Re: Another non-free license - PerlBuildSystem
On 20/02/07, Arthur Corliss [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 20 Feb 2007, Ashley Pond V wrote: I didn't want to feed this so responded personally to a couple off list. Y'all couldn't resist sharing your politics and goofs though so… I apologize to the disinterested if this just feeds it. I find it difficult to believe, being a middling hacker compared to some of you guys, that I'm the only one on this list who has ever written code that ended up used by a military group; or the only one who regretted it. I've not only written code used by the military, but I also served in the military. Despite the idiots who like to portray us a baby killers I'm proud of it. And you're so surprised that I find you an offensive jackass (that's right -- I looked at your site). I expressed interest in such a license getting hammered out by some experts because I don't like being a party to mass murder. Between 200,000 and 750,000 (depending on whose figures you prefer) Iraqis have died at the hands of the US government since 1990. They can take my tax money to do it at the threat of prison but I would like to think it *might* be possible to stop them from taking my otherwise freely given work (the lack of Earth-moving nature of which is entirely irrelevant to any such debate) to do it. If such a license would be immaterial then so are all other petitions. You're an idiot who thinks we're the blame for everything that's wrong in the world. That's your right, of course, and its my right to call you for the bogus numbers. Only a drooling, spoon-fed moron who's incapable of research could come up with those kinds of errors. Where's the proof of those numbers? At least sites like iraqbodycount.org actually give you access to the database of incidents and reported body counts, and they're only up to 62k. With the exception of Desert Storm this has been the safest war for both sides we've ever conducted. Read iraq body counts FAQ: What we are attempting to provide is a credible compilation of civilian deaths that have been reported by recognized sources. Our maximum therefore refers to reported deaths - which can only be a sample of true deaths unless one assumes that every civilian death has been reported. In fact their criteria is that the death must be reported in at least 2 credible sources and given that credible journalists cannot travel in Iraq this means the numbers are only somewhat related to reality. So IBC's accurately counts something that just confuses the issue. The Lancet study on the other hand is the same methodology used in Darfur, the Congo, the Balkans and a variety of other conflict zones. Strangely the numbers have been accepted without argument for all those other places but the Iraq studies are hotly disputed by all kinds of people who know nothing about statistics and/or how to count deaths in a war zone. They are generally not disputed by statisticians. F This is the wrong kind of forum for this kind of stupidity. Just code, damn it, and quite whining. --Arthur Corliss Bolverk's Lair -- http://arthur.corlissfamily.org/ Digital Mages -- http://www.digitalmages.com/ Live Free or Die, the Only Way to Live -- NH State Motto
Re: Another non-free license - PerlBuildSystem
On 20/02/07, Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Ashley! On Tuesday 20 February 2007, Ashley Pond V wrote: I didn't want to feed this so responded personally to a couple off list. Y'all couldn't resist sharing your politics and goofs though so… I apologize to the disinterested if this just feeds it. I find it difficult to believe, being a middling hacker compared to some of you guys, that I'm the only one on this list who has ever written code that ended up used by a military group; or the only one who regretted it. I expressed interest in such a license getting hammered out by some experts because I don't like being a party to mass murder. Between 200,000 and 750,000 (depending on whose figures you prefer) Iraqis have died at the hands of the US government since 1990. They can take my tax money to do it at the threat of prison but I would like to think it *might* be possible to stop them from taking my otherwise freely given work (the lack of Earth-moving nature of which is entirely irrelevant to any such debate) to do it. If such a license would be immaterial then so are all other petitions. The license I'd love to see would be a Non-Governmental (Personal and Private Industry Only). One can crack wise or politicize the idea but it is worth bringing up. Whether or not others would honor such a license does not mitigate one's attempt to live ethically. As you may well be aware the Free Software Definition: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html Specifically says that the software should have: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose. The Open Source Definition ( http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php ) in articles 5 6 prohibit discrimination against persons or groups or against fields of endeavour. Thus, if you prohibit use of your code by militaries or otherwise government entities, it won't be free software or open source. Furthermore, your code will be rendered incompatible with the GPL and similar licences that can only be linked against a certain subset of such licences. See for example: http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html Now, why was free software defined as such that is available to be used for any purpose? I don't know for sure, but I have my own reasons for that. Let's suppose you and a few people make your software