used to exist because you have clearly marked your changes in the appropriate source files. It doesn't matter if it used to exist or not; you're only excused from complying with 2(c) if you receive the work in a form that is already interactive, AND it does not already contain an appropriate notice. If you take a non-interactive work and make it interactive, the GPL as written requires you to add an appropriate notice. Your only way out of this requirement is to go back to an earlier, interactive form which legitimately did not include a notice under 2(c). I would recommend that users of the GPL who find this requirement ugly begin adding an additional exemption to 2(c) to their own works. Branden, if I'm not mistaken, this would constitute an additional permission and is therefore acceptable in your book? -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer pgpO6dIsxhyZO.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
Scripsit Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] Does anyone here hold the position that requiring the copyright notice on the front page would not be DFSG-free, if that's a valid interpretation of the GPL? I have a hard time deciding what to think here. On one hand, it is not, in the present case, an orneous requirement. On the other, I fear a slippery slope leading to output restrictions and all sorts of bad things. Perhaps a reasonable place to draw the line would be to say that we don't find it DFSG-unfree in itself to require a copyright notice (or other stuff as detailed in GPL 2(c) on the front page, if the software appears *to the remote end user* as a coherent entity that he is having a stateful interaction with. This would be independent of how that appearance is technically achieved. However, for some technical architectures, the means by which the copyright notice is required in the license may still be unfree in themselves - for example, if they are phrased as an output or use restriction. Does anyone believe the GPL unambiguously *dis*allows that interpretation? I don't. Does anyone believe that this interpretation is sufficiently wrong-headed that it should not be considered valid, in spite of statements from the copyright holder or a court ruling? For debian-legal's purposes, I suppose that the constructive position would be to *assume* that the upstream author is right when he claims that the GPL includes restrictions that we usually don't see the GPL as including. If the restrictions claimed by the upstream author are unacceptable, we should treat the software as DSFG-nonfree even though the restrictions may not actually be there, seen from an objective legal viewpoint. Things only begin to get muddy in the hypothetical case that the project has been forked or inherited by a new upstream author, and the new upstream author interprets the GPL to grant rights that the old one explicitly denied. *Then* we'll nedd to figure out which of the authors we believe. -- Henning Makholm Punctuation, is? fun!
Re: PHPNuke license
Scripsit Simon Law [EMAIL PROTECTED] Let us consider the output of tr a-z A-Z as _not_ source code nor object code. This implies that it is not exempted by section 2, and also not exempted by section 3. So it's not a particularly useful definition since you would be bound by pure copyright law, and you'd never be able to redistribute. I think the most reasonable reading of the GPL would be something like: If you distribute something that is derived from the source (whether or not it consists of machine code), you have to also distribute the preferred form for modifying that particular something. In most cases the preferred form for modifying that particular something would be the original source itself. However, one can invent examples where it isn't - but this of course will have to depend on an assumption about *why* someone might want to modify the particular something. Say, for example that I do cat *.c | tr a-g A-G | tr -c -d A-G# in the source directory and proceed to convert the output to a MIDI file which I call Ode to Emacs or something equally silly. I have now derived a musical work for which the preferred form for modifying would be the MIDI file, or perhaps some intermediate text file I used. However, the original C sourse would not be the preferred form for modifying my song - on the assumption that the reason one would modify the music is that it sounds awful, rather than there's a bug in the program it was derived from. -- Henning MakholmDe er da bare dumme. Det skal du bare sige til dem.
