Help on package
Hello, I am now packaging a Tetris-like game, and I have some doubts about the description. I have written the description like this: Description: Free clone of Tetris, featuring a bastard level Bastet (stands for bastard Tetris) is a free (GPL'd) clone of Tetris(r) (built on the top of petris by Peter Seidler) which is designed to be as bastard as possible: it tries to compute how useful blocks are and gives you the worst, the most bastard it can find. Playing bastet can be a painful experience, especially if you usually make canyons and wait for the long I-shaped block. As Tetris is a trademark, are the uses of this word proper? I mean, is it legal to make use of this word as I have written it on the description? Now, the upstream author mentions his software is based on petris, a Tetris-like game on MIT/X11 license. Is it all valid to bastet use GPL? Bastet is licensed over GPL. I only need some orientation, in order to make bastet Debian policy-compliant. Regards and thanks in advance, -- David Moreno Garza [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.damog.net/ PGP 356E16CD - 84F0 E180 8AF6 E8D0 842F B520 63F3 08DB 356E 16CD
Re: Not inherently free, but inherently non-free?
On Sat, May 01, 2004 at 10:49:22AM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Apr 29, 2004 at 12:23:51PM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote: Big snip; big extrapolation Actually, the GFDL is quite clear: you aren't allowed distribute on an encypted medium even if it's accompanied by a freely readable medium -- you can't even *make* a copy on an encrypted medium, according to the line I quoted above. Yes, this is the problem. Hmm. So if I have an hardware encryption passthrough on my computer, I could not have any GFDL works installed at all? :) That appears to be a reasonable interpretation of the license terms[1]. While the FSF doesn't appear to interpret it that way itself, other copyright holders in GNU FDL-licensed works may choose to interpret it differently. [1] 2. VERBATIM COPYING You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3. You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may publicly display copies. -- G. Branden Robinson| Reality is what refuses to go away Debian GNU/Linux | when I stop believing in it. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- Philip K. Dick http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: RFC: Debian License Information on www.debian.org
[I am not subscribed to -www.] On Fri, Apr 30, 2004 at 11:17:29AM +0200, Gerfried Fuchs wrote: * Frank Lichtenheld [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-04-30 03:49]: I just completed the first version of these pages (loosly based on the pages of the security team), put them online and added a first license, OPL, based on the summary on debian-legal by Jeremy Hankins. I would say, we definitely need to relicense our website[1], then I agree. Last time I've heard about the OPL I was told it is free as long as the options in VI. aren't used. That was a mistaken conclusion, which has since been superseded by a more careful reading and understanding of the terms of the OPL. -- G. Branden Robinson|The errors of great men are Debian GNU/Linux |venerable because they are more [EMAIL PROTECTED] |fruitful than the truths of little http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |men. -- Friedrich Nietzsche signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: VOCAL (Vovidia Communications License)
On Sun, May 02, 2004 at 04:46:12PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: On Sun, May 02, 2004 at 09:26:10AM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote: * 4. Products derived from this software may not be called VOCAL, nor *may VOCAL appear in their name, without prior written *permission of Vovida Networks, Inc. This license appears to be identical to the Apache License, version 1.1, with the names changed and clause 3 (an advertising clause) removed. It looks to be a DFSG-Free license. Clause 4 makes it GPL-incompatible, so be sure it doesn't link to any GPLed software. I wonder why we considered clause #4 to be free; Carelessness, I suspect. it seems a little overreaching. Yes. It prohibits code reuse with any projects with names like Vocal Minority or Vocalize. (This isn't an objection; just curiosity.) Yes. Does anyone know if the latest version of the Apache Software License still retains these terms? -- G. Branden Robinson|Sometimes, getting your patch in is Debian GNU/Linux |just a matter of waiting for [EMAIL PROTECTED] |somebody else to reimplement it. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |-- Jonathan Corbet signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: European Directive on Copyright Law (91/EC/250) wrt open source
On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 12:33:33AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: Ideas and principles are not copyrightable ever, are they? They are the wrong side of the idea-expression boundary. Copyright only covers expressions. This is not news. no: what's news is that the copy of 91/EC/250 on which i based the entire justification for the reverse engineering necessary for samba to interoperate with windows nt domains has DISAPPEARED. l.
Re: VOCAL (Vovidia Communications License)
On Tue, 04 May 2004, Branden Robinson wrote: Does anyone know if the latest version of the Apache Software License still retains these terms? No, thankfully Apache Source License v 2.0 ditched them for the more sane (and more to the point) §6: 6. Trademarks. This License does not grant permission to use the trade names, trademarks, service marks, or product names of the Licensor, except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Work and reproducing the content of the NOTICE file.[1] Which is probably what the license should have said in the beginning. [We probably should really review Apache Source License v 2.0 sometime... §3 (patent reciprocity) and §4d (acknowledgements in the NOTICE file) are two clauses that are near the border, and while I think they're free, I'm interested in others opinions of them.[2]] Don Armstrong 1: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 2: I know we discussed §3 when it was proposed, but it's interesting... §4d may also be important to discuss, especially in the context of droit d' auter and in the context of free documentation licenses. -- Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -- Mark Twain http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
MJ Ray wrote: On 2004-05-03 22:53:05 +0100 Carl-Daniel Hailfinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MJ Ray wrote: because of its dumb developers who won't answer simple questions about ^^^ Hey, can you do anything else but insult people? I'm not sure what you mean. I've reread the email and I'm surprised that you think there are at least 3 insults in it. I count one and that was an intentional illustration of the unnecessarily insulting language it was replying to. Dumb \Dumb\, a. [...] 2. Not willing to speak; mute; silent; not speaking; not accompanied by words; I'm sorry to have misunderstood you. The meaning of dumb I was referring to is slightly different. Quoting from dictionary.reference.com: -- dumb( P ) adj. dumb·er, dumb·est 1.a Lacking the power of speech. Used of animals and inanimate objects. 1.b Often Offensive. Incapable of using speech; mute. Used of humans. See Usage Note at mute. 2. Temporarily speechless, as with shock or fear: I was dumb with disbelief. 3. Unwilling to speak; taciturn. [...] 6. Conspicuously unintelligent; stupid: dumb officials; a dumb decision. [...] Our Living Language In ordinary spoken English, a sentence such as He is dumb will be interpreted to mean “He is stupid” rather than “He lacks the power of speech.” “Lacking the power of speech” is, however, the original sense of the word, but it has been eclipsed by the meaning “stupid.” -- It seems an apt description of how some XFree86 developers reacted to questions. They went dumb. Other XFree86 developers were helpful, but they are not the reason I plan to stop using it, so I do not blame them. I mistook your phrase its dumb developers as referring to all XFree86 developers. Now that you clarified it, it doesn't look like an insult anymore. Carl-Daniel
