Re: New Ion3 licence
On Sat, Apr 28, 2007 at 12:15:25PM +0200, Francesco Poli wrote: On Sat, 28 Apr 2007 11:00:06 +0100 Ben Hutchings wrote: Ben Finney [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [...] They're explicitly allowed (though discouraged, as you noted) when the requirement is in place for *modified* works. The license in question is requiring a name change for even *unmodified* works, and that's non-free. But if I rename before uploading the package to Debian, then that provision is nullified. So I think the licence would then be free in so far as it applied to the Debian package. Right? Mmmmh, would I be allowed to grab the Debian package, and rename it as ion3, without other modifications (and distribute the result whenever I feel like doing so)? I mean: would the clause be really nullified? Or rather, would it just not apply to Debian, but still be ready to kick in as soon as I do something to the package? I'm definitely uncomfortable with sleeping clauses which could get suddenly awake when you least expect... :-( This doesn't matter, it's still free. If you derive GPL software, you can't violate the terms of the GPL license and yet that GPL software still remains Free by the DFSG definition. Same with a renamed ion derivative, if you derive from a renamed ion and violate its license, the renamed ion remains Free. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Non-DD's in debian-legal
On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 10:52:45AM -0700, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: Theodore Tso [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: However, I *do* believe that d-l is a cesspit, and I for one am very glad that in its current incarnation, it is not at all binding and has no value other than being a debating socity --- a debating socity that I am very glad that I can avoid, thank you very much. I suspect that if it were confined to Debian developers, this problem would be much reduced. Not eliminated, but reduced. Because Debian developers *never* fight amongst themselves ;-) - David slightly less optimistic Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG-freeness of the CID Font Code Public Licence
On Tue, Jun 06, 2006 at 10:05:39AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: David Nusinow [EMAIL PROTECTED] p.s. Anyone reading this thread via MJ Ray's blog might want to note that the mkcfm license issue doesn't affect the X server package so much as xfonts-utils. Thanks. I'll correct that. Often it's not clear to me which package is being discussed, so I sometimes guess, sometimes I guess wrongly and sometimes I probably omit threads which should appear. Corrections by direct email are welcomed. No problem. I figured you'd see it here anyway, and the clarification might be useful. The GLX issue I mentioned above does affect the X server (as well as some other packages) for future reference, since I'm sure it'll come up again in a few months as it's a chronic problem. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: DFSG-freeness of the CID Font Code Public Licence
On Wed, May 31, 2006 at 08:58:18PM +0200, Adeodato Sim?? wrote: [Please CC on replies, M-F-T set accordingly.] Hello, I'd like an opinion about the DFSG-freeness of the CID Font Code Public License, included below. A utility normally shipped with X11, mkcfm, was recently removed because the license was regarded non-free; this statement seems to come from Xorg upstream, see their Bug#5553 [1]. [1] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5553 One can find this utility shipped in Sarge's version of the 'xutils' package, and the full license included in its debian/copyright file, which makes me think the license has been ruled to be DFSG-free in the past. I took a quick look myself and, although I saw a couple of potentially problematic points, I'm more interested in -legal's assessment of whether this license surpasses or not the limits that are being applied to main nowadays. Just a note: I had to make a judgement call on this one, since it wasn't clearly non-free to me. In the end, because I'm not a fan of the problematic clauses and the program in question was, aiui, for essentially obsolete font formats, I decided to drop it. In contrast, the license for the GLX implementation that we're shipping also contains problematic clauses, but I'm not willing to yank it just yet. The reason is because it's critical to the way people expect an X server to work and there's no Free alternative. This obviously needs fixing (I'm hoping someone who's interested in this problem would put the time in to contacting SGI and trying to politely get it relicensed) and it's a far more important licensing problem affecting the X codebase than the mkcfm license. - David Nusinow p.s. Anyone reading this thread via MJ Ray's blog might want to note that the mkcfm license issue doesn't affect the X server package so much as xfonts-utils. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Non-DD's in debian-legal
On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 08:04:56PM -0400, Jeremy Hankins wrote: I'm afraid I don't understand the fear here. What would it mean for d-l to become gnome.alioth.debian.org in your example? Non-developers, no matter how much they love Free Software and Debian, don't get to decide on the policies for the Debian project. They have a say, but they don't get to make a decision, or make any claims on behalf of the project. This applies to debian-legal contributors as well. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6 [was: Re: DebConf6: Call For Papers]
On Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 12:28:07AM +0100, Francesco Poli wrote: On Mon, 7 Nov 2005 10:01:48 +0100 Andreas Schuldei wrote: Fine Print Publication Rights Debconf requires non-exclusive publication rights to papers, presentations, and any additional handouts or audio/visual materials used in conjunction with the presentation. The authors have the freedom to pick a DFSG-free license for the papers themselves and retain all copyrights. I agree with and support the decision of the organizers to allow any DFSG-free license for the papers to be acceptable. That they are mandating this is acceptible and is to be encouraged for an event connected with Debian. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 10:13:31PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: Scripsit David Nusinow [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debconf requires non-exclusive publication rights to papers, presentations, and any additional handouts or audio/visual materials used in conjunction with the presentation. The authors have the freedom to pick a DFSG-free license for the papers themselves and retain all copyrights. I agree with and support the decision of the organizers to allow any DFSG-free license for the papers to be acceptable. The point of the discussion is not whether authors should be *allowed* to licence their papers DFSG-freely. Everybody agrees that that is a good thing. The disagreement is about whether authots should be *forced* to licence their papers DFSG-freely, under threat of exclusion from the conference. That they are mandating this is acceptible and is to be encouraged They are *not* mandating a DFSG-free license. All they are mandating is that the conference gets non-exclusive publications rigthts. From reading the responses from Andreas, rather than people trying poorly to interpret him, it's pretty apparent that they'll be giving freely licensed talks a greater weight than non-free ones. They're also going to make it easy to choose a free license from their interface. Furthermore, it implies a very strong desire to have freely licensed materials. I believe these desires are sincere and that they'll look to have a complete panel of high quality freely licensed papers for the conference. Ultimately though, it's a judgement call, and you simply have to trust the people doing the work. They have shown a desire to encourage free software, and have also shown the ability to put on a successful debconf. This is why I support their decision to run the conference as their experience dictates. Hopefully if you don't like the way they run the conference you'll get involved in the future and help to make it even better. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Thu, Sep 15, 2005 at 11:08:23PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: On Thu, Sep 15, 2005 at 11:05:32PM -0400, David Nusinow wrote: Do any of these choice of venue clauses impinge on simple redistribution? If so, I'd *definitely* be against those specific ones. If they don't relate to the simple redistribution that our mirror operators do, then I don't think this is an issue we have to worry about. Sure; the distribution rights are contingent on accepting the specified court's jurisdiction over the license agreement. This impinges simple redistribution. Ok, given this then I'll agree entirely that it's non-free, since it limits the freedom to redistribute the software. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Fri, Sep 16, 2005 at 03:53:56PM -0400, Michael Poole wrote: Adam McKenna writes: The copyright holder can sue users (or even random people off the street, for that matter) whether he put a choice of venue clause in his license or not. Please go back and read the rest of this thread, since your arguments were previously made and countered. You argue that since choice of venue is a small (or putatively reasonable) cost or form of discrimination, it can be ignored; the DFSG do not allow that. I don't feel that this argument was ever effectively countered. There's no explicit cost or discrimination such as send me five dollars or no black people can use this software. Because of this, the argument is hazy. You really need to justify it based on the basic freedoms that the DFSG is meant to guarantee. Note that not costing money isn't one of those freedoms. Nor is preventing travel or a prolonged stay. Justifying non-freeness in terms of basic freedoms has been done to my personal satisfaction in this case, but the fact that people constantly are falling back on the cost argument shows that the word hasn't gotten out. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Fri, Sep 16, 2005 at 01:10:32PM -0700, Adam McKenna wrote: On Fri, Sep 16, 2005 at 04:03:05PM -0400, David Nusinow wrote: You really need to justify it based on the basic freedoms that the DFSG is meant to guarantee. Note that not costing money isn't one of those freedoms. Nor is preventing travel or a prolonged stay. Justifying non-freeness in terms of basic freedoms has been done to my personal satisfaction in this case, but the fact that people constantly are falling back on the cost argument shows that the word hasn't gotten out. I assume you are talking about this statement made by Steve Langasek: | Sure; the distribution rights are contingent on accepting the specified | court's jurisdiction over the license agreement. This impinges simple | redistribution. Please explain how this is different than accepting any random country's copyright laws when distributing copyrighted material created by a citizen of that country. Basically, the clincher for me is that our mirrors can't simply carry the software we distribute without coming under some fair degree of risk due to this issue. True, it is only a single potentiality that they are actually sued for this. But I feel that the simple redistribution of software is a guaranteed right and should be totally unencumbered. When you modify or use the software, things can be a bit more complex (which is why we accept the GPL's restrictions on modification and distribution) but that's not the case here. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Fri, Sep 16, 2005 at 01:30:47PM -0700, Adam McKenna wrote: On Fri, Sep 16, 2005 at 04:22:21PM -0400, David Nusinow wrote: Basically, the clincher for me is that our mirrors can't simply carry the software we distribute without coming under some fair degree of risk due to this issue. What if the People's Republic of Kraplakistan made a law that all of its citizens were due royalties whenever someone distributed a work for which they held copyright, regardless of the license under which the works were released? What if the law went on to declare that Kraplakistan courts were granted jurisdiction over all distribution of such works? Would you advocate making all copyrighted work non-free, or would you advocate that we simply stop distributing material copyrighted by citizens of Kraplakistan? I'd simply advocate that we stop distributing material copyrighted by citizens of Kraplakistan[1]. I don't think we should use the DFSG to try and change legal systems. As many others on this list have said in the past as well, we can't deal with countries with overly restrictive laws. Let's liken individual licenses to countries. We can refuse to distribute software bearing an individual license the same way we can refuse to distribute software from Kraplakistan. If both restrict the guaranteed freedoms, this is what we should do. - David Nusinow [1] Great name by the way :-) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Thu, Sep 15, 2005 at 10:53:38PM +0200, Francesco Poli wrote: On Wed, 14 Sep 2005 19:11:03 -0400 David Nusinow wrote: Furthermore, we are not imposing anything on our users. They are free to not install such software if they choose. We can't completely protect people from being sued to begin with. C'mon David! :-( We are not imposing anything on our users. They are free to not install Acrobat Reader if they choose. Consequently Acrobat Reader can be moved to main. This is nonsense... :-( Acrobat Reader clearly has restrictions on basic freedoms like distribution and modification. Maybe if you can give me a better example, I'll believe you. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Fri, Sep 16, 2005 at 01:44:05AM +0300, George Danchev wrote: On Thursday 15 September 2005 23:53, Francesco Poli wrote: On Wed, 14 Sep 2005 19:11:03 -0400 David Nusinow wrote: Furthermore, we are not imposing anything on our users. They are free to not install such software if they choose. We can't completely protect people from being sued to begin with. C'mon David! :-( We are not imposing anything on our users. They are free to not install Acrobat Reader if they choose. Consequently Acrobat Reader can be moved to main. This is nonsense... :-( Right ! Also count that mirror operators carring such software could find themselves in a baseless lawsuit adventure while being located or not in some exotic jurisdictions. If they manage to filter such crap somehow, then ftpmasters could serve as last resort being targeted for no good reasons. Do any of these choice of venue clauses impinge on simple redistribution? If so, I'd *definitely* be against those specific ones. If they don't relate to the simple redistribution that our mirror operators do, then I don't think this is an issue we have to worry about. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 11:56:34AM -0300, Humberto Massa Guimarães wrote: ** David Nusinow :: If someone is going to file a lawsuit, someone has to pay for it. If the two sides live in different places, one of them has to travel no matter what, and thus pay for that expense. If we say that choice of venue clauses aren't Free, then the person bringing the suit will very likely have to travel and pay the fee (or that's my interpretation of Humberto and Michael Poole's responses). If not, then the person defending the suit will have to pay the fee. Either way, there is a cost involved. Why are we choosing sides if such a cost can't be avoided? Because: 1. it's greater the probability that the licensee is poorer than the licensor; I fully disagree with this. If a large corporation takes Free software written by an individual, this will not be the case. We've seen such cases in the Free Software world before. 2. the definition of user (as in we care about our users) fits the licensee better than the licensor -- even if it also fits the licensor; and, finally This is true, but I don't feel that it's enough to create a bias towards the licensee. 3. in the case of a fork (fork == GOOD(TM)) people can end up with a license that make BOTH the licensee and the licensor pay some (possibly hefty) cost to litigate the terms of the license. Example of #3 above: I start a (small) companya that distributes a fork of Mozilla -- under MPL1.1 -- , with a lot of improvements. Someone in Argentina forks my fork, and disobeys some of MPL's rules. Now, to prosecute that someone, I have to travel to California -- because I also agreed to the venue of the MPL 1.1. Worse yet, someone in my home town could be the culprit, and I would still have to go California to prosecute him... probably. This does not seem Free Software to me. This is a good argument, but ultimately it strikes me as negligable. If someone in Argentina forks my fork I'd have to travel to Argentina to prosecute them for it. This is a significant burden on me, and thus it wouldn't make a huge difference if I had to travel to California instead. In this case, both sides of the suit would actually be on equal footing, as neither would be on their home turf. Furthermore, the choice of venue clauses don't impose any sort of cost on the freedoms we expect from software. They do impose a potential cost on litigation related to that software, but the DFSG shouldn't be used as a weapon to change the legal system. It should be used to protect and guarantee that we have certain freedoms in relation to using, modifying, and distributing software. Choice of venue clauses don't change these freedoms. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 10:46:49PM +0200, Francesco Poli wrote: On Fri, 09 Sep 2005 17:17:06 -0400 David Nusinow wrote: I think we need to consider the point that Matthew has been raising though, that a choice of venue clause may be important for a program author to successfully defend their copyright. If the justification for this is to be grounded in the discrimination clause of the DFSG, we can't choose to discriminate against the program's authors. If this is to be grounded in the clause about not requiring a fee, we can't require that the program's author be forced to take on the burden of such a fee if they need to defend their copyright. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way, AFAICT. The DFSG are guidelines to determine whether a *right-holder* gives enough permissions to *licensees*, not whether *Debian* gives enough permissions to *right-holders*. Yes, but you must ground this in the rights that the DFSG guarantees the licensee. The two arguments that I've seen are based on either 1) cost or 2) discrimination. Neither of these holds up in my eyes. The cost is only associated with litigation, rather than the use, modification, and distribution of software. I don't like the idea of choice of venue clauses either, but I'm more uncomfortable with extending the DFSG to deal with things outside the realm of the basic freedoms we associate with software. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Wed, Sep 14, 2005 at 04:56:09PM +0200, Henning Makholm wrote: Scripsit David Nusinow [EMAIL PROTECTED] Furthermore, the choice of venue clauses don't impose any sort of cost on the freedoms we expect from software. Yes they do. You have to suffer the choice-of-venue clause in order to get the freedoms we expect from software. That is a cost. It is a cost I do not want to pay just to get some software on my computer, and it is a cost that I cannot in good conscience advocate that Debian users should have to pay in order to get the freedoms of software that we promise comes with freedoms. This is nonsense. A choice of venue clause does not impose any fee on using, modifying, and distributing the software. It *only* has relevance in the realm of litigation. They do impose a potential cost on litigation related to that software, No, you are completely mistaken. The risk associated with accepting a choice-of-venue clause hits *especially* users who have no plans to litigate over the license. Again, this is totally outside the realm of using, modifying, and distributing the software, which are the basic freedoms we expect. It's not pretty, but it's outside the scope of the DFSG. but the DFSG shouldn't be used as a weapon to change the legal system. It is not being used as a weapon to change the legal system. The legal system is fine as it is. We're merely protecting users from having a weapon trained on them that the legal system does not ordinarily provide. It should be used to protect and guarantee that we have certain freedoms in relation to using, modifying, and distributing software. Choice of venue clauses don't change these freedoms. Choice of venue means that one has to accept to lose a pre-existing protection before one gets the freedom to use, modify and distribute the software. We do not want to impose on our users that they have to lose that protection just because they depend on Debian. We accept that a user can have other restrictions on the modification of the software. We accept that a user can have restrictions on the distribution of software. We can also accept such a restriction that lies completely outside these basic freedoms. Furthermore, we are not imposing anything on our users. They are free to not install such software if they choose. We can't completely protect people from being sued to begin with. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 08:18:01AM -0400, Raul Miller wrote: On 9/9/05, David Nusinow [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Please use a non-broken mail program. Anyways, please say what you mean in a fashion that carries useful information. Thank you Mr. Pedant. If you'll examine the grandparent mail to mine, you'll find your answer. Good luck figuring out which that is, with all the thread breaks. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 02:56:11PM -0400, Michael Poole wrote: John Hasler writes: Henning Makholm writes: A bicycle trip to my local courthouse: DKK 2, including write-offs on the bicycle. A trip to some court in America: Tens of thousands of DKKs. If I were to sue you for infringing the copyright on my GPL software I would file in US district court. FRCP 8(a) requires any such claim to explain why the court has jurisdiction over the question and the defendant. How would your pleading address this? Why would US citizenship not be sufficient? - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 08:44:39PM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 12:44:56PM -0500, John Hasler wrote: Henning Makholm writes: A bicycle trip to my local courthouse: DKK 2, including write-offs on the bicycle. A trip to some court in America: Tens of thousands of DKKs. If I were to sue you for infringing the copyright on my GPL software I would file in US district court. Assuming it's a nuisance lawsuit, I would ignore it (or file a written statement to this effect), and let the judgement lapse (assuming the court itself didn't just acknowledge my point and throw it out), since I have no intention to enter US territory at any point. When you filed in a UK court to attempt to enforce the US judgement, I would raise the defence that the claim was nonsense. This is sort of like saying I block you with my force field! Saying the claim is nonsense if John has good evidence that you are infringing on his copyright isn't going to get you far. If you bring choice-of-venue into the picture, it becomes rather more murky. How so? The only thing I see is that it strengthens the plaintiff's argument to actually have the case tried in a US court. I doubt this would be a very weak argument to begin with though. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