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 12:16:23PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:26:17PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote: On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 04:31:17PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: Can you remind me of the advantages of NOT interpreting as object form as any form other than the preferred form for modification? For the detailed description, see http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200303/msg00131.html I've read it. In a nutshell, I don't know of any reasonable person that would define object code as the output of tr a-z A-Z on a text file. Nice to meet you. :) That is, I'm perfectly willing to accept that as an example of object code if the only alternative is to call it source code. I think we need to keep in mind that the GPL does not (cannot) legislate *what* the preferred form for modification is; therefore, the preferred form does not exist in isolation, but is always tied to a person who *has a preference*. Although the GPL does not make it explicit who this person is, I believe the only sane interpretation is that the preference that matters is that of the party who has made the modifications now being distributed. As a result, the output of tr a-z A-Z may be either source code *or* object code, *depending on the intent of the party making this change*. If they're making this change because they have a mental condition (or operating system condition) that allows them to only think in terms of that part of the character set which is accessible to AOL users, the result may very well be *their* preferred form for modification, in which case it's source code. If it's obfuscation, then it's not the preferred form of modification, in which case it's either object code or something else that the GPL doesn't permit distribution of. I'm happy to be generous and say that it's object code in this case. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer pgpE5UFTzfKsV.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
Scripsit Simon Law [EMAIL PROTECTED] Here's an interesting GPL puzzle. Say you completely remove the interactive functionality of a program that uses (2)(c). This means that you can remove that entire chunk of code anyway. Someone uses your code and prepares a derivative work that is interactive. Is this new author required to put in an appropriate notice? Yes. The requirement to put in a notice holds *whenever* the modified program is interactive, *unless* it was derived from an *interactive* program that didn't have one. This also goes for programs that have never been interactive before (and so never had a notice). If, say, I modified CVS such that it entered an interactive mode when run without arguments, I believe I'd be required to add a 2(c) notice. $ cvs Concurrent Versions System 2.3.4 (makholm fork) (client/server) Copyright 1989-2003 lots of people CVS comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c' for details. cvs update M armadillo.tex ? book.dvi U squirrel.tex cvs diff -u --- armadillo.tex 3 Mar 2003 10:08 - 1.49 +++ armadillo.tex 5 Mar 2003 12:17 - @@ -228,7 +228,7 @@ is not important. One may wonder why this paradoxical animal ever evolved? Surely, -only drooling brainless idiots would ever suggest that it was due +only conventional thinkers would ever suggest that it was due to ``natural selection''. No, there is a much more subtle effect at play here, and we will discuss that in the next chapter. cvs commit -m toned down the insults slightly Checking in armadillo.tex; /var/cvsroot/mknbook/armadillo.tex,v -- armadillo.tex new revision: 1.50; previos revision: 1.49 done cvs bye $ -- Henning Makholm We will discuss your youth another time.
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 08:06:05PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: Does anyone here hold the position that requiring the copyright notice on the front page would not be DFSG-free, if that's a valid interpretation of the GPL? Well I should say, this case is independant of the GPL due to the specific requirement. I have a hard time deciding what to think here. On one hand, it is not, in the present case, an orneous requirement. On the other, I fear a slippery slope leading to output restrictions and all sorts of bad things. I think it is an orneous requirement. I was looking around for software to use for my own website, and PHPNuke was one of the things I was evaluating. I think that any website tool that insists that you include an attribution or copyright statement is not suitable for us and is not sufficiently free for the users -- and by users, I mean the users of Debian. If Apache insisted on this from day one, nobody would have taken it seriously and it would have lost out. I think that we can, should, and must take a stand here and say that requiring that on individual websites goes too far. Perhaps a reasonable place to draw the line would be to say that we don't find it DFSG-unfree in itself to require a copyright notice (or other stuff as detailed in GPL 2(c) on the front page, if the software Even that is problematic, for the reasons above, but moreover: Sometimes it can be difficult to determine just what a front page is. If you have several categories of information, and always link to one specific category (yet they are part of an overriding system that has no general entry page), what is the front page? Is it still a front page if nobody links to it? Would intentionally linking to other pages to avoid the copyright notice constitute a violation of the DMCA? appears *to the remote end user* as a coherent entity that he is having a stateful interaction with. This would be independent of how I'm not so sure. I've never really felt I'm having a stateful interaction with the majority of websites. PHPNuke and its ilk do not automatically imply stateful interactions either. as including. If the restrictions claimed by the upstream author are unacceptable, we should treat the software as DSFG-nonfree even though the restrictions may not actually be there, seen from an objective legal viewpoint. That's a reasonable stance and I support it. one explicitly denied. *Then* we'll nedd to figure out which of the authors we believe. Good point.