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb/wrote: Sadly, your invariant section-inspired changes to the GPL cause other problems, which seem similar to combining an ad-clause licence with the GPL. Rememer that an ad-clause usually does not render a work non-free, just incompatible with the GPL. Depending on the size of the ads, it can be a practical problem or a usability problem, however. Claus -- http://www.faerber.muc.de
Re: European Directive on Copyright Law (91/EC/250) wrt open source
On 2004-05-04 07:28:49 +0100 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: no: what's news is that the copy of 91/EC/250 on which i based the entire justification for the reverse engineering necessary for samba to interoperate with windows nt domains has DISAPPEARED. As I understand it, the directive is not safe to rely on for that permission. You need to use your local law which implements the directive. I think that reverse engineering the part of Windows NT required to interoperate with it would be permitted under UK law if the docs about it are unavailable or incomplete, but IANAL and this really could do with their opinion. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing
xzx license
debian-legal, xzx's license forbids modification but we have a diff of over 30 kB. It looks like it's undistributable in the current form. See bug 240941. Please comment. Thanks, - Nikke -- Niklas Vainio [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: The draft Position statement on the GFDL
On May 2, 2004, at 14:25, Manoj Srivastava wrote: obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute In other words, clause isn't about copying, but about further copying. I read it as: (obstruct OR control) (the reading OR further copying) of the copies you (make OR distribute) So, it is a license violation to do any of the following: 1) obstruct the reading of the copies you make 2) control the reading of the copies you make 3) obstruct the further copying of the copies you make 4) control the further copying of the copies you make 5) obstruct the reading of the copies you distribute 6) control the reading of the copies you distribute 7) obstruct the further copying of the copies you distribute 8) control the further copying of the copies you distribute (Wow, 2^3 is 8 and I actually got 8 of 'em above. Amazing...) I believe this indicates that once you've given a copy to someone else, you've not placed specific technical obstacles in the way of them making copies. You'd think that's what they meant, but they said 'copies you MAKE OR distribute' not just 'copies you distribute'. I'm fairly confident the phrase technical measures to obstruct or control refers to the concept of having a legal right to obstruct control the reading or copying of the document after distribution. If they wanted to prohibit you from using legal measures --- the DMCA, for example --- why did they say technical measures instead of legal measures? More specifically, since the GFDL is a legal document, the primary effect of this clause is to deny someone the right, in court, of claiming someone else has subverted the barriers they placed on copying. Maybe they intended that, but it's not what they wrote. Invariant Sections I agree the GFDL's invariant sections are troublesome. However, redistribution of derived works are allowed, so Clause 3 of the DFSG isn't the issue. Last time I looked --- and everyone else on this list looked --- the GFDL did not allow me to distribute a derived work that modified or removed invariant sections. DFSG doesn't demand that you can change some things. It demands that you can change all things. The current DFSG does not prohibit bloat. Bloat is something which we manage arbitrarily. No, it does not prohibit bloat. I does, however, prohibit legally requiring bloat. Finally, I'm a bit dubious about the Dissident Test in this context. If someone doesn't want to be listed as an author, they might simply invent an entity or some surrogate name and list this entity as the responsible party. If its acceptable to use pseudonyms, then that concern goes away. Notice how Manoj worded it There is some concern... as in we aren't completely agreed or sure of that issue. [Similarly, if some crazy government imposes penalties on people who distribute documents containing the letter e, this is a problem in that government, not a problem in Debian.] But if the license requires that the document be at least 10% e's, then its a license problem. Freedoms For Documentation These look like worthwhile goals, but do not look like DFSG issues. Many, if not all of them, are. Conclusion: a number of the points in the position statement look like they could be real problems in a number of circumstances, but few of them (if any) are DFSG issues. Please read the discussions of the GFDL in the archives of -legal.
Re: Squeak in Debian?
Lex Spoon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Lex Spoon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've posted a summary of the discussion on including Squeak in non-free: http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3733 I'll edit it as issues come up. There are two open issues: The indemnification clause is _not_ acceptable. Using phrases like it is extremely unlikely won't cut it. Why not? We are talking about whether we find it acceptible to distribute Squeak, not whether Squeak is completely DFSG free. What standard do you propose? If you worry about every imaginable legal action, then we end up doing nothing, so surely we need to assess *realistic* risk. Keep in mind that it is extremely unlikely was only part of the argument. There is also that we are only liable to the extent that our distribution is involved in the case. Further, we can choose to defend the case ourselves if we prefer, just as if we'd been sued directly. The problem is that Debian distributors would have to defend Apple at all. In total, this seems like we end up with the same level of liability we already have. The clause in question opens up a new kind of liability to the mirrors. Before, they only had to worry about the screwy laws in their own country. Now they have to worry about everyone's screwy laws. It is helpful to consider what it would be like if non-free were full of these kinds of licenses. Americans could be liable to defend people for violating Britain's Official Secrets Act. French would have to defend people against the DMCA. 1. Export regs. Are our servers up to snuff for avoiding export to US embargoed countries? (It looks to me that we need to handle this anyway, even aside from Squeak's license.) As I understand it, the US servers do not export software to those countries. However, probably not all of the non-us mirrors check whether a request originates from Cuba [1]. In that case, the mirrors would be violating the license (but no law that applies to them). This is different from what I said before, because I didn't think about mirrors outside the US redistributing software to Cuba. We probably need to have all the mirrors following US export law. How hard would that be to implement? I don't think the problem is technical. There are a fair number of people who do not agree with the Cuban embargo, inside the US and out. The thing is, if a Swiss Debian mirror allows downloads from Cuba, and a US-based server lets that mirror download stuff from the US, then the US-based server is breaking US export law. You can't export from US to Cuba either directly or indirectly. Now, there are exceptions to export law involving stuff that is publically available and/or free. Also, posting on an ftp site might or might not be considered exporting. So there are at least two loopholes we might be able to exploint. IANAL so I can't tell. The legal advice that Debian got is at http://www.debian.org/legal/cryptoinmain As I read it, it was suggested that the main mirrors should do reverse DNS lookups. I don't think that happened, but I am far from in the know. Regards, Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Social Contract GR's Affect on sarge
On May 1, 2004, at 05:40, Francesco Paolo Lovergine wrote: Ah that's an interesting point. TCP/IP is a standard, so it's non free... No, that's not true. The idea of TCP/IP is free --- an idea can't be covered by copyright, and there is AFAIK no patent being actively enforced on it. A particular description of the idea of TCP/IP could be non-free, but that doesn't make another description of the idea (the source code in the kernel) non-free. And, actually, most of IP and TCP are from earlier RFCs, which (if I remember correctly) are free...
