Chris Nandor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> At 1:16 -0700 2000.09.11, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> Public Domain is clear, but what does Freely Available really mean?
> That is defined already in the license.
> "Freely Available" means that no fee is charged for the item
> itself, though there may be fees involved in handling the item.
> It also means that recipients of the item may redistribute it
> under the same conditions they received it.
> I don't see how that is vague at all. Maybe you just forgot that it was
> defined at the top of the license?
No, that's extremely vague. Other people have talked about this, but the
problem is that it's conflating free of charge with a license and they're
two entirely different things.
What if you make your changes available only if someone signs a
non-disclosure agreement? Or make them freely available but say that they
can't be used in commercial packages? The last sentence does nothing at
all about this; it just says that the license sticks with your changes
(and it actually has another problem, given that it implies that anyone
receiving your changes has to require an identical contract with anyone
they distribute your changes to, a very undesireable property in a free
software license).
>> Are you required to let people use your code as part of a commercial
>> package?
> Not your modifications, no, you aren't.
This makes the term "Freely Available" more of a surprise, since it isn't
meaning what a lot of peole are going to expect it to mean.
> You can make a GPL'd modification of perl and release that modification
> separately.
Woah, wait, that's another issue entirely. GPL'd code is entirely
permissable in commercial packages.
What I'm asking about is a license clause that says something like "you
are not permitted to sell software containing these modifications without
explicit permission from the copyright holder." A license more like the
ssh license, one that's obviously not a free software license at all.
> I think that is quite clear. The only burden made on you to make your
> modification "freely available" is that no fee may be charged for the
> item itself, and that recipients may also redistribute it under the same
> conditions they've received it. You could allow, disallow, or do
> anything you want with your license, as long as it follows those two
> conditions.
So you can make your modifications freely available but put a license on
them that says that no one else can use them without paying you money?
That still fulfills the letter of the license; the modifications are
available to anyone for free, and those people can give copies to anyone
else. They're just not *usable*.
>> I really have no idea what this means. I have a few guesses as to what
>> it's *supposed* to mean, but I don't know if they're correct. It
>> sounds like I can charge someone a reasonable (what's reasonable? who
>> defines reasonable?)
> Well, two things:
> 1. I think most people can tell what a reasonable copying fee is,
> though I understand how you could try to use this as a "breaking"
> point
Well, it's at least in the $200 to $500 range; I've seen plenty of
"copying fees" that have reached that price range, enough to argue that
it's reasonable. Is that the intention here?
> 2. The Internet has pretty much rendered this moot for everybody; I
> simply cannot think of a way in which this matters anymore
The issue isn't copies of Perl itself, since anyone can get that easily
enough, but packages based on Perl fulfilling point four. It *sounds*
from point five like the intention of this license is that if you make
some changes to Perl (porting it to a platform, for example) and call it
winperl (to pick a name at almost random), you still have to abide by the
restriction to not charge more than a reasonable copying fee plus support.
But I don't see anything in here that clearly prevents me from selling
winperl for $200 a pop.
Is this intended to be permitted or not? I'm not arguing one way or the
other; I'm just pointing out that the intention of the license here is
unclear.
>> fee for a copy of the package, but I can't chage them for using it?
>> Unless that would count as support? (What's support in this context?)
>> This is very unclear.
> Again, no, of course you cannot charge someone for using it.
Where does the license say that? It really should *explicitly* say
something about charges for *usage* as opposed to charges for obtaining
the package.
> You may not charge a fee for the item itself, and once the user has the
> item, you cannot change the terms I've set up as to what the user may do
> with it.
On what *in the license* do you base this?
> Support is basically whatever you want it to be ... I am not sure it
> matters. You can't oblige people to accept your support as a condition
> for use,
On what *in the license* do you base this?
Maybe you don't have to say this explicitly. Maybe you do. I don't know;
I'm not a lawyer. Are you sure that you know?
>> However, you may distribute this Package in aggregate with other
>> (possibly commercial) programs as part of a larger (possibly
>> commercial) software distribution provided that you do not advertise
>> this Package as a product of your own.
>> But if I distribute it by itself, I *can* advertise it as a product of
>> my own?
> Of course not. Why would you say that? Rights through omission? Such
> a right is not even implied, that I can see.
Nothing about copyright law restricts what I can *claim* about a package
normally. This appears to be an additional restriction I agree to if I
use Perl. But the restriction appears to only apply if I distribute the
package as part of a larger work; if I distribute it by itself, I don't
see anything in the license that says I can't lie about who wrote it.
Maybe that's not a problem. I'm not saying that's a problem; I'm saying
that the license is unclear and inconsistent about restricting this.
>> Er, either it's mere aggregation or not. There's no such thing as
>> "mere aggregation *provided* that...." If it's mere aggregation, then
>> copyright law says you can't impose any restrictions at all.
> No restrictions are being imposed. It is defining what, exactly, falls
> under mere aggregation.
Licenses don't get to do that. Mere aggregation (or the equivalent legal
term) is defined by the government, not by a software license. Licenses
that attempt to redefine legal terms worry me.
>> But copyright law actually fairly clearly states that this is *not*
>> mere aggregation, as this is the creation of a derivative work, so the
>> above clause contradicts the law.
> From the Copyright Act:
>> A ''derivative work'' is a work based upon one or more preexisting
>> works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization,
>> fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art
>> reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a
>> work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of
>> editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications
>> which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a
>> ''derivative work''.
> I don't think embedding the complete Standard Version of the interpreter
> could be considered a derivative work.
I don't see how you can read the above paragraph and claim that it's not.
It recasts and transforms Perl into a portion of a larger work, which is
square in the center of what the law considers to be a derivative work.
If I were to compose a song that includes the entirety of another song
playing in the background under my original music, that's definitely a
derivative work of the song. If I include the entirety of another book as
chapters four through twenty of mine, my work is definitely a derivative
work of the original. I don't see how embedding Perl is fundamentally
different than examples such as that.
> I am not sure that is the point at all, let alone the entire point. As
> you are fond of saying, the point here is whether or not it could stand
> up to lawyers, or in court. It seems to me it could and would.
I'm not willing to make that judgement or accept your judgement on this
point, given that neither of us are lawyers. That's the point of getting
legal advice, in my mind.
--
Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