Please stop breaking threads. On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 04:53:15PM -0300, Humberto Massa Guimarães wrote: FRCP 8(a) requires any such claim to explain why the court has jurisdiction over the question and the defendant. How would your pleading address this? Why would US citizenship not be sufficient? Whose US citizenship? The plaintiff. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 05:01:17PM -0300, Humberto Massa Guimarães wrote: Why would US citizenship not be sufficient? Whose US citizenship? The plaintiff. No. Because the Court has no bearing on what would a non-US-citizen nor-US-resident (the defendant) will do. If the Court orders you (*) to stop distributing some software and you don't, the Police gets to your door and you go to Jail. If the Court orders me (*) to do something and I don't, they can't do anything unless I want to go to Disneyland. (*) I am obviously supposing you, the plaintiff, is an US citizen and resident. Please use a non-broken mail program. How does a choice of venue clause compel you to go to the US then? The US courts still can't force your country's police to come after you. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 09:55:24PM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: Not really interested in the case where you actually did infringe on the license. I don't think it's worthwhile to worry about whether we discriminate against such people. Nuisance lawsuits are the canonical example of the important part here. That's the scenario where choice-of-venue is bad. Ok, thank you for clarifying that. I think we need to consider the point that Matthew has been raising though, that a choice of venue clause may be important for a program author to successfully defend their copyright. If the justification for this is to be grounded in the discrimination clause of the DFSG, we can't choose to discriminate against the program's authors. If this is to be grounded in the clause about not requiring a fee, we can't require that the program's author be forced to take on the burden of such a fee if they need to defend their copyright. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 04:31:17PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 05:17:06PM -0400, David Nusinow wrote: Ok, thank you for clarifying that. I think we need to consider the point that Matthew has been raising though, that a choice of venue clause may be important for a program author to successfully defend their copyright. A no modifications allowed clause may be important for a program author to successfully protect their reputation, but we don't consider such a restriction free; one *should* be able to defend one's reputation relying only on a identify all changes prominently clause, and one *should* be able to defend one's copyright within the existing framework governing personal jurisdiction. Sure, but it's arguable whether choice of venue truly restricts a user's freedom. The no modifications allowed is pretty obviously non-free. Part of the issue with the existing framework of personal jurisdiction is that we don't seem to have a clear idea what it actually is. I haven't seen any links to documents explaining how jurisdiction is actually determined in real life cases. Michael Poole's link from elsewhere in the thread is the closest thing, but it's unclear to me how exactly this would work in real world situations. Since the actual framework remains a mystery to me, I see issues with declaring that the framework is sufficient and doesn't need to be modified by a license. I've googled looking for examples of how a venue is determined normally in international cases, but to no avail as of yet, but I'll keep looking. Some real data would help here. If the justification for this is to be grounded in the discrimination clause of the DFSG, we can't choose to discriminate against the program's authors. Even if we accept this argument, how is putting the authors on equal footing with the users discrimination? Perhaps that wasn't the best way to argue that I don't think it falls under the discrimination clause, as some have argued. This strikes me as a really far cry from saying something like No Israelis can use this software, which is the sort of thing the clause was really meant to protect against. If this is to be grounded in the clause about not requiring a fee, we can't require that the program's author be forced to take on the burden of such a fee if they need to defend their copyright. Sorry, this sentence registers as complete nonsense to me. If you're going to claim that requiring certain things of *authors* before their code can be included in Debian is a fee, how is this particular fee different from the fee of publishing source code? If someone is going to file a lawsuit, someone has to pay for it. If the two sides live in different places, one of them has to travel no matter what, and thus pay for that expense. If we say that choice of venue clauses aren't Free, then the person bringing the suit will very likely have to travel and pay the fee (or that's my interpretation of Humberto and Michael Poole's responses). If not, then the person defending the suit will have to pay the fee. Either way, there is a cost involved. Why are we choosing sides if such a cost can't be avoided? - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: generated source files, GPL and DFSG
On Fri, Jul 22, 2005 at 11:28:54PM -0700, Michael K. Edwards wrote: On 7/22/05, Glenn Maynard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In other words, we'll take something as source that we know isn't, because we like nVidia. ... Hey, I didn't say I liked the idea myself. I'm just calling it like I see it. I would say that the core functionality of the nv driver is not maintainable or improvable by anyone outside nVidia, but at least it can be recompiled to pick up changes in X.org data structure layout or whatever and there is some chance of point fixing it. It's not entirely my idea of source code -- but then neither are the Emacs internals. This is true, but not because the driver isn't commented. It's because the specs for the card have not been released, and as such we don't know what the magic numbers mean. The hardware specs are entirely external to the source code for the driver itself, and as such it doesn't affect the freeness of the driver. On a more practical note, you're going to have a very difficult time convincing me to move the nv driver to non-free. This not even borderline case is the only thing that stands in the way of having every single nvidia owner use the binary nvidia drivers which I can not support in *any way at all*. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: generated source files, GPL and DFSG
On Sat, Jul 23, 2005 at 09:50:56AM -0700, Ken Arromdee wrote: On Sat, 23 Jul 2005, David Nusinow wrote: This is true, but not because the driver isn't commented. It's because the specs for the card have not been released, and as such we don't know what the magic numbers mean. The hardware specs are entirely external to the source code for the driver itself, and as such it doesn't affect the freeness of the driver. If the guys at Nvidia maintain the driver by referring to a separate copy of the hardware specs and copying numbers from it into the driver when needed, then the hardware specs are external to the source code of the driver. If the guys at Nvidia maintain the driver by maintaining a version of the code which has symbols in it, and give the driver to us by removing the symbols, then to the extent which the symbols provide information about the specs, the specs are *not* external to the source of the driver. But understanding it is contingent on those specs. You have all the rights to modify the code that is the nv driver as it is under a Free license. Upstream also likely keeps the driver in revision control with its own set of comments and metadata that they use to maintain the driver, but not having access to that does not qualify the thing as non-free. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Bug#316487: debian-installer-manual: Missing copyright credit: Karsten M. Self for section C.4
On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 12:36:14PM -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote: This bug concerns appropriate copyright notice in the Debian Installer Guide which adapts substantial material originally written by me. My license allows use under DFSG compliant guidelines, but requests attribution. I initially requested attribution in May, 2003, a DIG author admitted to using my work in writing this section of the DIG, but requested I submit a patch (I'm not familiar with Debian's document system and patches -- I'm not a DD). Ok, change committed. You are now attributed in the administrivia section. Thanks for the great doc. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RES: What makes software copyrightable anyway?
On Tue, May 17, 2005 at 09:38:52PM -0700, Michael K. Edwards wrote: On 5/17/05, Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] I guess I don't see the point of all this. That much, at least, is clear to all observers. Does anyone else have any difficulty in following the flow of my argument as given, or in finding ample support for it in the statutes and case law I have cited over the last few weeks? I have had great difficulty, simply due to the sheer volume of text that has spewed forth from your fingers, which makes your argument not only difficult to follow, but completely saps any interest I might possibly have in the subject. The simple observation that you seem unable to communicate your thoughts concisely makes me feel like you haven't thought things through particularly well. In addition, much of your argument is caught up in personal attacks that I have less than no desire to read. As a result of these and other things (the various thread-breaking RES mails which aren't your fault, for instance) I've had great difficulty maintaining the patience to not simply killfile every mail in this thread, let alone follow the flow of your argument and read the original cases that you cite. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: I'll let the Freemasons know Debian is distributing their trademark