Re: Repost of the DRAFT d-l summary of the OSL v2.0
Fabian Bastin [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Just a little question. If you want a copyleft license for your work debian-legal recommends the GPL v2.0. What is the recommendation if you want a copyleft license, but no as strong as the GPL, in particular if you consider that simply linking a module does not produce a derivative work? The LGPL has an annonying point since it allows anybody to distribute the product in GPL instead of LGPL. I don't know of a license that does specifically what you want, though I don't think it would be hard to come up with one. I think the reason there isn't one is that there's little reason for such a license. If you want to give extra permissions, just use the LGPL. Why is it important for your works to be GPL-incompatible? -- Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
Re: xzx license
Niklas Vainio said on Tue, May 04, 2004 at 02:59:08PM +0300,: xzx's license forbids modification but we have a diff of over 30 kB. It looks like it's undistributable in the current form. See bug 240941. Where is the license text available? -- +~+ Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M., 'NANDINI', S. R. M. Road, Ernakulam, Cochin-682018, Kerala, India. http://paivakil.port5.com +~+
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
On 2004-05-03 15:24:00 +0100 Claus Färber [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Rememer that an ad-clause usually does not render a work non-free, just incompatible with the GPL. [...] An ad-clause usually applies to documentation or advertising supplied with the software, not the software package itself, and only requires attribution not a large advert. It sails very close to the wind, but doesn't quite fall over. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing
Debian-legal summary of the OSL v2.0
The OSL (Open Software License) v2.0 is not a DFSG free license. - Item #5 External Deployment places distribution-like burdens on deployment. E.g., when the Work is made available for use over a network source must be distributed. This is a use restriction. While the DFSG does not explicitly prohibit this, the consensus on debian-legal is that this is non-free. - Item #9 Acceptance and Termination requires the licensee to acknowledge acceptance of the license. According to the Dissident Test[1] this is a significant restriction on distribution (DFSG #1). - Item #6 Attribution Rights requires retention of any Attribution Notice, even if false. There are no restrictions on what may be considered an attribution notice, so there are no clear limits on what materials must be retained. This restricts modification (DFSG #3). - Item #10 Termination for Patent Action terminates the license if you are involved in a suit with a licensor over a patent applicable to software, or against anyone else over a patent relating to the Work. This clause is much too broad, and restricts all the freedoms that the license provides. Suggestions: If you want a copyleft license for your work debian-legal recommends the GPL v2. Any attempt to modify the license to pass the DFSG would need to address the four issues above. NOTE: The above is not legal advice. If you need legal advice you should contact an attorney. The OSL v2.0 can be found at: http://opensource.org/licenses/osl-2.0.php It is included in full below. [1] See item 8 in the DFSG FAQ: http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html - Open Software License v. 2.0 This Open Software License (the License) applies to any original work of authorship (the Original Work) whose owner (the Licensor) has placed the following notice immediately following the copyright notice for the Original Work: Licensed under the Open Software License version 2.0 1) Grant of Copyright License. Licensor hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, sublicenseable license to do the following: a) to reproduce the Original Work in copies; b) to prepare derivative works (Derivative Works) based upon the Original Work; c) to distribute copies of the Original Work and Derivative Works to the public, with the proviso that copies of Original Work or Derivative Works that You distribute shall be licensed under the Open Software License; d) to perform the Original Work publicly; and e) to display the Original Work publicly. 2) Grant of Patent License. Licensor hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, sublicenseable license, under patent claims owned or controlled by the Licensor that are embodied in the Original Work as furnished by the Licensor, to make, use, sell and offer for sale the Original Work and Derivative Works. 3) Grant of Source Code License. The term Source Code means the preferred form of the Original Work for making modifications to it and all available documentation describing how to modify the Original Work. Licensor hereby agrees to provide a machine-readable copy of the Source Code of the Original Work along with each copy of the Original Work that Licensor distributes. Licensor reserves the right to satisfy this obligation by placing a machine-readable copy of the Source Code in an information repository reasonably calculated to permit inexpensive and convenient access by You for as long as Licensor continues to distribute the Original Work, and by publishing the address of that information repository in a notice immediately following the copyright notice that applies to the Original Work. 4) Exclusions From License Grant. Neither the names of Licensor, nor the names of any contributors to the Original Work, nor any of their trademarks or service marks, may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this Original Work without express prior written permission of the Licensor. Nothing in this License shall be deemed to grant any rights to trademarks, copyrights, patents, trade secrets or any other intellectual property of Licensor except as expressly stated herein. No patent license is granted to make, use, sell or offer to sell embodiments of any patent claims other than the licensed claims defined in Section 2. No right is granted to the trademarks of Licensor even if such marks are included in the Original Work. Nothing in this License shall be interpreted to prohibit Licensor from licensing under different terms from this License any Original Work that Licensor otherwise would have a right to license. 5) External Deployment. The term External Deployment means the use or distribution of the Original Work or Derivative Works in any way such that the Original Work or
Re: xzx license
On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 06:10:06PM +0530, Mahesh T. Pai wrote: xzx's license forbids modification but we have a diff of over 30 kB. It looks like it's undistributable in the current form. See bug 240941. Where is the license text available? All packages have a link to their license text in the package page. Here's the text: http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/non-free/x/xzx/xzx_3.0.1-2/copyright - Nikke -- Niklas Vainio [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: European Directive on Copyright Law (91/EC/250) wrt open source
Raul Miller wrote: On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 08:41:30PM +0200, Arnoud Engelfriet wrote: A dominant market player could use the GPL in an abusive way. For example, consider Microsoft licensing its standard libraries under GPL. After thinking about a number of scenarios, I don't think that this would work as a form of abuse. Maybe not, it was just a top-of-my-head suggestion. The abuse would be forcing others to license their work under certain terms. By itself you can request that, but if you're a dominant player the rules change. MS is currently being investigated in Europe and Japan for allegedly forcing its OEM licensees to give them royalty-free patent licenses for anything Windows infringes. Nothing wrong with asking a RF license, but forcing that by using your market power _is_ wrong. Arnoud -- Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch patent attorney - Speaking only for myself Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/
Re: European Directive on Copyright Law (91/EC/250) wrt open source
