Re: License requiring to reproduce copyrights in binary distributions.
Le Wed, Jul 08, 2009 at 07:00:23AM +0200, Florian Weimer a écrit : * Charles Plessy: - The GPL, that assumes that the source is always available, and therefore does not have special requirements for binary distributions. This is incorrect. If the binary includes copyright statements to display them, you may not remove them (see §5 (d) in the GPL version 3). In addition to license terms, you have to take moral rights into account. In many countries, software authors have an inalienable right to be named as authors, like any other author. Hi Florian, Reading the paragraph 5.d, I have rather the impression that it says that if the program we redistribute does not display copyright notices, the GPL does not require us to fix this: 5. Conveying Modified Source Versions. [..] d) If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display Appropriate Legal Notices; however, if the Program has interactive interfaces that do not display Appropriate Legal Notices, your work need not make them do so. The moral rights is another issue… Most of the heat in the discussions about debian/copyright stem from the fact that Upstream does not document copyrights perfectly. Otherwise, writing this file would be trivial. Do I undertand correctly that your comment is: If a copyright notice is present in the source but not in the binary version nor its accompaning documentation, it can be a violation of autors inalienable rights in some countries. Then we return to the original question: if it is acceptable that Debian distributes the source and binary forms of works licensed under the GPL in separate packages, does that mean that there is no need to reproduce copyright statements from the source code to the debian/copyright file in the binary package for works licensed under other terms, unless the license specifically requires to do so? Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: License requiring to reproduce copyrights in binary distributions.
* Charles Plessy: - The GPL, that assumes that the source is always available, and therefore does not have special requirements for binary distributions. This is incorrect. If the binary includes copyright statements to display them, you may not remove them (see §5 (d) in the GPL version 3). In addition to license terms, you have to take moral rights into account. In many countries, software authors have an inalienable right to be named as authors, like any other author. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: License requiring to reproduce copyrights in binary distributions.
Le Fri, Jul 03, 2009 at 10:02:42PM +0200, Francesco Poli a écrit : If you are convinced that a public-domain-like situation is actually desirable, then, AFAIK, the best way to achieve it is the Creative Commons public domain dedication [1], or possibly CC0 [2]. [1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/ [2] http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode Hi Francesco, since CC0 is recommended over the PD dedication, I will use CC0. http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0 -- Charles -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: License requiring to reproduce copyrights in binary distributions.
Charles Plessy ple...@debian.org wrote: It appeared in various discussions about either DEP5 or the NEW queue that licenses vary in their requirement for reproducing the authors copyrights in binary distributions. [...] I wonder if the licence requirements are the deciding factor. With the increasing criminalisation of copyright infringement worldwide, users may need to show their local police or state agent that they have a valid copyright licence for any copies. How can users do that reliably if the binary distributions aren't reproducing the authors' copyrights? Puzzled, -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: License requiring to reproduce copyrights in binary distributions.
Le Fri, Jul 03, 2009 at 09:10:10AM +0100, MJ Ray a écrit : Charles Plessy ple...@debian.org wrote: It appeared in various discussions about either DEP5 or the NEW queue that licenses vary in their requirement for reproducing the authors copyrights in binary distributions. [...] I wonder if the licence requirements are the deciding factor. With the increasing criminalisation of copyright infringement worldwide, users may need to show their local police or state agent that they have a valid copyright licence for any copies. How can users do that reliably if the binary distributions aren't reproducing the authors' copyrights? Definitely, licence requirements are not the only deciding factor, but they provide the boundaries, that I would like to document better. In many of the upstream original distribution of our programs, the coverage of all the copyright statements does not reach a 100 % accuracy, and for some of the other binary Linux distributions, this does not seem to be problematic. In our attempt to be perfect, we actually put ourselves into a troublesome situation where if for a version A, debian/copyright is 100 % accurate and for a version B it is missing one name, then we are disinforming our users because we made them rely on us instead on Upstream. What we have to do is to comply with the license, for sure, but to what extent do we want to substitute with Upstream's duties? Do we really want to maintain our own list of all the Linux, KDE and Mozilla contributors? Arent'we taking a responsability that we could avoid by not doing this if the license allows? If Upstream maintains an AUTHORS file, I think that it would be better to ship it and only use debian/copyright as a license summary. And of course, we can sent patches upstream if we find people missing… Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: License requiring to reproduce copyrights in binary distributions.