On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 09:57:46AM -0500, William Ballard wrote: Regarding http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/01/msg00312.html I'll let the Freemasons know Debian is distributing their Trademarked logo and diluting their trademark. I'm also going to write letters to Duracell, Namco, and Hummer. I don't think it's right to distribute other people's trademarked images as merchandise, even if it's free. It's fundamentally different than reviewing the product in a magazine -- which has a purpose. The purpose of this is to market Debian and entice people to use it using other people's trademarked property. I think the press will be interested to know that in this corner case Debian chose to get away with whatever it can get away with until it receives cease and desist letters because it thinks no one will enforce these trademarks so the risk is small. Or as I'm sure someone will say there's nothing wrong here so naturally we can include say the NFL logo, right? Take your vendetta elsewhere please. We are not creating a competing product with any of these companies, nor are we even implying that they are endorsing us or are connected in any way to us by including these images. We are not using these images to advertise for Debian, so I seriously doubt that this would fall under trademark dilution. For what it's worth, I've had clipart collections for years which have plenty of images of these types, and these collections were distributed commercially. Removal of the pacman image is the only one that I can see any case for at all, but this can be dealt with in a far more polite and civilized manner than you've seen fit to conduct yourself. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: I'll let the Freemasons know Debian is distributing their trademark
On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 11:16:24AM -0500, William Ballard wrote: Why not include the McDonald's logo or a picture of a McDonald's hamburger? I'd like to include that on my website. How are these different? Context is everything. - David Nusinow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: I'll let the Freemasons know Debian is distributing their trademark
On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 09:57:46AM -0500, William Ballard wrote: Regarding http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/01/msg00312.html I'll let the Freemasons know Debian is distributing their Trademarked logo and diluting their trademark. I'm also going to write letters to Duracell, Namco, and Hummer. I don't think it's right to distribute other people's trademarked images as merchandise, even if it's free. It's fundamentally different than reviewing the product in a magazine -- which has a purpose. The purpose of this is to market Debian and entice people to use it using other people's trademarked property. I think the press will be interested to know that in this corner case Debian chose to get away with whatever it can get away with until it receives cease and desist letters because it thinks no one will enforce these trademarks so the risk is small. Or as I'm sure someone will say there's nothing wrong here so naturally we can include say the NFL logo, right? Take your vendetta elsewhere please. We are not creating a competing product with any of these companies, nor are we even implying that they are endorsing us or are connected in any way to us by including these images. We are not using these images to advertise for Debian, so I seriously doubt that this would fall under trademark dilution. For what it's worth, I've had clipart collections for years which have plenty of images of these types, and these collections were distributed commercially. Removal of the pacman image is the only one that I can see any case for at all, but this can be dealt with in a far more polite and civilized manner than you've seen fit to conduct yourself. - David Nusinow
Re: I'll let the Freemasons know Debian is distributing their trademark
On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 11:16:24AM -0500, William Ballard wrote: Why not include the McDonald's logo or a picture of a McDonald's hamburger? I'd like to include that on my website. How are these different? Context is everything. - David Nusinow
Re: ng-spice legal-license advice
On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 10:45:59PM +1100, Matt Flax wrote: I see, the thing is that ngspice is actually reporting a BSD license on its web site : http://sourceforge.net/projects/ngspice/ inside thae package however it has alot of different original packages ... like the original Berkley liense (which ceased to maintain publicly in the eighties or early nineties), a different license for xspice (also part of the build) and one of the continuations of ng-spice ... people say that ng-spice may even turn into tclspice so which of these licenses are the one to choose ? or are all of them correct ? You're going to have to go to the copyright holders for that, and get clarification from them. You may want to request that they consider re-licensing the work under a Free license while you're at it. It is still possible to package for contrib ... right ? Only if you split the non-free stuff out from the Free stuff. As it stands, you're probably going to have to put it in non-free. - David Nusinow
Re: Suggestions of David Nusinow, was: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Mon, Aug 23, 2004 at 03:12:51AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: I certainly agree. The thrust of my comments was to make sure NMs understand that licensing issues are often difficult, and that if one isn't prepared to wrestle with them oneself, one needs to place more trust in one's peers who do. This is an important point which I fully agree with (more below). I am dismayed and exasperated by the recent trend of bashing the debian-legal list collectively, particularly when it comes from people who don't participate in its discussions. Maybe there is some sort of Real Hackers Don't Need Debian-Legal elitism going on; maybe it's just good old-fashioned fear of what one doesn't understand. I get the feeling that the elitism as you call it is more related to the above. Perhaps there is some feeling that understanding licensing issues isn't difficult (which would be a misplaced feeling) but more importantly I think that those who have placed their trust in their peers feel that their trust might be violated. It's certaintly how I feel in some respects and it's how I read many of the other critics of -legal, both past and present, as well. That said, I think you're on to the solution by making sure people are aware that these issues are difficult. At any rate, I'm not saying we need to make the PP process turn our NMs into legal experts. I *am* saying we need to educate them that legal issues, even in Free Software, are sufficiently complex that expertise is actually required. Armchair quarterbacking from a position of ignorance is antisocial and corrosive to our organization. Agreed, and this approach would get rid of my reservations about simply pointing NM's to -legal for everything. My worry there was that we would either be turning prospective DD's in to robots or that we would be pointing them to so-called experts who haven't studied the issues but are more than happy to enforce their views on to others. I'm trying to come up with an effective outline for good NM questions to accomplish this. Here's what I've got so far, and I'd love more input, especially in terms of actual licenses that people with more experience in this area think are exemplary of the problems inherent in license analysis. - Each question is based on some actual license. This license is meant to highlite one specific issue, either codified explicitly in the DFSG or to be inferred from it. - Each question includes at least one link to the mailing list archive where the license was discussed, so that the NM can read what has been said about the license. The license should be picked so that the discussion isn't too long (the QPL would be a very bad choice, for example) and possibly with particularly good posts. If anyone remembers any very good posts that clearly explain and/or define a point, these would also potentially be noted in the question, or brought up by the AM after the question is answered. - The questions should be a mix of both obviously non-free, obviously free, and less obviously in either camp. For the last category, it should be stressed by the AM at some point, either in the question or the answer, that the boundaries are not so clear cut and that these can be very difficult issues. - I think around 4 to 7 licenses would be a good number to have. There were 4 when I went through NM, and I have to look them over again (along with my answers) so I don't want to comment on them right now. Anyhow, that's what little I've got so far. I'm hoping to attack this in a more concrete manner, with actual licenses and writing after release. - David Nusinow
Re: Suggestions of David Nusinow, was: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Tue, Aug 24, 2004 at 03:01:37PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: Andrew Suffield writes: here. You don't have to be an attorney to understand the law, only to practice it. But it's a great help in terms of understanding the meanings of lots of the *legal* license terms that are bandied about. And how they might be applied in court, with precedent. And in this case professional training is much more important than in the others you named IMHO. My only issue with this line of argument is that this is a volunteer project. If we don't have volunteer lawyers to do this work for us, we make due with what we've got, the same way we do everything else. - David Nusinow
Re: NEW ocaml licence proposal by upstream, will be part of the 3.08.1 release going into sarge.
On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 12:09:01PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Brian Thomas Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Why is granting of extra freedoms non-free? It isn't. The part of my message that you snipped made clear that it's the requirement that I must grant extra permissions which is non-free. What is the difference between granting of extra permissions and granting of extra freedoms? Nothing. Therefore, I require you to grant me a permissive license to all code you have ever written. Oh wait, that doesn't seem free to you? Why? Because it's a requirement. What's the difference between charity and tax? Tax is a requirement, charity is freely given. That's not a fair example because all the code he has ever written is not a derived work from the licensed code. Just because there are requirements of people receiving the license to give up something does not make it non-free. - David Nusinow
Re: Suggestions of David Nusinow, was: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Sun, Aug 08, 2004 at 07:07:11PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: Apart from Raul Miller's[1], I have yet to read a rebutal to Manoj's draft position statement on the GNU FDL[2]. If you would direct me to one which represents the will of the project as a whole, I'd appreciate it. Given that Raul himself, after a thread that went several directions, said I'm not trying to convince people that the GFDL as it currently stands should be considered DFSG free. I'm ambivalent about that.[3], we seem to be rather short on comprehensive and well-reasoned defenses of the DFSG-freeness of the GNU FDL. Maybe you can help. Actually, I agree with the GNU FDL position, and I even submitted a draft version of a small portion of it to Manoj while he was in the writing phase of it. :-) - David Nusinow
Re: periodic summaries, was: RPSL and DFSG ...