MJ Ray wrote: On 2004-05-03 19:41:30 +0100 Arnoud Engelfriet [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For example, consider Microsoft licensing its standard libraries under GPL. People fork them and create competition? No, people would be forced to license their work under GPL or develop alternative standard libraries. And since MS has a dominant position, that alternative is not commercially feasible. So it would be the proprietary software people who would object. Article 2: Protection in accordance with this Directive shall apply to the expression in any form of a computer program. Ideas and principles which underlie any element of a computer program, including those which underlie its interfaces, are not protected by copyright under this Directive. Ideas and principles are not copyrightable ever, are they? They are the wrong side of the idea-expression boundary. Copyright only covers expressions. That's what this Directive says, yes. But apparently they felt it necessary to spell it out. Just to be safe, perhaps? European law wasn't as developed as US law by this time (1991). I don't think all European countries use the idea/expression approach. Or at least not the same way the USA does. Arnoud -- Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch patent attorney - Speaking only for myself Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/
Re: The draft Position statement on the GFDL
On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 08:40:25AM -0400, Anthony DeRobertis wrote: [you seem to have attributed my words to Manoj -- but we are different people] On May 2, 2004, at 14:25, Manoj Srivastava wrote: obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute In other words, clause isn't about copying, but about further copying. I read it as: (obstruct OR control) (the reading OR further copying) of the copies you (make OR distribute) I'll grant that my observation about further copying is moot, however, the phrase you've quoted has no verb, so you have not addressed the other aspect of my argument. I'm fairly confident the phrase technical measures to obstruct or control refers to the concept of having a legal right to obstruct control the reading or copying of the document after distribution. If they wanted to prohibit you from using legal measures --- the DMCA, for example --- why did they say technical measures instead of legal measures? Because they are specifically talking about technical measures to enforce intellectual property rights. This has been a major feature of recent copyright laws and treaties. Try a google search on: technical measures copy for an informal treatment of this issue. The current DFSG does not prohibit bloat. Bloat is something which we manage arbitrarily. No, it does not prohibit bloat. I does, however, prohibit legally requiring bloat. If by bloat, you mean bloat in program binaries, this is true. However, for example, the DFSG doesn't require that bloat be removed from program sources. [Similarly, if some crazy government imposes penalties on people who distribute documents containing the letter e, this is a problem in that government, not a problem in Debian.] But if the license requires that the document be at least 10% e's, then its a license problem. There is no license in that sentence. Note, however, that the word Debian contains the letter e. Freedoms For Documentation These look like worthwhile goals, but do not look like DFSG issues. Many, if not all of them, are. Could you be more specific? Conclusion: a number of the points in the position statement look like they could be real problems in a number of circumstances, but few of them (if any) are DFSG issues. Please read the discussions of the GFDL in the archives of -legal. Could you be more specific? -- Raul
Re: European Directive on Copyright Law (91/EC/250) wrt open source
On 2004-05-04 15:00:57 +0100 Arnoud Engelfriet [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: European law wasn't as developed as US law by this time (1991). As I'm sure you know, European law is not an homogenous whole, so occasionally there are harmonisation and generalisation parts in directives. You can find that this was already in some European law before 1991.
Re: Prefered License for forums content
Josh Triplett wrote: Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Recall that the Creative Commons Attribution license was ruled to be DFSG-non-free by debian-legal (initial review request at http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/debian-legal-200403/msg00267.html , final summary at http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/debian-legal-200404/msg00031.html When any Licensor asks, all references to their name(s) must be purged from the work. This restricts modification (DFSG 3). This is an unalienable moral right in most of Europe. If this is DFSG non-free, then Debian has a serious problem, because then is it logically impossible to have a license that is compatible with the DFSG and European Law at the same time. The by-sa license is likely to be non-free as well for the same reasons. If people think that, we don't they express their opinion about it on the relevant mailinglist, namely [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wouter Vanden Hove www.opencursus.org www.vrijschrift.org
Re: The draft Position statement on the GFDL
On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 01:18:51PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: You really need to look at an as amended copy of the act. One such copy is at http://www.jenkins-ip.com/patlaw/index1.htm Thanks, that's a good reference, and the changes from the version I was looking at were... rather extensive. However, I don't see anything in that reference which lets a copyright license dictate terms of use. As near as I can tell, the GFDL can refuse to grant copyright permissions -- if someone uses technical measures to prevent others from reading or copying some GFDL document, then that person might lose the right to make further copies. However, the GFDL can't revoke ownership of a copy which was obtained legally. -- Raul
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 10:56:13AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: On 2004-05-03 15:24:00 +0100 Claus Färber [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Rememer that an ad-clause usually does not render a work non-free, just incompatible with the GPL. [...] An ad-clause usually applies to documentation or advertising supplied with the software, not the software package itself, and only requires attribution not a large advert. It sails very close to the wind, but doesn't quite fall over. And even then, some of us are willing to go to some fairly large amount of effort to try to convince upstreams to switch to a license without one... -- Joel Baker [EMAIL PROTECTED],''`. Debian GNU/kNetBSD(i386) porter : :' : `. `' http://nienna.lightbearer.com/ `- pgpaldQc4SmED.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Prefered License for forums content
On Tue, 4 May 2004, Wouter Vanden Hove wrote: When any Licensor asks, all references to their name(s) must be purged from the work. This restricts modification (DFSG 3). This is an unalienable moral right in most of Europe. If this is DFSG non-free, then Debian has a serious problem, because then is it logically impossible to have a license that is compatible with the DFSG and European Law at the same time. That restriction isn't the same as the European law, because the European law only applies in Europe, but the license restriction applies all over the world. It's like the export clauses which says that users have to be bound by US export restrictions (even users not in the US).
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
Markus Törnqvist wrote: On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 10:35:12AM -0700, Hans Reiser wrote: No, that certainly is an option. Relocating the credits to somewhere reasonable for a particular installer is just fine with me. Let's see what the Debian people say about showing the complete credits in the preinstall screen during interactive installation and scrolling through them automatically in a non-interactive one, for example. I think the response will be but it's still non-free :P Also, if every software showed their credits, there would easily be a ton of them. This is bad why? They could be interesting for users to read while the install proceeds. I wouldn't mind it. However, it could get out of hand if we had three-four-five screenfulls of credits during every boot. Then it's time to /dev/null again... Well, a really clever way of doing it would have a page describing what the program does with a little bit of credits at the bottom. As a user, I am usually disappointed by how operating systems fail to take the opportunity to educate me while I wait for them to install. Credits (as commercials and ads and stuff) should never defeat the purpose of the entity of which they are a part. I would really like Debian to understand the difference between credits and ads. Credits describe someone's contribution to the project. Ads describe some product for you to buy. Very different things.
