Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software?
* Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED] [030518 22:18]: Why do you think the concept is bogus? In principle I think it's a good idea to have something that prevents others from mutilating my work. The implementation sucks greatly though. It's bogus because it impinges on free speech and gives heirs of the dead rights over the living. (Just like excessive copyright durations do, but I digress...) In the US, I could mutilate your work, but I couldn't pass it off as yours (that would be misrepresentation, possibly fraud). If you were alive, I couldn't distort it to give you a bad reputation: that would be libel or slander, depending. (Dead people have no right to defend their reputations in the US.) That's plenty sufficient to protect authors' reputations and works' integrity without the need for an extra bogus 'author's rights' concept. I suspect this is why the US was able to say We protect moral rights plenty for Berne. Please note, that this could also played backward. Why should libel or slander be extended to the work of the authors? Consider European tradition are more specific laws. The first person stealing electricity in Germany could AFAIK not be sentenced, because an abstractum like electric energy was not covered by the law. (And proper looked at it, there is nothing stolen, with AC not even the electrons). Please note that different law systems cathegorize differently. I for example never understood this bogus freedom of speech covering pornography. The German (I don't how it is handled in the rest of Europe) freedom of opinion granting the right to have an opinion and express it (or not express it), together with freedom of press and some other freedoms is the thing I want, not this overly broad statement. (Which makes it too easy to abuse it for the wrong things or abolish it in the really important aspects). Hochachtungsvoll, Bernhard R. Link -- Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
new-maintainer vs patents.
Hello, I've been asked to provide the list of patents that my package may/may not be possibly infriging on. As you can imagine this task is way beyond my capabilities, so what should one do with this? Are all package maintainers required to do this? Is there some policy about which patents do we ignore and which do we respect? Would uploading to non-us solve the problem? And if not, how would one go about locating software patents in every country that uses such patents? -- Dariush Pietrzak, She swore and she cursed, that she never would deceive me Key fingerprint = 40D0 9FFB 9939 7320 8294 05E0 BCC7 02C4 75CC 50D9
Re: new-maintainer vs patents.
Hi Dariush Pietrzak, Hello, I've been asked to provide the list of patents that my package may/may not be possibly infriging on. What package? By whom? As you can imagine this task is way beyond my capabilities, so what should one do with this? Are all package maintainers required to do this? Not that I am aware of [NB: I'm not a Debian developer] Is there some policy about which patents do we ignore and which do we respect? The rule of thumb here seems to be to not discuss particular patents unless there is an unavoidable issue because it might impact upon whether developers/users/list subscribers are found to be committing willful patent infringement. Check out this link:[0] http://www.advogato.org/article/7.html Because of this, lawyers routinely advise their clients to avoid reading patents in areas they are working in. The danger posed by the willful infringement doctrine is seen as outweighing any benefit that can be gained from reading patents. This state of affairs, of course, negates even the theoretical benefit of the patent system, that the public at large learns about new technology once it is patented. As it stands, the people who should be learning from patents in any given field are the same people who stand to lose the most if they dare to take a peek. When people find out the software you intend to package it may be obvious that there are clear patent issues. But I don't think anyone wants you to try to locate applicable software patents in every country! Regards, Adam [0] http://groups.google.com/groups?qselm=20030129212006%2476db%40gated-at.bofh.it (also read through the thread)
Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software?
Henning Makholm said: Scripsit Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED] RMS could use his 'moral rights' to prevent someone from distributing a version of Emacs which could read and write Microsoft Word files (file format being reverse-engineered). No he can't. His placing Emacs under a free license, aside from his numerous writings about software freedom, clearly imply that his works have no intrinsic artistic character that could possibly be violated by any third-party modification. Is this (no intrinsic artistic character) a characteristic of Emacs, or of Free Software in general? Does this clear implication extend to documentation released under a Free licence? Does this clear implication extend to literary, visual arts, or audio works released under a Free license? There have been conflicting statements on d-l about the applicability of Free Software licenses in countries where 'moral rights' are irrevokable. The boundary of your inference above is unclear. --Joe
Re: new-maintainer vs patents.