On Mon, Aug 09, 2004 at 04:36:31AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: On 2004-08-09 03:10:06 +0100 Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm not so sure that it should go to d-d-a. For one time deals, where a legal analysis affects a lot of packages, sure. But not for a weekly synopsis. That is more like a mailing list of its own (like kernel-traffic). Then, unless the world shouts you down, for now I'll put it to d-l and then my free software news blog (also on planet.debian.net) and rely on subject line consistency to help people find them. If it seems to work, I'll look for a better home next month. Both of those are great choices. Thank you very much for doing this. - David Nusinow
Re: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Wed, Jul 28, 2004 at 01:05:45AM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: It's fairly easy to say we're debating the QPL; this may affect these packages ..., but it's very hard to do the same for a specific restriction, which is probably what you're really looking for. The best that could be hoped for is common language to grep for, which usually works to a degree, but it's not reliable ... To be honest, I don't see any way to announce we're debating about this random clause and have people get interested. Perhaps in the announcement email with the license and package names include a quick summary of the contested points? - David Nusinow
Re: Suggestions of David Nusinow, was: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Wed, Jul 28, 2004 at 09:57:53AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: On 2004-07-28 03:35:31 +0100 David Nusinow [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1) MJ Ray has suggested doing more work with people in the NM queue. [...] As should be obvious, I don't understand the NM black box. How would we do this? One thing is to modify the standard templates used for questions. Include more licenses to critique, all of which are picked to display certain points. I don't know that many licenses so I can't suggest any in particular right now, but a more focused portion of Policy Procedures would be good. As it is, I see the Policy Procedures overlapping quite a bit with Tasks Skills as they currently stand, so some separation would provide the necessary room in the tests. 2) Steve McIntyre has continually suggested codifying [...] I agree with others that this is dangerous and likely to weaken the guidelines in nearly all cases. This is going to sound really bad, and I'm not trying to stir up trouble in saying this, but perhaps the guidelines need weakening? As Matthew Garret pointed out in another email, current interpretation of freedom is more restrictive than that of the FSF, and I echo his point that this probably needs to be justified. 3) As I stated earlier, I liked the news post to DWN. Keep those up [...] DWN is too difficult/demoralising for me and I'm used to rejections from real news mags. bad news like the premature MPL draft summary are included quickly, while -legal successes like the LPPL aren't reported. It's all well and good inviting contributions, but I don't even know whether my contributions got there or whether I should resend. There's easier stuff to do than spend time shouting into a black hole. That's disheartening. Have you spoken with Joey on the subject at all? 4) Announce major changes to things to -devel-announce. [...] This is a better idea, if summarisers are willing. If a major license is declared as non-free, [...] Ewww ;-) Hehe If you don't like this and would rather rant and talk in circles [...] Please refrain from false alternatives. We can dislike your suggestions and still not prefer to rant. I'm sorry, but it's been a frustrating task trying to communicate with this list. I'm afraid I haven't done as good a job as I'd like, but I very much appreciate having your ear. - David Nusinow
Re: Suggestions of David Nusinow, was: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Fri, Jul 30, 2004 at 03:39:01AM -0700, Don Armstrong wrote: On Fri, 30 Jul 2004, David Nusinow wrote: This is going to sound really bad, and I'm not trying to stir up trouble in saying this, but perhaps the guidelines need weakening? So we should be willing to give up more of the freedom that we now need in order to have a work in Debian? Perhaps. It seems that a number of people want this. I'm simply raising the question as a possibility. current interpretation of freedom is more restrictive than that of the FSF, It's not that we're more restrictive than the FSF. It's almost exactly the opposite. We're more expansive with the freedoms that we require. In many cases we've decided that specific freedoms are important, and the FSF has decided that being pragmatic is better than retaining the freedom. The issue though is that the project as a whole has agreed to the freedoms guaranteed by the DFSG, but specific interpretations that aren't clear from the DFSG are being used in conjunction with the DFSG itself. These specific freedoms haven't necessarily been agreed to by the rest of the project, which is why Steve and I have suggested actually attempting to take the step and see if the project really does agree with them. It might be that the majority of the project isn't so far from the FSF. Note that I'm not placing forth my own opinion on the subject one way or another really so much as advocating a real communication where I only see a large split right now. Perhaps modifying the DFSG isn't the best way to go about this (and it's definitely the last thing that I'd resort to) but it should not be ruled out all together. I echo his point that this probably needs to be justified. In all of the cases to date, where we've gone against the interpretation of the FSF, we've done so with very careful justification of the reasoning behind our difference in opinion, and how that springs from the DFSG. The few thousand messages on the GFDL are a reasonable example of the process of justification that we have gone through. If there's one thing I would never accuse the participants of this list of, it's lack of care and thoroughness. My real concern is simply to allow these carefully formed conclusions to reflect the will of the project as a whole. - David Nusinow
Re: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 11:52:42PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: It can help, though. There are multiple discussions going on here: 1: does DFSG#1 only prohibit fees, or other stuff, too? What's a fee? Where's my dictionary?; and 2: is choice of venue an onerous restriction? I believe #2 is the important question, and that #1 is rules lawyering, a waste of time. We might be able to reduce #1 with modifications like these, making it clear that: no, this isn't a bright line test, and yes, judgement is required. Indeed. Perhaps a more organized body of caselaw as it were would help provide better judgement. Wading through mounds and mounds of posts over the years makes it difficult to provide evidence from prior experience for judgement. The FAQ is good obviously, but maybe a sort of collection of final summaries would be helpful? I don't think these types of amendments are what David and Steve M have in mind, though; I think they're aiming to reduce #2, as well, and that's hard to do without either special cases, or new generalizations that may backfire. I feel like there has to be a way to do it properly without simply saying no choice of venue clauses are allowed. Why are they not allowed, and what other sorts of clauses could this reasoning be applied to? I think the answers to these questions are the key to the problem. I wish I'd been following the choice of venue debate more closely to pose decent answers myself, but Sven's fillibuster made that impossible. - David Nusinow
Re: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 11:11:59PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: I don't mind discussing them. I'll admit to not caring to discuss six things (several of which seem to me to be self-evidently non-free, such as arbitrary termination) simultaneously. That's definitely fair (and I fully agree with you on the arbitrary termination point). 2) Steve McIntyre has continually suggested codifying the various things in the DFSG. I fully agree with this. If you really truly believe that your interpretations are shared by the rest of the project, then you have nothing to fear from this, and you only stand to gain. There's certainly something to lose from this being done incorrectly. An amendment saying The license may not require a choice of venue would inevitably set a precedent: for every other weird restriction that we see, the person trying to push it into Debian would say: Hey! You had to have a GR and change the DFSG to call choice of venue non-free! I demand a GR for my 'say the Pledge of Allegiance' restriction, too! I'm not really against it in principle; it's just the side-effects that worry me. (I keep seeing assurances that it won't come to that, but I really havn't been very reassured.) This is a totally valid concern, and I'm glad it keeps coming up, but I don't feel like it's enough to paralyze any attempt to modify the DFSG. I'm definitely against haphazardly modifying foundational documents (and the recent GR showed many ways how such a thing should not be handled) but at least attempting to do so might be warranted. 3) As I stated earlier, I liked the news post to DWN. Keep those up for big things like new tests and interesting new interpretations. 4) Announce major changes to things to -devel-announce. If a major license is declared as non-free, announce it to -devel or -devel-announce (maybe the -devel first in order to allow dissenters to weigh in before going for the broader -devel-announce). 5) Possibly start -legal-announce for summaries and such I don't have a problem with any of this, but this is all after-the-fact stuff: things to do after a big discussion, forming a list consensus, and writing summaries. It sounds like what you want it things to happen to draw people into the discussion before we find ourself at a consensus (that's certainly better than doing so after, since that results in the discussion rebooting). This is true. They're just some ideas I'd had floating around right away, and I don't have any ingenious ideas for bringing people in at the start of the debate, mainly because doing the sort of work -legal does is very hard (at least to me). One possibility for something like -legal-announce would be to post an initial mail like Someone has requested that foo license be reviewed for package bar. This license also applies to packages bas, etc. This would let people subscribe to a low volume list, and if anything they're interested in goes under review, they could join the discussion. I could see posting these things to -devel or -devel-announce, but this strikes me as rather ugly. - David Nusinow
Re: Summary : ocaml, QPL and the DFSG.
On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 02:07:54PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: David Nusinow [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: No, you don't have to find one. Just write a very, very simple one. I don't think it can be done in a free way, but if you show me one, then I'll believe you. I've thought about this for a while, and I think that perhaps the simplest way that it would work would be to distribute changes to your immediate upstream, rather than the original upstream. You would have to have some relationship with your immediate upstream in order to get the software to modify in the first place, so there should be no additional fee associated with distribution upstream in this case. I do think Sven might disagree, and have reason to be just a little testy that I've made spamming him a condition of distributing modifications to my software. If Linux were licensed that way, Debian would have to send one kernel source tree per download per kernel copyright holder to poor Sven. That would be thousands of kernel sources. Surely, enough to put debian.org and its mirrors into some unhappy territory. Ok, I misunderstood your question. I assumed Sven would want the changes. This would classify as discrimination against Sven, and would fail the DFSG. Fortunately, this is not necessarily the case with forced upstream distribution clauses. Why is this discrimination against him? I think that's fairly contorted, in comparison to the simplicity of saying that a Free license cannot compel me to initiate action, only to do some things in particular ways, and this compels me to initiate communication with somebody. I didn't realize you were headed in the must pet a cat direction with this. Harassing Sven when he doesn't want it would be discrimination. I'd rather not justify this, since I think it's pretty self-evident. As for the must pet a cat side of the question, I agree. I asked if a free license could, in your view, require that any time you distribute modifications, you also send a copy to the original author. That would require sending them on *every download*. If you're a mass distribution site, that's a problem. Ok, now I see. I'd see this as failing DFSG 1 because it would effectively prevent Debian from distributing the software. Not even getting in to fees and whatnot, this would definitely be a real restriction. Even looking at this from a pragmatic, rather than ideological point of view, this holds. Can I say you must do it by a non-digital mechanism? This question could be asked for forced downstream source distribution as well. Why not? Because those are expensive. Real mail costs a lot more than e-mail. Ok then, since this would fail the fee test by my definition of the word fee. But fortunately I've never seen a forced upstream distribution clause with this requirement, which would make it non-free. OK; but requiring me to use my network connection is not a fee, not even if I pay by the bit? Is there a bright line, here? Or just a vague idea that some costs are large enough to be non-free, but very small costs are not worth worrying about? There's definitely no bright line, but again, what if the license forced you to send your changes downstream in hard copy, rather than upstream? I'd say that this would fail DFSG 1 too. Can I say you must sign your changes? As above, this could be applied to downstream distribution. Why not, given the DFSG? (The dictator test obviously would apply, but I don't know if I agree with it as a functional tool) Because it compels me to reveal my identity to distribute changes, which is a cost. I don't consider this a valid argument. You reveal your identity distributing changes downstream as well. No I don't. I can drop CDs in the street, or paint code on walls. Ok, let's invoke the pet the cat argument from earlier. You said above in comparison to the simplicity of saying that a Free license cannot compel me to initiate action, only to do some things in particular ways. This forces you to distribute your changes in a particular way. The revelation of your identity is the way in which you must distribute your changes. It's a restriction on behavior, much like the GPL places other restrictions on distribution of changes. Furthermore, nowhere in the DFSG is privacy guaranteed (and I won't accept discrimination as a valid reason for this because the license is not written with the intent to discriminate against people who need to keep their identity secret). Can I require a license from you? More free than otherwise compelled by the copyleft? What about a non-free license, can I require that? No, because this obviously fails DFSG 7. No it doesn't. My license passes on to them. It's just that your changes have to be under a more or less restrictive license. Ah, you mean DFSG 3. No, I meant 7, but 3 applies as well, thanks
Re: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 02:02:11PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: (intentional thread break) On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 02:48:27PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: RPSL 12.6 requires a fee for distribution, violating DFSG 1. I'm fairly certain that there isn't clear consensus on this. Regardless of whether choice of venue is a fee, the only people I've seen who appear to believe that choice of venue is free are you, Lex Spoon and Sven Luther. On the other side, we appear to have: Edmund Evans, Steve Langasek, Andrew Suffield, Brian Sniffen, Evan Prodromou, Branden Robinson, Josh Triplett, Michael Poole, MJ Ray, Nathanael Nerode, Henning Makholm, Raul Miller, Matthew Palmer, Walter Landry, and myself. Informal and inexact as my reading of these people's posts may be, I honestly think you overstate the disagreement on this issue ... Keeping score isn't a good way to think about this. There are people who aren't yet decided on the issue and are mute (myself included there) as well as the vast majority of DD's who I'd bet are not even aware of the issue. This sort of declaration of consensus despite a lack of clarity grounded in the DFSG is exactly what's caused so much ire within the rest of the project towards this list. - David Nusinow
Re: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 03:02:16PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: I'm not trying to say we outnumber you, so be quiet, or anything that silly, nor am I trying to stop discussion about it. I just feel he's overstating the disagreement. I'm fairly certain that there isn't clear consensus on this. is an overstatement? Sounds pretty benign to me. Again, keeping score of a few active -legal participants isn't enough to claim clear consensus for the whole project on whether something is non-free. - David Nusinow
Re: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 06:27:36PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: I find 80% to be pretty clear. I guess you're one of the people claiming that there's a silent majority secretly disagreeing with the vast majority of d-legal (who can't be bothered to state their opinion and its rationale), so there's no point in arguing this further. Way to ignore what I actually wrote. What I said was that most DD's aren't aware of the issue, which is very different than silent disagreement. DD's have universally agreed to uphold the DFSG, not some additional material that's grounded in one interpretation of the DFSG. As a result, I'd bet that many would be surprised when a license is declared non-free because of something that they did not agree to. I personally don't think that -legal does a good enough job of communicating with the rest of the project, and I know I'm not the only one. My opinion on the silence is a reflection of this lack of communication, not some hand-waving fake telepathy[1]. - David Nusinow [1] I was happy to see the Dictator Test announced in DWN. I think that's a very positive step in the right direction.