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
You miss the point. I get plenty of credit because of the filesystem name. It is everybody else who gets shortchanged unless we print a randomly chosen 1 paragraph credit at mkreiser4 time. Hans Chris Dukes wrote: On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 08:49:10PM +0300, Markus Törnqvist wrote: [SNEEPAGE] Perhaps this is overly cynical but... In this day and age people only seem to care about proper attribution when either 1) Looking for another garbage novel to read. 2) Looking for someone to sue. The former seems to be covered by having the author's name in bigger type than the title of the novel. The latter, it doesn't matter how well the credits are buried, the presumed targets will be served. So as a compromise can we have hansreiserfs* as the prefix on all packages. HANSREISER as the prefix on all executables, kernel symbols, fstypes... Frequent use of bold and blink for the text HANS REISER as well. I don't know about other folks, but the credits filling my terminal windows and logs get first dibs on catching the blame on whatever may be going wrong with my computer.
Re: Prefered License for forums content
Apologies for being out-of-thread, but the message hasn't reached me yet. On Tue, 4 May 2004, Wouter Vanden Hove wrote: When any Licensor asks, all references to their name(s) must be purged from the work. This restricts modification (DFSG 3). This is an unalienable moral right in most of Europe. [...] Is it? The references identifying them as the author may be forced in that way, but I did not think that reporting of their actions can be purged by using their moral rights. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing
Re: Prefered License for forums content
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi, thanks for the suggesstions regarding my license problems. I´ve read through the licenses you suggested and I personally prefer the MIT license [1]. This license is short, easy to understand (even for license outsiders like me :-) ) and i.e. you dont have to include a license which is ten times longer then the content covered by the license if you use a forums posting in other works. The GNU GPL I think will also fit my needs but I think it will be overkill if I use this license for postings. I´ll discuss this internally with my fellows and if there are questions arising I know where I get help. :-) Bye Sebastian [1] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php - -- debianforum.de - die deutschsprachige Supportwebseite rund um das Debian-Projekt http://www.debianforum.de -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAl8J0LNuxCHvKAMsRAolSAJ97qUfopfjKTS2i0gRTH60JMexiZgCfWqlW 5RsyI5rxq049sHFTNb0eTpE= =veJV -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote: It seems an apt description of how some XFree86 developers reacted to questions. They went dumb. Other XFree86 developers were helpful, but they are not the reason I plan to stop using it, so I do not blame them. I understand why they lost interest in talking to persons who cannot grasp that distros removed mention of them from their man pages and this was wrong. I sent them a thanks for being brave enough to take on the task of changing licensing mores and forcing distros to attribute, and I got a response.;-) Hans
Re: xzx license
Niklas Vainio wrote: On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 06:10:06PM +0530, Mahesh T. Pai wrote: xzx's license forbids modification but we have a diff of over 30 kB. It looks like it's undistributable in the current form. See bug 240941. Where is the license text available? All packages have a link to their license text in the package page. Here's the text: http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/non-free/x/xzx/xzx_3.0.1-2/copyright In the future, it is helpful for debian-legal if requests to review a license are accompanied by the full text of the license, for the purposes of quoting and comment. The full text follows. - Josh Triplett xzx license: Permission to use, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name of the copyright holder not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission. The copyright holder makes no representations about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided as is without express or implied warranty. THE CODE MAY NOT BE MODIFIED OR REUSED WITHOUT PERMISSION! THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE, INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS, IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. As you said, this license clearly prohibits all modification. permission notice: However, I would appreciate if you distribute a binary-only version with Debian. In that case I could give you the permission to change the source code (only to make it compile under Debian Linux). You must not change any version number, copyright notice nor documentation of XZX. There is a XZX distribution for RedHat available. BTW starting with version 2.2.0 XZX is no longer freeware. But a shareware version will still be available. For more detailed information look at XZX's homepage. [signature snipped] This permission notice is very narrow. Any change not directly related to making the software compile, such as a bugfix (there appears to be at least one in the diff), is not allowed, and neither is distributing the modified source (even in the form of a unified diff, which contains much of the original). Furthermore, as you mentioned, it is unclear who the permission applies to. I think the package should be removed. - Josh Triplett
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
On 2004-05-04 17:20:56 +0100 Hans Reiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I understand why they lost interest in talking to persons who cannot grasp that distros removed mention of them from their man pages and this was wrong. That's actually irrelevant in that case. Their advertising clause is actually not the reason for it being non-free, as I understand it, although it does make it GPL-incompatible, which is a bit irritating. Their licence requires extreme protection of their name as a condition, which seems unacceptable for free software. If I even mention in a factual review who holds the copyright to the software, I have probably failed the letter of the conditions. It seems a little cruel of you to punish all users by taking your code non-free because you are not happy with some distributor actions. You should work with the distributors instead of accusing them of immorality as an opening tactic. That should be the last resort, not the first. I sent them a thanks for being brave enough to take on the task of changing licensing mores and forcing distros to attribute, and I got a response.;-) You seem to enjoy working against free software. I got some responses, too, as previously mentioned. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
There is a difference between free software and plagiarizable software. The two are orthogonal concepts. Debian wants software to be both free and plagiarizable. XFree86 and I want our software to be free but not plagiarizable. In general, I want software to not be plagiarizable, as I think it works against the societal interest to not attribute accurately. Saying that plagiarism is an important freedom is like saying assault is something you must be allowed to do if you are to be considered free. Hans MJ Ray wrote: On 2004-05-04 17:20:56 +0100 Hans Reiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I understand why they lost interest in talking to persons who cannot grasp that distros removed mention of them from their man pages and this was wrong. That's actually irrelevant in that case. Their advertising clause is actually not the reason for it being non-free, as I understand it, although it does make it GPL-incompatible, which is a bit irritating. Their licence requires extreme protection of their name as a condition, which seems unacceptable for free software. If I even mention in a factual review who holds the copyright to the software, I have probably failed the letter of the conditions. It seems a little cruel of you to punish all users by taking your code non-free because you are not happy with some distributor actions. You should work with the distributors instead of accusing them of immorality as an opening tactic. That should be the last resort, not the first. I sent them a thanks for being brave enough to take on the task of changing licensing mores and forcing distros to attribute, and I got a response.;-) You seem to enjoy working against free software. I got some responses, too, as previously mentioned.