prohibited for used by armed forces. Now there are also many anarchists in the world, who dislike governments, and some of them are going to restrict their software from being used by governments. Then I would decide that due to the fact I hate racism, then my software cannot be used for racist purposes. And a bunch of Antisemites are going to restrict their software from being used by Jews. As a result, the open-source software world will become fractured by such restricted software, and people who would like to make use of various pieces of software for their own use will have to carefully look at all of their licences for such incompatibilities with their purposes. Furthermore, let's suppose I'm a consultant who sets up web-sites. I'd like to write a Content Management System for facilitating my present and future work. However, since I don't know who my future clients are going to be I won't be able to use any of this software for fear my future client would be a military group, a government, a racist person or organisation, a Jew or someone whose first name starts with the letter S. Eventually, I may have to implement everything from scratch. Isn't that the point? If you object to group A then you'll be quite happy when people who want to work with group A have to implement everything from scratch. This is exactly what happens if you base your code on GPL code and then want to turn it into a closed product. Of course it makes you less likely to receive code contributions from other but that's obviously the price you're willing to pay for your politics, F As someone wise has once commented The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and what I said just proved it. I find a lot of value in keeping open source software usable by everybody for every purpose. If you want to make your software unlike this, you have the right to, but be aware that I and many other people won't get near it with a ten foot pole, and it won't become part of most distributions, or be used by most open-source projects. So you'll essentially make it unusable. So you should choose whether you want to make your software popular, or you want to protect its abuse but also prevent almost every legitimate use of it. Regards, Shlomi Fish - Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage:http://www.shlomifish.org/ Chuck Norris wrote a complete Perl 6 implementation in a day but then destroyed all evidence with his bare hands, so no one will know his secrets.
Re: Another non-free license - PerlBuildSystem
Being an *extremely* political creature, I'm sorely tempted to wade into this mess, but I won't. Can we just agree to stick to the license's suitability for the CPAN? Cheers, Ovid -- Buy the book -- http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlhks/ Perl and CGI -- http://users.easystreet.com/ovid/cgi_course/
Re: Another non-free license - PerlBuildSystem
On Feb 21, 2007, at 4:56 AM, Adam Kennedy wrote: Personally, I've always liked the idea we limit CPAN to at least something like OSI-compatible licenses. This would at least remove some ambiguity... Adam K I strongly disagree. I like the current non-policy to let anything in, but retroactively to kick out the really nasty junk. The CPAN FAQ says: CPAN and PAUSE are not responsible for any licenses or lack thereof contained in the contents of the archive. We do recommend that authors license their modules to avoid legal ambiguity and so that people may use the code in good conscience. If you require help with a license, we urge you to consult legal counsel who can give you sound advice. -- http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html#How_is_Perl_licensed With that statement, CPAN is absolving itself of any claim to represent only open source code. If we have an open-source-only policy, then someone needs to enforce it. Who do you think should go through all of the CPAN modules to look for non-OSI-licensed packages? Well, it looks like RT users are doing that a module at a time, but slowly: http://rt.cpan.org/Search/Results.html?Query=Subject+LIKE +'license'Order=DESCOrderBy=Status For a while Path-Class, Archive-Any and even Encode all lacked license statements. Happily these are now fixed, but if a policy like what you propose had been in place they would have not been allowed in CPAN, much to everyone's loss. http://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=9203 http://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=14896 http://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=19056 Chris -- Chris Dolan, Equilibrious LLC, http://equilibrious.net/ Public key: http://chrisdolan.net/public.key vCard: http://chrisdolan.net/ChrisDolan.vcf
Re: Another non-free license - PerlBuildSystem
Ovid wrote: Being an *extremely* political creature, I'm sorely tempted to wade into this mess, but I won't. Can we just agree to stick to the license's suitability for the CPAN? Cheers, Ovid Perhaps this is just a me, too... The law of unintended consequences (Every action has at least two consequences - the one you intended, and at least one you didn't) is at work here. I think it's ironic that some of the biggest organizational contributors to open source (Red Hat, O'Reilly Media, and CPAN come to mind) are barred from using PerlBuildSystem because they don't restrict their distributions to keep them away from armed groups (and are thus suppliers). You can hold whatever political opinions you want. Just be aware that when you try to mix ideology with technology, the technology invariably suffers. But I'm guessing the author of PerlBuildSystem isn't subscribed to this mailing list, anyways.