On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 12:03:56PM +0200, Dariush Pietrzak wrote: Hello, I've been asked to provide the list of patents that my package may/may not be possibly infriging on. As you can imagine this task is way beyond my capabilities, so what should one do with this? That's not so beyond: you should be shure that the package you are building is compliant to our DFSG and that is not violating any patent or copyright. That mean you should inspect any file in the source. Are all package maintainers required to do this? We have to (of course we do our best). Is there some policy about which patents do we ignore and which do we respect? We do not ignore any patent. Would uploading to non-us solve the problem? And if not, how would one go about locating software patents in every country that uses such patents? Uploading to non-us is not a solution. You should contact and work with the author. ciao, -- Luca - De Whiskey's - De Vitis | Elegant or ugly code as well aliases: Luca ^De [A-Z][A-Za-z\-]*[iy]'\?s$ | as fine or rude sentences have Luca, a wannabe ``Good guy''. | something in common: they local LANG=[EMAIL PROTECTED] | don't depend on the language.
Re: The debate on Invariant sections (long)
Not consistently. The GNU FDL is a licensing initiative that is apparently intended to be used for all FSF documentation. The traditional GNU documentation license did not always include Invariant Sections. In the past, some of our manuals included invariant sections and some did not. Today that is still the case. However, in the past we needed an ad hoc license to have invariant sections. What changed with the GFDL is that it is a single license that covers both cases. You did not offer very specific rebuttals to any Debian forum of which I'm aware.[2] Arguing with you is not useful. You make many pedantic attacks about minor points. See above for one example; here's a second, from the same message: [RMS said:] We want to encourage widespread use of the FDL for two reasons: 1. It leads to a pool of text that can be copied between manuals. 2. It is (or at least ought to be) good for helping commercial publishers succeed publishing free manuals. I do not understand how the traditional GNU documentation license, without their proto-invariant sections, does not achieve either of the above goals. Those are our goals for wanting the GNU FDL to be widely used, but those are not our only goals in choosing licenses for our manuals. I could respond to all of these pedantic attacks, but it isn't useful. You can always make more of them. You have more time for this than I do. So I decided to spend my time on other things. You raised one point that I am concerned about: * Debugging with GDB; GDB version 5 May 2000[1] [1] This manual is an interesting case because it started out with no invariant sections at all, but later adopted the GNU FDL and marked non-Secondary Sections as Invariant[3], which RMS said was not permitted[4]. I will investigate this, and if a non-Secondary section has indeed been marked as invariant, I will make sure that is corrected.
Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software?
Scripsit [EMAIL PROTECTED] Henning Makholm said: No he can't. His placing Emacs under a free license, aside from his numerous writings about software freedom, clearly imply that his works have no intrinsic artistic character that could possibly be violated by any third-party modification. Is this (no intrinsic artistic character) a characteristic of Emacs, or of Free Software in general? Free software in general. But you are parsing it wrong. It is no (intrinsic artistic character that could possibly be violated by any third party modification). There's lot of artistic character, but it consists, among other things, in the permission to modify freely. Does this clear implication extend to documentation released under a Free licence? Does this clear implication extend to literary, visual arts, or audio works released under a Free license? I'd say yes, *if* the author *voluntarily* made the software free. There have been conflicting statements on d-l about the applicability of Free Software licenses in countries where 'moral rights' are irrevokable. Notice that all of those who claim that free software is impossible come from common law-countries themselves. -- Henning Makholm Larry wants to replicate all the time ... ah, no, all I meant was that he likes to have a bang everywhere.
Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software?
Henning Makholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: No he can't. His placing Emacs under a free license, aside from his numerous writings about software freedom, clearly imply that his works have no intrinsic artistic character that could possibly be violated by any third-party modification. This is horrid. I believe quite firmly that my work has an intrinsic artistic character.
Re: new-maintainer vs patents.