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 12:45:55PM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote: On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 01:10:15PM -0500, Simon Law wrote: Here's an interesting GPL puzzle. Say you completely remove the interactive functionality of a program that uses (2)(c). This means that you can remove that entire chunk of code anyway. Someone uses your code and prepares a derivative work that is interactive. Is this new author required to put in an appropriate notice? He knows that one used to exist because you have clearly marked your changes in the appropriate source files. It doesn't matter if it used to exist or not; you're only excused from complying with 2(c) if you receive the work in a form that is already interactive, AND it does not already contain an appropriate notice. If you take a non-interactive work and make it interactive, the GPL as written requires you to add an appropriate notice. Your only way out of this requirement is to go back to an earlier, interactive form which legitimately did not include a notice under 2(c). I would recommend that users of the GPL who find this requirement ugly begin adding an additional exemption to 2(c) to their own works. Branden, if I'm not mistaken, this would constitute an additional permission and is therefore acceptable in your book? Yes, this makes sense now. I can see from a more careful reading that 2(c) does obligate you to do add a correct and appropriate notice. Simon
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 08:06:05PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: Scripsit Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] Does anyone here hold the position that requiring the copyright notice on the front page would not be DFSG-free, if that's a valid interpretation of the GPL? I have a hard time deciding what to think here. On one hand, it is not, in the present case, an orneous requirement. On the other, I fear a slippery slope leading to output restrictions and all sorts of bad things. Perhaps a reasonable place to draw the line would be to say that we don't find it DFSG-unfree in itself to require a copyright notice (or other stuff as detailed in GPL 2(c) on the front page, if the software appears *to the remote end user* as a coherent entity that he is having a stateful interaction with. This would be independent of how that appearance is technically achieved. However, for some technical architectures, the means by which the copyright notice is required in the license may still be unfree in themselves - for example, if they are phrased as an output or use restriction. I'm not sure you've answered the question I meant to ask. Let me try to rephrase: if debian-legal finds that such a requirement from upstream is a legitimate clarification of the GPL (rather than an additional restriction imposed on top of the GPL), do you think it's appropriate for debian-legal to reject a piece of GPL software whose author imposes this restriction, given that the GPL is explicitly grandfathered into the DFSG? Whether this particular requirement is a clarification or an additional restriction is a separate question, I think (my third one, repeated below). I believe that if we get to the point where debian-legal agrees that an interpretation of the GPL is valid, but does not agree that this same interpretation is sufficiently free to be allowed in Debian, it's time to revise the DFSG by means of a GR. Does anyone believe that this interpretation is sufficiently wrong-headed that it should not be considered valid, in spite of statements from the copyright holder or a court ruling? For debian-legal's purposes, I suppose that the constructive position would be to *assume* that the upstream author is right when he claims that the GPL includes restrictions that we usually don't see the GPL as including. I think it is always appropriate to assume the license on a piece of software is exactly what the copyright holder states that it is; if nothing else, this avoids unnecessary lawsuits. I don't think it's appropriate to always accept the copyright holder's statements as an *interpretation of the GPL*. I think we need to decide independently what is a valid interpretation of the GPL, and what is an additional restriction imposed by the copyright holder -- specifically because of the GPL grandfathering. If the restrictions claimed by the upstream author are unacceptable, we should treat the software as DSFG-nonfree even though the restrictions may not actually be there, seen from an objective legal viewpoint. This, in spite of the DFSG's GPL grandfathering? Things only begin to get muddy in the hypothetical case that the project has been forked or inherited by a new upstream author, and the new upstream author interprets the GPL to grant rights that the old one explicitly denied. *Then* we'll nedd to figure out which of the authors we believe. I don't think this is muddy at all: the effective license on the code is that given by the original copyright holder. A new maintainer can't grant us more rights to code he doesn't own. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer pgpdhVrUEcNp9.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 01:52:33PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote:
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 08:06:05PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote:
On one hand, it is not, in the present case, an orneous requirement.
[...]
I think it is an orneous requirement.
Do I make you 'orny, baby? Do I?