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
* Hans Reiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-05-04 09:20]: I sent them a thanks for being brave enough to take on the task of changing licensing mores and forcing distros to attribute, and I got a response.;-) I wonder if you're aware that virtually every distro is moving away from XFree86. -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
On 2004-05-04 18:02:28 +0100 Hans Reiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There is a difference between free software and plagiarizable software. There is a difference between free software and forced-advert software, too. There is also the difference between a duck. Debian wants software to be both free and plagiarizable. Debian has not expressed that view, to the best of my knowledge. XFree86 and I want our software to be free but not plagiarizable. Great! I look forward to you both fixing your licences. In general, I want software to not be plagiarizable, as I think it works against the societal interest to not attribute accurately. I agree. Saying that plagiarism is an important freedom is like saying assault is something you must be allowed to do if you are to be considered free. No-one has said that. You seem to be constructing straw men. In case you missed it, the problem which makes XFree86's latest licence definitely non-free (not just GPL-incompatible) is independent of their advertising clause. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
Hans Reiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: You miss the point. I get plenty of credit because of the filesystem name. It is everybody else who gets shortchanged unless we print a randomly chosen 1 paragraph credit at mkreiser4 time. I'm not a Debian developer. But I don't understand your earlier comment about attribution in science in the light of this comment. A typical attribution in a peer reviewed scientific journal looks like, e.g., B. Aubert et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 121801 (2003), where the et al. represents 600+ people. Martin
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
Martin Michlmayr wrote: * Hans Reiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-05-04 09:20]: I sent them a thanks for being brave enough to take on the task of changing licensing mores and forcing distros to attribute, and I got a response.;-) I wonder if you're aware that virtually every distro is moving away from XFree86. They don't want to attribute. It is contrary to the distro brand awareness monopilization interest.
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
Hans Reiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: There is a difference between free software and plagiarizable software. The two are orthogonal concepts. Debian wants software to be both free and plagiarizable. XFree86 and I want our software to be free but not plagiarizable. In general, I want software to not be plagiarizable, as I think it works against the societal interest to not attribute accurately. Saying that plagiarism is an important freedom is like saying assault is something you must be allowed to do if you are to be considered free. No, it is exactly like saying plagiarism is something you must be allowed to do if you are to be considered free. If the law prevented me from making false statements, I would not be free. My nose is blue, for example, and frequently emits badgers. To make that statement illegal is to restrict my freedom. It is only a short step from there to restricting me from saying that two plus two equals four. Now, *fraud* is illegal -- so there is no need for a copyright license to inhibit fraud, because it's already a crime. But for me to have freedom with respect to an artifact, I must have freedom to change it in arbitrary ways. All ways that do not remove the maker's mark is not enough. Then it is a shared artifact, an open artifact even, but not a free artifact. Similarly, to have freedom with respect to a computer program, I must have freedom to change it. Required display of certain text is fine for a shared source program, or an open source program, but it is not a free program. -Brian Hans MJ Ray wrote: On 2004-05-04 17:20:56 +0100 Hans Reiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I understand why they lost interest in talking to persons who cannot grasp that distros removed mention of them from their man pages and this was wrong. That's actually irrelevant in that case. Their advertising clause is actually not the reason for it being non-free, as I understand it, although it does make it GPL-incompatible, which is a bit irritating. Their licence requires extreme protection of their name as a condition, which seems unacceptable for free software. If I even mention in a factual review who holds the copyright to the software, I have probably failed the letter of the conditions. It seems a little cruel of you to punish all users by taking your code non-free because you are not happy with some distributor actions. You should work with the distributors instead of accusing them of immorality as an opening tactic. That should be the last resort, not the first. I sent them a thanks for being brave enough to take on the task of changing licensing mores and forcing distros to attribute, and I got a response.;-) You seem to enjoy working against free software. I got some responses, too, as previously mentioned. -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
MJ Ray wrote: XFree86 and I want our software to be free but not plagiarizable. Great! I look forward to you both fixing your licences. Our licenses are free and not plagiarizable. GPL V2 is plagiarizable in the view of folks at debian who felt free to remove the credits. Assault is the wrong analogy, lying is what plagiarism is. Having a license that prevents lying about who did what is not a restriction on freedom any more than laws against fraud restrict freedom of speech. In general, I want software to not be plagiarizable, as I think it works against the societal interest to not attribute accurately. I agree. So support those who do something to stop plagiarism. Saying that plagiarism is an important freedom is like saying assault is something you must be allowed to do if you are to be considered free. No-one has said that. You seem to be constructing straw men. In case you missed it, the problem which makes XFree86's latest licence definitely non-free (not just GPL-incompatible) is independent of their advertising clause. What problem do you speak of? And call it a credit clause, not an advertising clause. Advertisements sell products, credits describe who made the project happen.
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
When you go to the opera, they don't come on stage and say buy XYZ, but they do say something prominent on the brochure like we thank the generous ABC corporation for making this evening happen. Debian should follow that model, it works and is morally right to do.