On Thu, 2 Jul 2009 23:39:26 +0900 Charles Plessy wrote: [...] I can re-release under the BOLA license with a WTFPL exemption: ‘To all effects and purposes, this work is to be considered Public Domain, but if you do not agree this is possible, then just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.’ I've already suggested more widely used, well known analyzed licenses. If you are convinced that a public-domain-like situation is actually desirable, then, AFAIK, the best way to achieve it is the Creative Commons public domain dedication [1], or possibly CC0 [2]. [1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/ [2] http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode This said, license proliferation is not Buena Onda… License proliferation is indeed a bad phenomenon, that's why I would *not* recommend a license like BOLA: I personally think that it's legally unclear, and almost completely unknown. -- New location for my website! Update your bookmarks! http://www.inventati.org/frx . Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgp19TFkkL7ti.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: License requiring to reproduce copyrights in binary distributions.
Charles Plessy ple...@debian.org (02/07/2009): […] may I suggest the BOLA license, that is a politically correct version of the WTFPL? http://blitiri.com.ar/p/bola/ Quoting it: | The BOLA text | Here's the text. I usually place it in a file named LICENSE in the top directory of the project. | It's composed of an introduction, and then the license itself. | Last updated: 11/September/2006. Version 1.0. | | I don't like licenses, because I don't like having to worry about all this | legal stuff just for a simple piece of software I don't really mind anyone | using. But I also believe that it's important that people share and give back; | so I'm placing this work under the following license. | | | BOLA - Buena Onda License Agreement (v1.0) | -- | | This work is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no | event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of | this work. | | To all effects and purposes, this work is to be considered Public Domain. | | | However, if you want to be buena onda, you should: | | 1. Not take credit for it, and give proper recognition to the authors. | 2. Share your modifications, so everybody benefits from them. | 3. Do something nice for the authors. | 4. Help someone who needs it. | 5. Don't waste. Anything, but specially energy that comes from natural |non-renewable resources. | 6. Be tolerant. Everything that's good in nature comes from cooperation. How is that the same as: | DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE | Version 2, December 2004 | | Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar | 14 rue de Plaisance, 75014 Paris, France | Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified | copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long | as the name is changed. | | DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE |TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION | | 0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO. Quoting the FAQ: | Isn’t this license basically public domain? | | There is no such thing as “putting a work in the public domain”, you | America-centered, Commonwealth-biased individual. Public domain varies | with the jurisdictions, and it is in some places debatable whether | someone who has not been dead for the last seventy years is entitled to | put his own work in the public domain. (Sources for last two quotes: http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/) Replacing “Public Domain” by “Public Domain” (which to me is what BOLA is about) sounds hmmm broken? Mraw, KiBi. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: License requiring to reproduce copyrights in binary distributions.
Le Thu, Jul 02, 2009 at 03:52:40PM +0200, Cyril Brulebois a écrit : | | There is no such thing as “putting a work in the public domain”, you | America-centered, Commonwealth-biased individual. Public domain varies | with the jurisdictions, and it is in some places debatable whether | someone who has not been dead for the last seventy years is entitled to | put his own work in the public domain. (Sources for last two quotes: http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/) Replacing “Public Domain” by “Public Domain” (which to me is what BOLA is about) sounds hmmm broken? I can re-release under the BOLA license with a WTFPL exemption: ‘To all effects and purposes, this work is to be considered Public Domain, but if you do not agree this is possible, then just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.’ This said, license proliferation is not Buena Onda… -- Charles -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: License requiring to reproduce copyrights in binary distributions.
On Wed, 1 Jul 2009 23:57:28 +0900 Charles Plessy wrote: Dear all, [...] I propose to make this list on the Debian wiki, and created a draft page: http://wiki.debian.org/CopyrightNotices Could you please explicitly state (in the wiki page itself) the license under which the wiki page is released? Could you please do that quickly, before the number of contributors becomes too large and re-licensing becomes a pain? Suggested license for the wiki page: GNU GPL v2 or Expat license, as you prefer. I personally think that relying on implicit permission to modify on wiki sites is a bad practice, that should be avoided whenever possible. I hope this helps. -- New location for my website! Update your bookmarks! http://www.inventati.org/frx . Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4 pgpnEBFVd6Z3i.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: License requiring to reproduce copyrights in binary distributions.
Le Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 07:03:03PM +0200, Francesco Poli a écrit : On Wed, 1 Jul 2009 23:57:28 +0900 Charles Plessy wrote: http://wiki.debian.org/CopyrightNotices Could you please explicitly state (in the wiki page itself) the license under which the wiki page is released? All my contributions on this wiki can be treated as if they were in the public domain, as stated on my personal page: http://wiki.debian.org/CharlesPlessy For this page, since the discussion on the wiki relicensing has not beared fruits yet, I would something permissive that would not hinder the work or our wiki admins when they will sort licencing issues out. Also, since this page stems from the impression that it is sometimes impractical to reproduce all copyright statements, I would like to pick one that allows to not do so. I know that people on this list object on license proliferation, but may I suggest the BOLA license, that is a politically correct version of the WTFPL? http://blitiri.com.ar/p/bola/ Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