Scripsit Luca - De Whiskey's - De Vitis [EMAIL PROTECTED] That's not so beyond: you should be shure that the package you are building is compliant to our DFSG and that is not violating any patent or copyright. That mean you should inspect any file in the source. You're misunderstanding something. It is not possible to find of whether there are any patents relevant to a given piece of software just by looking at the source. Therein lies (some of) the evil of the patent system. Are all package maintainers required to do this? No. -- Henning Makholm En tapper tinsoldat. En dame i spagat. Du er en lykkelig mand ...
Re: new-maintainer vs patents.
Luca - De Whiskey's - De Vitis wrote: Is there some policy about which patents do we ignore and which do we respect? We do not ignore any patent. Who is Branden supposed to send the royalty checks for patent #4,197,590 to again? (That's the XOR cursor patent.) -- see shy jo pgpIA1RJQkTCt.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: new-maintainer vs patents.
Hi, Luca - De Whiskey's - De Vitis wrote: On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 12:03:56PM +0200, Dariush Pietrzak wrote: Hello, I've been asked to provide the list of patents that my package may/may not be possibly infriging on. As you can imagine this task is way beyond my capabilities, so what should one do with this? That's not so beyond: you should be shure that the package you are building is compliant to our DFSG and that is not violating any patent or copyright. That mean you should inspect any file in the source. Are all package maintainers required to do this? We have to (of course we do our best). Is there some policy about which patents do we ignore and which do we respect? We do not ignore any patent. Ah, OK. So we can stop Debian because we would have to remove all software because the progess bar is patented by IBM (at least here in Europe, don't know about US) or the concept of if is patented or the concept on working on another machine (ssh), tabbed UIs (Adobe) etc.? Rene pgpZD0CZDQHiY.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software?
Henning Makholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Does this clear implication extend to documentation released under a Free licence? Does this clear implication extend to literary, visual arts, or audio works released under a Free license? I'd say yes, *if* the author *voluntarily* made the software free. Your emphasis is disturbing: does the exchange of licenses involved in distributing GPL'd software derivative of other GPL'd software count as voluntary throughout Europe? That is, is Freedom to Modify and Distribute an essential part of the artistic character of MySQL, XEmacs, and other works which the authors would rather have proprietary, but which they can't distribute except under the GPL? Thanks for taking the time to explain this system to the Common Law folks here. -Brian -- Brian T. Sniffen[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/
Re: The debate on invariant sections (long)
En réponse à Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Jerome Marant: Writing docs is something people don't like. Let's be realistic. Speak for yourself. I love writing documentation. I'd be doing massive Speak for yourself :-) amounts of work on the GCC manual right now if it weren't for its obnoxious licence. And anyone can quote me on that. :-) It's time for you to start a new manual, isn't it? :-) -- Jérôme Marant
Re: The debate on Invariant sections (long)
En réponse à Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I'd do it for GCC. Unfortunately, there's no clearly free version of the manual which is even remotely recent, so I'd actually have to write it from scratch, which I'm not up to doing. Actually... given that several GCC contributors aren't happy with the GFDL and invariant sections, maybe we could add up all the parts *we* contributed (since the copyright assignment agreement still gives us the right to use our own works) and see what it adds up to. What GCC people are doing or going to do? Are you going to try and convince the FSF or are you going to rebel? -- Jérôme Marant [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://marant.org
Re: The debate on invariant sections (long)
En réponse à Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Emacs is a perfect example. The documentation can be integrated into emacs as context-sensitive help. We cannot then distinguish. Since pretty much all documentation *could* have this integration done, we can't usefully distinguish at all. (In fact, the GFDL licence for the Emacs manual may make integrating it as context-sensitive help into the GPLed Emacs legally impossible. Ugh.) Does removing the manual from the tarball suffice? snip For instance, does the GNU manifesto as invariant section hurt? I say yes. I don't want to have to put it into my (hypothetical) context-sensitive help file for emacs, which consists of extracts from Sure. I understand. -- Jérôme Marant [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://marant.org
Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software?