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
On 2004-05-04 18:47:02 +0100 Hans Reiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Our licenses are free and not plagiarizable. GPL V2 is plagiarizable in the view of folks at debian who felt free to remove the credits. Can someone give a conclusive statement of what actually happened? The bug report 152547 looks like someone moved an advert into the docs accompanying, rather than removed any attribution. Now, if you call that advert the credits then I think you have a different view to many people. Assault is the wrong analogy, lying is what plagiarism is. Sure, but you've not shown any of these by debian yet. Having a license that prevents lying about who did what is not a restriction on freedom any more than laws against fraud restrict freedom of speech. Yes, that seems true and saying you must attribute this to me, not you would be fine, if redundant. Putting in the licence you must include this report of a conversation between Hans Reiser and his lawyer would not really prevent lying about who did what. I agree. So support those who do something to stop plagiarism. I do. I also support those who do things to promote free software. In case you missed it, the problem which makes XFree86's latest licence definitely non-free (not just GPL-incompatible) is independent of their advertising clause. What problem do you speak of? Their new condition clause 4, which says you cannot use their name, even for accurate reporting. Normally, this would just be a false statement, but this licence makes it a condition of the grant. I've not seen that mistake committed by anyone else yet. And call it a credit clause, not an advertising clause. Advertisements sell products, credits describe who made the project happen. No, it is advertising for the XFree86 Project, Inc. In addition to acknowledging their copyright (the credit), that advert may have to appear. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing
Re: European Directive on Copyright Law (91/EC/250) wrt open source
Arnoud Engelfriet said on Tue, May 04, 2004 at 04:00:57PM +0200,: No, people would be forced to license their work under GPL or develop alternative standard libraries. I do not see anything such a view in the English version. All thsi document says is, `you can reverse engineer so as to achieve interoperability'. Even if you use a non-free license, you will still have to go through the pain of re-writing a (software) library. You cannot use the existing work as such, AFAI can see. In case of a free/copyleft work, you do not have to `reverse engineer' the program, as commonly understood. You will still have to write code which does the same functions if you want to keep it non-free. -- +~+ Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M., 'NANDINI', S. R. M. Road, Ernakulam, Cochin-682018, Kerala, India. http://paivakil.port5.com +~+
Re: Prefered License for forums content
Wouter Vanden Hove [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/debian-legal-200404/msg00031.html When any Licensor asks, all references to their name(s) must be purged from the work. This restricts modification (DFSG 3). This is an unalienable moral right in most of Europe. If this is DFSG non-free, then Debian has a serious problem, because then is it logically impossible to have a license that is compatible with the DFSG and European Law at the same time. Avoiding misrepresentation isn't the same as purging an author's name. I certainly don't know the details of European moral rights (I assume this is what you're referring to), but I suspect it's a lot more nuanced than the clause in the cc-by. For example, the cc-by does not distinguish between legitimate uses of the author's name (e.g., biographical, or criticism of the author's position) and those the license seeks to restrict (presumably, just mis-attribution). But regardless, the fact that something is enshrined in some country's law does not necessarily make that thing desirable, or DFSG free when encoded into a license. What about a license with US DMCA-style anti-circumvention provisions, for example? That would be non-free, even if in the US it would be a null-op. The by-sa license is likely to be non-free as well for the same reasons. If people think that, we don't they express their opinion about it on the relevant mailinglist, namely [EMAIL PROTECTED] This is probably a good idea. But I don't know that it would resolve the DFSG issues with the license, as there are other non-free provisions that I suspect CC would be reluctant to fix. -- Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
On 2004-05-04 18:40:49 +0100 Hans Reiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Martin Michlmayr wrote: I wonder if you're aware that virtually every distro is moving away from XFree86. They don't want to attribute. It is contrary to the distro brand awareness monopilization interest. I look forward to your entertaining contributions to the debian trademark discussions when the trademark committee reports. -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know. http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing
Re: Social Contract GR's Affect on sarge
On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 08:52:35AM -0400, Anthony DeRobertis wrote: Debian significantly restricts use (not just modification or redistribution) of what is in that file. There is no question that the rules for the official use logo fail the DFSG. The only way I can see for Debian to follow its SC is to not include its own official use logo. That's been brought up on -legal, and any package in main including that logo has a bug. FYI, I filed a bug against desktop-base, but my attempt at using X-Debbugs-CC failed and it wasn't CCd here. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=246784 (How did the header get set to [EMAIL PROTECTED]? Must have been a braino on my part when reading the reportbug manpage.) -- Glenn Maynard
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
On Tue, 2004-05-04 at 12:54, Hans Reiser wrote: When you go to the opera, they don't come on stage and say buy XYZ, but they do say something prominent on the brochure like we thank the generous ABC corporation for making this evening happen. Debian should follow that model, it works and is morally right to do. This is a very good analogy. Debian will happily print your credits in our brochure (/usr/share/doc/*reiser*/copyright), which is an optional read for people who want to see the opera (use the ReiserFS software). We'll even do it prominently, all caps, whatever. But we will not walk out on stage (print messages during use of the software) to advertise your filesystem. We do follow that model, it does work, and it is the right thing to do. -- Joe Wreschnig [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
I think a bit of confusion's developed as to just what people are after. That's silly stupid, so I'm going to try to be very precise (anal, even) about language in this message. Be warned. ;) Hans Reiser [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: There is a difference between free software and plagiarizable software. The two are orthogonal concepts. We're not talking about plagiarizing software. That's when someone claims to have written someone else's code. That's silly, and wrong, and probably against the law without even considering the license. That's not what you want this license to prevent -- not least because it does absolutely nothing to prevent it. The question d-l has is: what *are* you trying to achieve? Because there are two possibilities (given that we consider the license as written non-free): - You're trying to achieve something we consider non-free. This isn't a terribly interesting case -- your software can't go into debian main. Nothing personal, we're just following our social contract. - Your goal isn't, in itself, non-free. This is the interesting case, because it means that we're not communicating well, and we don't understand your license. Likely, this means that the wording of the license could be improved. So what are you trying to accomplish? Based on what I've read of this thread, I can see a few possibilities: - You don't want people to plagiarize your software. I.e., you don't want folks like me to claim to have written it. - You want to make sure that information about who contributed (financially and/or intellectually) to ReiserFS is readily available, so that folks who want to know can find out. - You want to make sure that people know who contributed to ReiserFS regardless of whether or not they are interested in finding out. The first two options are fine, depending on how they're implemented. If that's what you want, I'm sure we can hash out wording for the license that would satisfy both you and d-l. A couple comments (that I may not be remembering properly) seemed to imply that these credits are part of a revenue generating model. Folks who wish to require users to see their name in conjunction with ReiserFS may purchase this control over what ReiserFS users see (i.e., they can purchase an ad -- the first TV ads worked exactly like this, that's why the word sponsor is used to refer to ad purchasers). If this is the case, and you are using the license to implement this control (i.e., option three above), then I think it's clear that you intend your license to work exactly as it appears to, and restrict users' freedom. If this is your goal (or perhaps some other variant on item 3 above) I don't think you're going to have much luck convincing folks on d-l that your license is Free. -- Jeremy Hankins [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333 9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03