Re: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 08:02:30PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 05:56:16PM -0500, David Nusinow wrote: On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 06:27:36PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: I find 80% to be pretty clear. I guess you're one of the people claiming that there's a silent majority secretly disagreeing with the vast majority of d-legal (who can't be bothered to state their opinion and its rationale), so there's no point in arguing this further. Way to ignore what I actually wrote. What I said was that most DD's aren't aware of the issue, which is very different than silent disagreement. DD's have universally agreed to uphold the DFSG, not some additional material that's grounded in one interpretation of the DFSG. As a result, I'd bet that many would be surprised when a license is declared non-free because of something that they did not agree to. Your argument could be applied by one disagreeing with any nontrivial d-legal consensus at all--and even trivial ones, like 'can only distribute on Thursday' is non-free[1]. It's an argument that d-legal consensus is meaningless; I don't believe that d-legal consensus is actually so distinct from the informed opinions of the rest of the project. If it was, and the project as a whole really did agree that the things being argued recently--choice of venue, license-termination-at-my-slightest- whim, forced distribution to upstream on demand, forced archival of source for years (GPL#3b without 3a), forced smiling on distribution[2]--are free, I'd probably throw in the towel and give up trying to keep Debian free, because the project would have drifted so far from my concept of Freedom as to make it a futile effort. The but the entire project wasn't consulted! argument could be applied to all of those. You sound like you don't actually want to discuss these things, despite previously claiming that you do. Make up your mind. I'm not saying consult the rest of the project on every little decision, but applying dogmatic interpretations of the DFSG is a big decision, and this *needs* to be communicated to the rest of the project. The various tests, controversial interpretations like choice of venue, etc. These are not definitively demostrable within the DFSG. If you have practical suggestions, let's hear them; otherwise this just isn't interesting. 1) MJ Ray has suggested doing more work with people in the NM queue. I agree with this. When I went through PP, the Desert Island Test was alluded to, but the rationale was never explained. The other tests didn't come up, iirc. 2) Steve McIntyre has continually suggested codifying the various things in the DFSG. I fully agree with this. If you really truly believe that your interpretations are shared by the rest of the project, then you have nothing to fear from this, and you only stand to gain. 3) As I stated earlier, I liked the news post to DWN. Keep those up for big things like new tests and interesting new interpretations. 4) Announce major changes to things to -devel-announce. If a major license is declared as non-free, announce it to -devel or -devel-announce (maybe the -devel first in order to allow dissenters to weigh in before going for the broader -devel-announce). 5) Possibly start -legal-announce for summaries and such Hopefully those are good starting points for you. My goal isn't to tear down or break consensus, but to bring some sort of peace and compromise. If you don't like this and would rather rant and talk in circles, then I'm not the man to be posting to this list. If you like any of these ideas, let me know and I can try to help implement them. - David Nusinow
Re: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Wed, Jul 28, 2004 at 02:00:53AM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote: On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 05:56:16PM -0500, David Nusinow wrote: DD's have universally agreed to uphold the DFSG, not some additional material that's grounded in one interpretation of the DFSG. As a result, I'd bet that many would be surprised when a license is declared non-free because of something that they did not agree to. This argument applies equally to every interpretation of the DFSG, and therefore reduces to The DFSG cannot be applied to anything. Reduction ad absurdum, etc; it's wrong. Wow Andrew. I thought we'd gotten beyond the reductio ad absurdium phase of our relationship. I guess not. It's only if you choose to interpret it that way. For major interpretive decisions not clearly grounded in the DFSG, particularly for major licenses such as QPL, these questions should be communicated to the rest of the project. Obviously, these are judgement calls, but then what do you have against trying to get a stronger consensus by allowing more people to be aware of the issue at hand? I personally don't think that -legal does a good enough job of communicating with the rest of the project, and I know I'm not the only one. Right, there's at least two or three of you running around and trying to undermine the project. Cut it out. This idiotic attempt to create discord is not productive; it's somewhere between trolling and deliberate sabotage. No, don't ask questions and express opinions! Heaven forbid! You're shattering my precious worldview! -legal is a fucking mailing list. It's nonsensical to say it doesn't communicate with the rest of the project. Anybody can subscribe and follow the discussions, and there are public archives. Anybody who is interested should do so. This is not a cabal or a clique, the project is not divided into departments, and there is nothing secret about it. -legal exists because a fair number of people are not interested and wanted to get the discussions away from other mailing lists. These people are by definition not interested, and therefore it's stupid to complain that they weren't informed; they had the choice, and *they* chose not to. -legal is a relatively high traffic mailing list full of minutia and long-winded, often difficult posts. It's a very hard list to follow for anyone, and this makes it prohibitive for many people to contribute. I've certaintly wasted plenty of time just trying to read the majority of the posts on the list over the past few weeks, let alone really try to comprehend them in detail. There is no cabal (although there is a bit of a clique, as most everything in Debian is) nor would I accuse the list of being one. But no one can follow everything in Debian, and intra-project communication is a problem in general, and -legal to the rest of Debian is no exception. If you don't see this as a problem, then maybe you ought to actually listen to people who disagree with you, as hard as this may be, and try to figure out why they do so. You may say this isn't an inclusive clique, but then you accuse me (and along with me, anyone else who has a dischordant opinion) of trolling. Contradiction ad absurdium? - David Nusinow
Re: RPSL and DFSG-compliance - choice of venue
On Wed, Jul 28, 2004 at 12:43:31PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 09:35:31PM -0500, David Nusinow wrote: DFSG. I fully agree with this. If you really truly believe that your interpretations are shared by the rest of the project, then you have nothing to fear from this, and you only stand to gain. We fear that as soon as we special-case something in the DFSG it will be used as a fulcrum for splitting hairs even finer. Our special case isn't banned by the DFSG, but these other ones are, so obviously the DFSG was intended to be proscriptive, therefore our special case is free and our gratuitously non-free licence should be permitted. AKA The DFSG Arms Race. We keep throwing GRs around every couple of months to say this sucks, and then someone who wants to play word games comes up with another truly non-free licence clause which isn't covered by one of the special cases in the DFSG. This is true, but when the same basic ideas come up repeatedly, such as the choice of venue clause, they're probably worth codifying, since they're no longer special case. That being said, I think there are a few items of wording that need to be addressed (DFSG #1 in particular can be read a wide number of different ways depending on one's desires), and one or two extra wide sweeping clauses wouldn't go astray, but they need to be *very* carefully considered. Even the wording changes would likely have an effect similar to the recent editorial amendments GR. Agreed. - David Nusinow
Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL
On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 02:25:13PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote: On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 11:02:57PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: After some discussion, if there is significant opinion here that such a clause *is* non-free, a DFSG change should be proposed to make that explicit. That way we can get the opinion and mandate of the general population of DDs to *actually* *explicitly* claim that such clauses are non-free. When something is in the DFSG, we have much more of a case to make to upstream authors than foo on debian-legal doesn't like it. I'm not saying that disagreement *itself* should cause a GR (as somehow you seemed to believe I was saying). Do you understand me now? Regardless of the trigger, adding choice of venue is non-free to the DFSG will start a tendency to enumerate non-free things. Adjusting the DFSG to better express our intentions is useful; special casing individual clauses is a hack. I'm not sure I agree here. I feel like the DFSG has special casing of individual clauses scattered throughout the document, such as 6 and 8, and that adding a choice of venue clause guideline would fit with those just fine. That said, I'd rather any sort of amendment be written according to the real meat of the issue, rather than simply saying The license can't have a choice of venue clause. - David Nusinow
Re: Summary : ocaml, QPL and the DFSG.