Henning Makholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Scripsit Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED] RMS could use his 'moral rights' to prevent someone from distributing a version of Emacs which could read and write Microsoft Word files (file format being reverse-engineered). No he can't. His placing Emacs under a free license, aside from his numerous writings about software freedom, clearly imply that his works have no intrinsic artistic character that could possibly be violated by any third-party modification. But someone, I think you, said very early in this conversation that if an author is economically pressured to put his work under the GPL, that putting it under the GPL would not be regarded as proof of his intended artistic character. Doesn't that put the GPL'd work of groups like MySQL or the KDE group at risk under your system? -Brian
[Resolution of] Re: Maxima: Difficult US export restriction issue
Good news everyone, Dave Turner, the FSF's ``GPL Compliance Engineer'' suggests including the DOE text in the SAME FILE as the GPL will be sufficient to honour the DOE's requirement while also not modifying the GPL. The text should note that it is not part of the licence. Below is my suggested replacement for /usr/share/doc/maxima/copyright. /usr/share/doc/maxima/COPYING1 should be removed Regards, Adam -- /usr/share/doc/maxima/copyright -- Maxima is dedicated to the memory of William F. Schelter. On 6 October 1998 William F. Schelter was formally notified that he could distribute DOE-MACSYMA upon terms of his choosing, in particular the GNU General Public License: http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/wfs/maxima-doe-auth.gif Schelter proceed to distribute derived works under the GPL. In the formal notification a request was made that a paragraph should be included in the GPL and should accompany other modifications, enhancements or derivative works of your program. This paragraph is transcribed below in honor of that request. Like the preamble it does not form part of the license. Distribution of such derivative works is subject to the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (Title 15 CFR 768-799), which implements the Export Administration Act of 1979, as amended, and/or the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, of 12-6-84, (Title 22 CFR 121-130), which implements the Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C. 2728) and may require license for export. GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. Preamble The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too. When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things. To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it. For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights. We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software. Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations. Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all. The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow. GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION 0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The Program, below, refers to any such program or work, and a work based on the Program means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another
Re: [OT] Droit d'auteur vs. free software?
Please note, that this could also played backward. Why should libel or slander be extended to the work of the authors? Huh? It's not being extended at all. There's no right of the *work*. It's simply the right of the *author* not to be defamed. You can do whatever you want with the work if you don't do it in public, and you can say whatever you want about the work; it's only false claims about the *author* that you can't make in public (including implied claims). Consider European tradition are more specific laws. The first person stealing electricity in Germany could AFAIK not be sentenced, because an abstractum like electric energy was not covered by the law. (And proper looked at it, there is nothing stolen, with AC not even the electrons). In a common law country, you might not have been able to sentence them (which is just fine by me -- people shouldn't go to jail for 'stealing' electricity), but you would always have been able to sue them, and a judge could always order them to stop and repay costs. Without any specific statutes at all. Unfortunately (IMO) we have been on the trend towards codification of all possible laws for a long time. How different are things really on the Continent? Is *everthing* codified? Perhaps it is; I believe the French (Napoleonic Code) system requires *every* ruling to be based on a specific article of the code. Please note that different law systems cathegorize differently. I for example never understood this bogus freedom of speech covering pornography. The German (I don't how it is handled in Uh, it only covers pornography with 'social, literary, or scientific value', or something like that. (I may have got the phrase wrong.) That's not bogus at all. Perhaps you disagree with the wide latitude our courts traditionally give to claims that something has such value (as do many people, though not me). the rest of Europe) freedom of opinion granting the right to have an opinion and express it (or not express it), together with Many First Amendement cases on freedom of speech here feature the anti-freedom people arguing that the speech is worthless and the pro-freedom people arguing that it's socially valuable precisely because it expresses an opinion about an important issue. I don't see a difference between German and American law here, really. freedom of press and some other freedoms is the thing I want, not this overly broad statement. (Which makes it too easy to abuse it for the wrong things or abolish it in the really important aspects). Anyway, we're getting even further off topic.
Re: The debate on invariant sections (long)
Jerome said: It's time for you to start a new manual, isn't it? :-) Yeah. :-) But I've been contenting myself with commenting the code and documenting it within the files themselves, in --help, etc. :-) Of which there's plenty that needs to be done. --Nathanael
