At 14:05 -0700 2000.09.10, Russ Allbery wrote:
>Chris Nandor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>> I do not think we should encourage ANY specific licensing terms for CPAN
>> content, except that it should be an open source license of some kind.
>
>I agree with this as a statement of general "official" policy; however,
>I'll certainly encourage people who are using the Artistic License by
>itself to either hire an intellectual property lawyer to clean it up if
>they can, or if not to use a different license whose meaning is clear.
And I'll certainly encourage people not to waste their time in such a way.
I personally think the AL _is_ clear. But ho-hum.
>> As to picking another license, like the MIT: I honestly don't care. I
>> am not here to say the AL should be the license of choice. I am here to
>> say it is acceptable. However, I like the AL and will stick with it
>> (though I wouldn't mind minor changes to it for clarifications).
>
>I find this really unfortunate, since I would therefore be extremely
>reluctant to use any of the software you released under that license in
>any sort of commercial product (despite the fact that I presume you intend
>to allow that).
That's worse than silly, but it is your loss, I guess. I cannot worry
myself with people refusing to use software that I have granted them use of
because they are afraid of some very literally impossible outcome.
>> One more thing, Bradley Kuhn wrote this:
>
>>> Yet, we have documentation in the core and software on CPAN that is
>>> Artistic-only, and thus isn't known to be free documentation/free
>>> software.
>
>> That is patently false. Even Bruce Perens says that AL-licensed
>> software is open source (though with heavy reservations, of course).
>
>No, it is absolutely not patently false.
Yes, it is.
>It's entirely accurate. Perhaps
>you've missed what the FSF says about the Artistic License (used by
>itself), an opinion that I've heard is backed up by their legal counsel:
That is the opinion of the FSF (and their legal counsel, who I'm not
inclined to trust anyway), one not generally held by the OSI (which most
certainly has approved of the AL by itself as an open source license,
though with reservation), or by the hacker or "open source" / "free
software" communities in general.
Bradley Kuhn said that software that is AL-only is not known to be free
software. But thousands of people out there (including many of the people
on p5p, etc.) when asked would say yes, it is free software. That makes
his statement false. His words, when interpreted in English and using
standard English definitions, are false. Such software IS known to be free
software.
>Remember, *licensing fails closed.* If the license is too vague to be
>valid, the result is that you can't use the software at all.
That's only true if you start from the bogus assumption that law determines
rights. I refuse to be bound by such newfangled, invalid notions. If
someone tells me I can use their software, then I will feel free to use it.
True, I am not a lawyer, or a businessman, or a company. And thank God.
They live in a sick world, where a man's word means nothing, where you need
escape clauses and protections from evey angle and at every turn. Let them
play their silly little game if they want to, but don't tell me that I have
to abide by it, and don't tell me that I have to believe the lie that our
rights derive from whatever laws and courts happen to be fashionable at the
time.
>*In practice,* the use of a
>vague license is going to strongly discourage anyone who cares about
>licenses
This isn't true. It might discourage some people. It could possibly
discourage most. It won't discourage all. This is proved by the large
number of people who license their software AL-only specifically because
they don't like the GPL. If they didn't care about licenses, then this
wouldn't even be an issue. The very fact that it is an issue disproves
your statement.
>The AL says nice, free-software-like things, but it doesn't say them
>clearly, in legal language, or in a fashion that has any assurance of
>being interpreted "correctly" by a court.
Again, this matters not to me. I know you think that is a juvenile way to
see it, but frankly, I don't give a damn.
>You may not care, and I
>may not care, but the lawyers *do* care and *have* to care because in the
>unlikely case that it will come up in a court, the judge will care.
That's just the thing: I am not inclined to care one whit about what
happens to people silly enough to go to court over such issues. Let them
waste their lives on it; they will get what they deserve.
Now, I will repeat: I think the AL could use a small overhaul. I do not
believe at all that it is too vague to be legally valid. And I do not
believe at all that it NEEDS to be legally valid to work as a free software
license, in that people who care that much about the legal validity of it
have a problem that I can't fix.
--
Chris Nandor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pudge.net/
Open Source Development Network [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://osdn.com/