On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 04:17:35PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: I have recently come to believe that the GPL's requirement for source distribution is fundamentally different, and is in fact not truly a compelled distribution in the fashion of the QPL. Please rip my thought process to shreds if it's bogus. The core of my argument is that the binary and source forms of a work are in fact different forms of the same copyrighted work (excluding, for the purposes of thought-experiment, the linking issue). Since both forms are the same copyrighted work, there is no real separation of entities to distribute -- the GPL is just making that nice and clear. Consider, as an analogous situation, that some books come with CDs of the text of the book and (sometimes) further examples and other material. The printed text and the book-on-CD are the same copyrighted work. If you sell the book to someone else, you're supposed to give them the CD as well. Certainly it's frowned upon to sell the book to one person and the CD to someone else. The GPL is just source+binary in the same way as book+CD. Some licences give you the option of distributing in one form or the other, but the GPL reserves this right to some degree -- it says that you at least have to give the recipient the option -- it's like asking the person you sell your book to if they want the CD, and if they decline, you throw it in the bin. The argument seems fairly OK to me. Any comments? Very interesting argument. My only issue with it is that you own the textbook so you should have the right to sell it as you will. AFAIK, you haven't licensed the textbook and CD when purchasing the thing, so you can sell it in pieces if you like, the same way you could break a CD in half and sell the halves if you really wanted to do so (and could find some genius to pay you for the privledge.) This seems like a critical difference. Maybe a different analogy is necessary, because I like the idea very much. - David Nusinow
Re: Summary : ocaml, QPL and the DFSG.
On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 06:46:32PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: Great. Please suggest an example free license with a forced upstream distribution clause. It may be a copyleft or not, at your choice. I don't have a particular one nor am I going to go hunt one down for us to drag this conversation out longer than it has to. I'd rather stick to the point that I'm trying to argue, which is solely based on forced distribution of changes upstream. I do think Sven might disagree, and have reason to be just a little testy that I've made spamming him a condition of distributing modifications to my software. If Linux were licensed that way, Debian would have to send one kernel source tree per download per kernel copyright holder to poor Sven. That would be thousands of kernel sources. Surely, enough to put debian.org and its mirrors into some unhappy territory. Ok, I misunderstood your question. I assumed Sven would want the changes. This would classify as discrimination against Sven, and would fail the DFSG. Fortunately, this is not necessarily the case with forced upstream distribution clauses. And gosh, that is a problem for the mirrors: if distributing modified copies requires that the mods be sent to the initial author, then a mirror or distributor such as Debian will have to send a copy on *every download* even though it hasn't modified the software. I'm sorry, I don't understand how you got from send mods to initial author to every download requires a corresponding mail to the initial author. Could you clarify? Can I say you must do it by a non-digital mechanism? This question could be asked for forced downstream source distribution as well. Why not? Because those are expensive. Real mail costs a lot more than e-mail. Ok then, since this would fail the fee test by my definition of the word fee. But fortunately I've never seen a forced upstream distribution clause with this requirement, which would make it non-free. Can I say you must sign your changes? As above, this could be applied to downstream distribution. Why not, given the DFSG? (The dictator test obviously would apply, but I don't know if I agree with it as a functional tool) Because it compels me to reveal my identity to distribute changes, which is a cost. I don't consider this a valid argument. You reveal your identity distributing changes downstream as well. Furthermore, nowhere in the DFSG is privacy guaranteed (and I won't accept discrimination as a valid reason for this because the license is not written with the intent to discriminate against people who need to keep their identity secret). Can I require a license from you? More free than otherwise compelled by the copyleft? What about a non-free license, can I require that? No, because this obviously fails DFSG 7. No it doesn't. My license passes on to them. It's just that your changes have to be under a more or less restrictive license. Ah, you mean DFSG 3. No, I meant 7, but 3 applies as well, thanks for clarifying for me. It's not just that I think these are hard questions. It's that I think many of them have no free answer. That makes me think that the question which opens this can of worms -- forced distribution -- is probably non-free. I don't think it opens any can of worms greater than the one we've already opened by allowing copyleft. OK. I look forward to a proposal for a free license which requires changes be sent to the upstream author. Please don't make me propose some fantasy license so we can go through these arguments all over again. I'm not here to argue for the sake of arguing, so please don't ask me to do so. So far you've constructed a bunch of extringent requirements that would make forced upstream distribution of modifications non-free, but I've seen nothing that convinces me that the basic concept is universally non-free. I don't believe that forced upstream distribution is necessarily free mind you, just that the extringent requirements in the actual license need to be taken in to account, which is what I meant by level of detail in an earlier mail. Ultimately, I think the Desert Island Test needs refinement, because as it is, it strikes me as rather crude. - David Nusinow
Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL
On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 10:15:26AM +0200, Bernhard R. Link wrote: Why shaky? When an clause results in discriminating against people, groups or fields of endeavor (of course within the limits of free software[1]) then the licence is non-free. Why should we make a difference between explicit prohibitons and things that effectively prohibit? Can I replace a veto against using my software in an nuclear plant by a condition that when used in a nuclear plant one must publish all security measures of the plant and make the licence thus free without changing who if effectively allowed to use it and who not? I think the only way to even begin to approach effective discrimination is to approach via intent. If a clause does not explicitly say This may not be used in foo but goes to obvious and lengths to prevent usage for foo, then that counts as discrimination. Getting confirmation of intent from the author is probably going to be very important in these cases. The desert island test definitely does not demonstrate effective discrimination in this fashion though. - David Nusinow
Re: Summary : ocaml, QPL and the DFSG.
On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 01:21:25AM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: I'll certainly throw my hat in in favour of to upstream being worse than source if binaries. As will I, but I'll also claim that to upstream is still not non-free. Firstly, there's an advancing freedom argument -- ensuring recipients have source code (if they want it) has a great practical advantage to freedom. I hope you agree with that (if not, we have more fundamental disagreements than this small matter). It could very easily be argued that by forcing distribution to an upstream author that they will possibly release the code to the public where the downstream recipient may choose to keep such code private. Next, there's the issue of cost -- presumably it is of trivial cost (or even profitable) to me to distribute to my recipient, because otherwise I wouldn't be doing it. It's unlikely that distributing source alongside the binaries will significantly increase that cost -- and the GPL (the most common example of this form of distribution) specifically allows the recouping of distribution costs for source. However, it may not be a trivial cost to distribute changes back to the original author -- in cases previously hypothesised, it may even be illegal. It is also unlikely to be trivial to determine what cost I may incur in sending the changes back upstream at the time I decide to exercise my granted permissions. It's fairly unlikely that the cost of distributing changes to the original author will be that significant. Desert island and other corner case scenarios aside that is. Although it's not terminal to the point at hand, these must send back to the author clauses have tended to be poorly written, having no time limit or other effective means of limiting my exposure, so it is even harder for me to determine any cost I may incur as a result of complying with my obligations under the licence. This is a good point, and perhaps we need to examine this further. I could imagine better guidelines built by consensus that worked around the issue via these details. Finally, there is the matter of choice. I can choose who I distribute my modified version to, and hence who receives the source. I cannot choose to send my modifications upstream -- I am compelled to if I wish to exercise my granted permissions. You may argue that I can avoid sending changes upstream by not making changes, but that's a bollocks argument -- if I cannot exercise the rights guaranteed to be available by the DFSG for a free licence, then that licence is not free. But the idea of sending changes downstream also constrains freedoms, just in a different fashion. I think this argument is invalid because while you may have the freedom to associate with only certain people under the GPL, you do not have the freedom to associate with them in exactly the way you want. - David Nusinow
Re: Summary : ocaml, QPL and the DFSG.