RE: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
It disturbs me that such a great piece of software engineering like ReiserV3 and V4 is sullied by licensing arguments about whether someone is going to plagiarize them. I imagine that nearly all software engineers would be horrified at the thought of stealing the Reiser3 and 4 code and representing them as their own. It would be tantamount to a random civil engineer trotting the blueprints to the Golden Gate bridge out as their own design. The social and professional repercussions would be immediate, highly negative and totally incompatible with the motivation for contributing to FOSS systems. I'd like to get an idea of what the major concerns are surrounding plagiarism and FOSS. l. Is it that you believe the John Q Software is going to rip off your software and represent it as their own work. That would be plagiarism and I think very very rare in the FOSS community. 2. Are you unhappy with the fact that a few of the major distros are charging money for support and representing the software itself as their own creation? Wouldn't that already be in contravention of GPL V2? Are you unhappy with the fact that some distros make *a lot* of money and fail to credit the FOSS people that made it possible? Arguably the market determines whether their support and package integration are worthy of financial support, just as the DOD determines whether V4 is worth of their support. The relative discrepancy in reward vs. effort is an economic discussion beyond the scope of this. 3. Is it that you simply want an efficient mechanism for cataloging efforts of the major contributors to a project? If that's the case why don't we just come up with some sort of credits standard to be macro embedded in the binaries? That way anyone could view the credits by running a 'credits' shell command against the binary/library/kernel etc. Obviously the macros would be viewable in source. 4. How about this for a self-referential solution to the problem. In ReiserV4, you could view the ReiserV4 credits by simply looking at the credits meta properties in reiser4.o or any other software. Sounds like a good idea for a plugin or default behavior. The ability to view credits like this might make software engineers recommend V4 for this reason alone. ;-) 5. It would probably be easy enough to put hooks in the Gnome and KDE help subsystems so that the Help/Credits menu item would scan the binary for attributions. 6. I've said this before, but if the 'credits' program doesn't find the exact 'attributions' structure in the binary, it can do a multi-part diff/MD5 and then match it to the closest known version. This algorithm might be similar to the rsync or advanced binary diff algorithms. That way if there are no attribution macros or someone intentionally strips or alters attributions you could track it. I'm sure some digital signature technique could be used to guarantee non-alteration. What if the team members each digitally signed the their source modules? Anyway, these are all possible technical solutions to a human problem. People would like attribution for the hard work they do. Naturally. Is there a better mechanism? Hopefully the issue doesn't devolve into an argument about forcing people to read the credits, nagware like, during the execution of the code. That would simply not scale at all and would aggressively de-select your software free or otherwise from an open environment. Think about it, (1) Everytime the kernel invokes kmod, the kmod team brays about how great they are. (2) Everytime someone opens a dynamic library, it shouts about how great it is. (3) Everytime your email program starts up, it delays for 20 seconds while it advertises for the team. Of course if you buy support, this message goes away. Hmmm (4) Everytime a particular SMTP service starts up it announces it's version and a random contributor. For people trying to hack into systems, this is very bad as it can be used to determine whether there are vulnerabilities. (5) By this time, we begin experiencing a very low coefficient of static friction on the development slope. There has to be a better way, or FOSS software wouldn't exist. In short, can you guys give some real examples where developers intentions have been abused or are likely to be abused by GPL V2? Thanks, jim burnes
Re: European Directive on Copyright Law (91/EC/250) wrt open source
On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 04:00:57PM +0200, Arnoud Engelfriet wrote: MJ Ray wrote: On 2004-05-03 19:41:30 +0100 Arnoud Engelfriet [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For example, consider Microsoft licensing its standard libraries under GPL. People fork them and create competition? No, people would be forced to license their work under GPL or develop alternative standard libraries. And since MS has a dominant position, that alternative is not commercially feasible. So it would be the proprietary software people who would object. yep. that's the point that i am making - _with the additional_ point that many open source licenses are incompatible! e.g. the latest xfree86 license, which is causing every single significant distribution to stop using the latest versions, 4.4.x l.
Re: Fwd: reiser4 non-free?
Burnes, James wrote: (1) Everytime the kernel invokes kmod, the kmod team brays about how great they are. (2) Everytime someone opens a dynamic library, it shouts about how great it is. (3) Everytime your email program starts up, it delays for 20 seconds while it advertises for the team. Of course if you buy support, this message goes away. Hmmm (4) Everytime a particular SMTP service starts up it announces it's version and a random contributor. For people trying to hack into systems, this is very bad as it can be used to determine whether there are vulnerabilities. If the above software is Free, it does not contravene the license to modify the software so it doesn't do this (without specific examples, I can't be sure if the above software is free or not). One can only assume that the developers are either a) OK with this, or b) militantly unaware of the permissions they are granting when they release their software under a Free license. I find it unlikely that people intelligent enough to write software as complex as Apache, Sendmail, Linux, Thunderbird, etc. would license their software under a license they haven't fully read, or don't fully understand. I (and, in my opinion, any 'reasonable person') must assume that when an author releases under the GPL, he intends to permit any modification of the program (including the removal of run-time advertisements), as the GPL states. 'GPL + rider' licenses, on the other hand, show that the author really intends some other license, which is often non-free. GPL initially, followed by an amendment into 'GPL + rider' suggests that the author fits into category b). -- Lewis Jardine IANAL IANADD
Re: RFC: Debian License Information on www.debian.org
On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 01:09:21AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: On Fri, Apr 30, 2004 at 11:17:29AM +0200, Gerfried Fuchs wrote: * Frank Lichtenheld [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-04-30 03:49]: I just completed the first version of these pages (loosly based on the pages of the security team), put them online and added a first license, OPL, based on the summary on debian-legal by Jeremy Hankins. I would say, we definitely need to relicense our website[1], then I agree. Given that we haven't asked contributors to assign their copyrights to SPI, do we have the right to do this? -- Matt Kraai[EMAIL PROTECTED]http://ftbfs.org/
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Redistributing PHP Licensed code under LGPL app
Hi folks. I'm working on a php application that is licensed under the LGPL license but I need to include a few files from http://pear.php.net that are licensed under the PHP license. Then the question is: Can I redistribute those PHP licensed files with my LGPL application? Thanks a lot!
Re: Redistributing PHP Licensed code under LGPL app
On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 02:10:59AM +0200, Marc Fargas (TeLeNiEkO) wrote: Hi folks. I'm working on a php application that is licensed under the LGPL license but I need to include a few files from http://pear.php.net that are licensed under the PHP license. Then the question is: Can I redistribute those PHP licensed files with my LGPL application? We can try to answer your question, if you include (inline, preferably, not a URL) the text of the PHP license in question. (I'd guess the answer is probably, since license compatibility is less of an issue with the LGPL than the GPL.) We can't give legal advise, though. You'd probably be better off asking the FSF. -- Glenn Maynard
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