Re: Another non-free license - PerlBuildSystem
On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Chris Dolan wrote: CPAN and PAUSE are not responsible for any licenses or lack thereof contained in the contents of the archive. We do recommend that authors license their modules to avoid legal ambiguity and so that people may use the code in good conscience. If you require help with a license, we urge you to consult legal counsel who can give you sound advice. -- http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html#How_is_Perl_licensed With that statement, CPAN is absolving itself of any claim to represent only open source code. If we have an open-source-only policy, then someone needs to enforce it. Who do you think should go through all of the CPAN modules to look for non-OSI-licensed packages? Well, it looks like RT users are doing that a module at a time, but slowly: Insisting on an OSI-approved license is basically shorthand for insisting on a license which allows the things that it must allow for uploading to PAUSE to be viable. 1. It must allow end-users to _use_ the software 2. It must allow CPAN and _all_ its mirrors to redistribute the software Saying a license should be OSI-approved is a simple test to avoid exactly the kind of silly wrangling the PerlBuildSystem license has created. In this particular case, the PBS license is in violation of #1, and IMO doesn't belong on CPAN. Of course, you could argue that only #2 is important for CPAN, but I think it's worth insisting on #1 just to simplify people's use of CPAN. I don't think _anyone_ should go through all of CPAN looking for things which break this policy, but removing it as we find it quite reasonable. For a while Path-Class, Archive-Any and even Encode all lacked license statements. Happily these are now fixed, but if a policy like what you propose had been in place they would have not been allowed in CPAN, much to everyone's loss. http://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=9203 http://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=14896 http://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=19056 Insisting on _a_ license is actually a really good idea. Absent an explicit license, CPAN does not have the right to redistribute the software, nor do mirrors. -dave /*=== VegGuide.Orgwww.BookIRead.com Your guide to all that's veg. My book blog ===*/
Re: Another non-free license - PerlBuildSystem
On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, David Nicol wrote: On 2/21/07, Dave Rolsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Insisting on _a_ license is actually a really good idea. Absent an explicit license, CPAN does not have the right to redistribute the software, nor do mirrors. that's nonsense. CPAN is equipment, it is not an actor with moral compass. Gee, thanks for the ad hominem! I'm not sure what you mean by equipment. CPAN's equipment is owned by people, corporations, and other institutions. These are all legal entities that can be said to be distributing software uploaded via PAUSE. Just because that distribution is automated via code does not automatically absolve them of responsibility. Now, it's possible that a CPAN mirror operator could make a legal argument that they should be not be held liable for carrying this content, but we don't know if that would hold water. I'd guess Moreover, that still doesn't address the issue of end-user usability. If a a piece of software is basically unusable by anyone, because the license is gibberish (ala PerlBuildSystem), then why shouldn't CPAN remove it? There's no reason we shouldn't enforce some _minimal_ community standards here. CPAN is a service provided by people for free, and they have no obligation to host anything one could upload. They may have violated their license themselves when they uploaded it. The author can't really violate the license in a legal sense, though their upload may have unintended effects. The license is a grant of distribution and usage right. The author already has all possible rights, and is not bound by their own license. -dave /*=== VegGuide.Orgwww.BookIRead.com Your guide to all that's veg. My book blog ===*/
Re: Another non-free license - PerlBuildSystem
* Chris Dolan [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2007-02-21 16:00]: For a while Path-Class, Archive-Any and even Encode all lacked license statements. Happily these are now fixed, but if a policy like what you propose had been in place they would have not been allowed in CPAN, much to everyone's loss. You mean the authors of these modules would have taken their ball and gone home, instead of just fixing their lack of licence and reuploading? Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // http://plasmasturm.org/
Re: Another non-free license - PerlBuildSystem
* imacat [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2007-02-19 07:20]: Armies are merely people that follow their leaders, and their ultimate leaders are the presidents and congresses. Don’t blame me, I’m just a contractor. Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // http://plasmasturm.org/
Re: Another non-free license - PerlBuildSystem
On Feb 21, 2007, at 5:37 PM, A. Pagaltzis wrote: * Chris Dolan [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2007-02-21 16:00]: For a while Path-Class, Archive-Any and even Encode all lacked license statements. Happily these are now fixed, but if a policy like what you propose had been in place they would have not been allowed in CPAN, much to everyone's loss. You mean the authors of these modules would have taken their ball and gone home, instead of just fixing their lack of licence and reuploading? :-) True enough. You've poked a gaping hole in my argument. Although I've declared I'm in favor of the ad hoc system that is in place now, I would not be opposed to a PAUSE rule that required every upload to contain a LICENSE or COPYING file. That would certainly have made my Module::License::Report package easier to write! Chris -- Chris Dolan, Equilibrious LLC, http://equilibrious.net/ Public key: http://chrisdolan.net/public.key vCard: http://chrisdolan.net/ChrisDolan.vcf