Guys, I think the word you're looking for is onerous.
onerous
adj : not easily borne; wearing; the burdensome task of preparing
the income tax return; my duties weren't onerous; I
only had to greet the guests; a taxing schedule
[syn: {burdensome}, {taxing}]
--
G. Branden Robinson| To stay young requires unceasing
Debian GNU/Linux | cultivation of the ability to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | unlearn old falsehoods.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Robert Heinlein
pgpzVpgWUMTPi.pgp
Description: PGP signature
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 12:08:28PM -0600, John Goerzen wrote: programming A term describing a program whose input and output are interleaved, like a conversation, allowing the user's input to depend on earlier output from the same run. In each run, PHPNuke receives a single request and sends a single result. There is no interleaving. Now, you could argue that with session cookies, etc. that makes all the difference, but unless PHPNuke is broken without them, I don't think that argument works. It's just another case of a word that's difficult to define precisely: to include everything we subjectivally consider interactive, especially considering the fact that we don't all agree on what's interactive, and that some of us can't quite make up our mind. A license needs to pick its own definition (which is dangerous, since it's likely to miss cases the license author didn't think of, which is why technical definitions are bad in licenses[1]) and use it. Here, the GPL is ambiguous and all we can do is go with what the copyright holder says, which is that PHPNuke is interactive. [1] In other words, I'm stressing that whatever the solution to this is (wrt the license), it is *not* to try very hard to define interactive; it will fail and probably make a big mess of odd interpretations in the process. -- Glenn Maynard
Re: PHPNuke license
On Tue, 2003-03-04 at 20:12, Glenn Maynard wrote: On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 06:53:51PM -0500, David Turner wrote: This, I simply don't think I can agree with. Perhaps a clearer example would be irc.worldforge.org. It lives on a computer owned and operated by Bob. But Bob basically never logs on to IRC. I asked, and the two people currently active said that they were currently using the server, while Bob wasn't (since he wasn't connected then). But why should they need to see licensing information for software when they're not bound by the licenses? I don't think they need to see it, but that they need to *be able to* see it. So, I do think the current (2)(c) is slightly flawed (although, as the discussion has revealed, it's quite hard to exploit the flaw, if you adopt sane definitions of interactive). It's Bob that potentially needs that information, not the users. Similarly, the license itself (the GPL text) must be made available to Bob, but nothing requires it be made available to the users on IRC. I doubt the warranty disclaimer is relevant to them, either. As a user, I would be interested. I think we're just hitting concepts of users that aren't exactly clear, and probably weren't considered at all when the GPL was written. After all, the GPL says when run, and IRC users certainly aren't running the IRC server when they connect to it; only Bob did that. But they might be if, instead of an ircd, it were an ftpd hooked up through inetd. In any case, I don't think we can come to any safe conclusion of whether it's correct to interpret 2c to include displaying the GPL blurb on the main page of PHPNuke output. I think we *can* -- I think displaying on the console, or in the comments, would be fine. OTOH, I think that if a copyright holder interprets it differently, their interpretation should dominate -- just as in the PINE case, this might make their software non-free. However, PHPNuke's interpretation is broader: it insists that the blurb be in the footer of each page, not just the main page. Even if we can can't determine the above, can we agree that it's not a reasonable interpretation to apply it to the output of each page (akin to outputting the blurb for every command issued to gdb)? Of course. I'm not sure where we could go from there; asking them to change it to only the main page is pointless if that's 1: still ambiguous and/or 2: still of questionable DFSG-freeness. Even if that's DFSG-free, it's still probably a bad idea to ask them to change to that if it's still a questionable interpretation of the GPL. I think we ought to ask them to change it because the footer thing is definately outside of (2)(c), but the front page thing is definately DFSG-free (by grandfathering if nothing else). -- -Dave Turner Stalk Me: 617 441 0668 On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -Thomas Jefferson
Re: PHPNuke license
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 12:45:55PM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote: I would recommend that users of the GPL who find this requirement ugly begin adding an additional exemption to 2(c) to their own works. Branden, if I'm not mistaken, this would constitute an additional permission and is therefore acceptable in your book? I'm not sure this would help. In order to remain GPL-compatible (as I understand it), the exemption must be severable, and if it's severable, people can still add the notice and make it sticky. It would be a statement that the original author doesn't *want* such a notice (and it would be rude to add it against his wishes), but such a notice can be made without touching the license. -- Glenn Maynard