On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 02:36:46AM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: It could very easily be argued that by forcing distribution to an upstream author that they will possibly release the code to the public where the downstream recipient may choose to keep such code private. And it could work the other way. Hell, in a licence under current discussion, there's an explicit licence term to allow upstream to sell my changes under a different licence of their choosing. That seems like it's quite useful for an upstream who wanted to take my modifications private... The it seems that we've reached an impasse at this level of detail, since it could well be argued that forced distribution upstream can impede or enhance free software and freedom in general. As such, you can't say that forced upstream distribution is inherently non-free. It's fairly unlikely that the cost of distributing changes to the original author will be that significant. Desert island and other corner case scenarios aside that is. A couple of years in prison isn't that costly? Because that's what I'd imagine you'd be facing for unauthorised export to an embargoed country. I consider this a corner case, and honestly not an issue that Debian should be concerned with, since we can't cover every corner case nor be responsible for how countries choose to run themselves. But the idea of sending changes downstream also constrains freedoms, just in a different fashion. I think this argument is invalid because while you may have the freedom to associate with only certain people under the GPL, you do not have the freedom to associate with them in exactly the way you want. It's a matter of degrees and of resultant benefit. A recipient with binaries but no source has a *lot* less freedom than a recipient with binaries and source. An upstream author without my modifications has only a bit less freedom than an upstream with my mods. This depends, of course, on the extent of your mods, but on the whole I agree. However, this distinction does not cause the idea of forcing upstream distribution to be non-free. Furthermore, it is a loss to the community (or people I distribute to, if you like) if I do not make the modifications to the software because I would be forced to send my modifications upstream. Much the same as if you won't modify the software because it's GPL instead of BSD. This doesn't make the requirement non-free. - David Nusinow
Re: Summary : ocaml, QPL and the DFSG.
On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 03:27:32PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: The it seems that we've reached an impasse at this level of detail, since it could well be argued that forced distribution upstream can impede or enhance free software and freedom in general. As such, you can't say that forced upstream distribution is inherently non-free. Sure I can. You've made the false assumption that the only argument for considering something non-free is that it's harmful to the Great and Holy Cause of Free Software. But in the case of forced distribution to any party, we don't have to look at secondary effects like that. We can just look at the direct effects: it forces me to find some person, contact him, send him a whole bunch of data, and All these tasks are trivial in the vast majority of cases. Contact information is almost always provided with the copyright information. And again, sending the data, barring corner cases of desert islands, is trivial. give him a Free license to that data. I see no issue with this in relation to the DFSG. Additionally, I have to secure rights to freely give anything else I combine into this program to the forcing person. This is no different than any other license, free or non-free. Copyright is copyright. Additionally, I cannot conceive of any way of doing this in a free way -- even if forced distribution to upstream on distribution of modifications is accepted as free. Can I say that you must send me modifications to the software I write every time you distribute? So on every download, fling another one my way? Can I say you must send them addressed to me at Sven Luther's address? I don't see any conflict with either of these questions and the DFSG. Can I say you must do it by a non-digital mechanism? This question could be asked for forced downstream source distribution as well. Why not? Can I say you must sign your changes? As above, this could be applied to downstream distribution. Why not, given the DFSG? (The dictator test obviously would apply, but I don't know if I agree with it as a functional tool) Can I require a license from you? More free than otherwise compelled by the copyleft? What about a non-free license, can I require that? No, because this obviously fails DFSG 7. It's not just that I think these are hard questions. It's that I think many of them have no free answer. That makes me think that the question which opens this can of worms -- forced distribution -- is probably non-free. I don't think it opens any can of worms greater than the one we've already opened by allowing copyleft. - David Nusinow
Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL
On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 01:53:53PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: This word discriminate - I don't think it means what you think it means. All users of the software are given the same license. The license itself does not discriminate against them; it does not say no people on a desert island may use this or similar. If other circumstances created by local law or coincidence are causing difficulties, then why is that a license problem? I agree with this interpretation to a large degree. The examples in the DFSG for fields of endeavor are explicit examples, and thus imply some sort of explicit discrimination (such as No one involved in genetic engineering may use this software) rather than an unintentional discrimination against corner cases. Licenses which require distribution of modifications to upstream authors are not discriminating against castaways any more than the GPL is discriminating against people who somehow lose all copies of the source to their modifications after distributing modified binaries. While licenses that don't require this are perhaps more free I don't feel that they fail the DFSG. - David Nusinow
Re: Termination clauses, was: Choice of venue
On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 10:34:08PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: David Nusinow [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But the cost of disclosure of the sources to downstream recipients is also a fee imposed by the upstream author simply by choosing the GPL or QPL. That only comes automatically with the QPL; with the GPL, I can work in a small group with no risk that it will be spread more widely. Perhaps I replied too soon. On second thought, the problematic clause in the QPL that you're referring to is 6c: c. If the items are not available to the general public, and the initial developer of the Software requests a copy of the items, then you must supply one. I said in my first reply that this discriminates against those whose field of endeavor is private study. First, I think the spirit of DFSG 5 and 6, as provided by the examples of business or genetic research, is meant to prevent more explicit discrimination. 6c only applies to modifications which have been distributed, so the private study endeavor does not apply. So back to the small group. From the wording of the license, I can't clearly see whether or not one can distribute the software within a company (since you is not defined within the document) and still have it considered as having been distributed (if you applies to a corporate entity, and the software is kept within the corporation, is it distributed?) This issue appears with the GPL as well, and the boundary is not entirely defined. I still see conflict between what we accept with the GPL and appear to fail to accept with the QPL. Finally, the spirit of the QPL, as from their annotated license[1] appears to be very much in favor of Free software. Section 6c's annotation states: This is to avoid problems with companies that try to hide the source. If we get to know about it we want to be able to get hold of the code even if we are not users. In this way, if somebody tries to cheat and we get to know we can release the code to the public. Not only can they release the code to the public, but they must release it should they choose to use it, according to section 3a. I would argue that while this license may fail corner cases of DFSG 5 or 6 (and I'm not sure it does) it certaintly does appear that the author's intentions are to remain Free. I have heard repeatedly that the developer's intentions are taken in to account when evaluating packages, and we seem to have some clear indication here that the goal of the QPL is to keep modifications open to the community. - David Nusinow [1] http://www.trolltech.com/licenses/qpl-annotated.html
Re: Termination clauses, was: Choice of venue
On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 03:28:04PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 12:09:40PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: David Nusinow [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Sat, Jul 17, 2004 at 02:02:03AM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: You brought up promises as fees, not me. The fees compelled by the QPL are in the form of licenses to the initial author and distribution to him, not promises to obey the license. Actually it was MJ Ray who applied the promisary definition to the idea of a fee, and I was trying to see whether or not that definition really seems to hold with our interpretation of the freeness. As it is, I see that definition as conflicting with any sort of non-public domain software because it implies some sort of behavioral constraints upon the lessor (which constitute a promise). What then defines the term fee such that the GPL does not demand one where the QPL does? A fee is a thing of value which must be given in payment for some return. That is, I must incur a cost in paying it, and the recipient should benefit from it. For example, the QPL's demand for a permissive license for the initial author is a fee. The license has value, and I may not make modifications without granting it. I incur a cost, loss of control. The recipient benefits greatly. The GPL's requirement that I distribute source with any binaries I distribute is not a fee. My distribution of source with binaries has negligible cost to me, so is not a fee. By this reasoning, if the QPL said you were allowed to charge the author for the cost of sending him the source, it would be free because the cost to you is nominally the same as the cost in the GPL. I don't believe this is true. No, because the license to those sources and the act of disclosure are themselves of cost to me and benefit to him. But the cost of disclosure of the sources to downstream recipients is also a fee imposed by the upstream author simply by choosing the GPL or QPL. Just because you already have a distribution channel set up with downstream does not mean there is no fee incurred from distributing and disclosing the source and your modifications to them. - David Nusinow
Re: Termination clauses, was: Choice of venue
On Sat, Jul 17, 2004 at 02:02:03AM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: You brought up promises as fees, not me. The fees compelled by the QPL are in the form of licenses to the initial author and distribution to him, not promises to obey the license. Actually it was MJ Ray who applied the promisary definition to the idea of a fee, and I was trying to see whether or not that definition really seems to hold with our interpretation of the freeness. As it is, I see that definition as conflicting with any sort of non-public domain software because it implies some sort of behavioral constraints upon the lessor (which constitute a promise). What then defines the term fee such that the GPL does not demand one where the QPL does? There is a promise -- a contract -- which comes into existence when I distribute modifications. I promise to hold copies of those forever in order to supply the initial author with copies on request. So is the timeframe (i.e. forever) important? - David Nusinow
Re: Termination clauses, was: Choice of venue
On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 12:03:22AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: What is this royalty or other fee? I claim it is the normal definition of consideration in an exchange, of payment in a sale transaction. A normal definition in English law is from Dunlop v Selfridge Ltd [1915] AC 847: An act or forebearance of one party, or the promise thereof, is the price for which the promise of the other is bought, and the promise thus given for value is enforceable. Consider a developer distributing an application that links with a QPL'd work to a small group, not the general public. This developer must promise to give works produced by them to the licensor in exchange for the copyright licence. The promise is enforceable. The licensing is the price for which the promise is bought. In short, the promise is a fee! How is the developer's promise to obey the license in the first place any less of a fee by this definition? The fee is the behavioral constraints of the developer as dictated by the licensor. In the case of the GPL, the promise includes distributing source code in a preferred format for editing to those who the developer themselves distribute to. The fee may not be payed directly to the original licensor, but isn't it still a fee by this definition? - David Nusinow
Re: Termination clauses, was: Choice of venue
On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 02:13:38PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: The developer hasn't promised to obey the license. I distribute software written by others all the time. I'm not sued by them because they licensed me to do this under the GPL, but I wouldn't even have to know about the GPL in order to do this legally. But your behavior is still constrained in that (in the case of the GPL or QPL) if you modify the software and distribute it you must agree to the terms of the license. I don't understand how this is not a promise. - David Nusinow
Re: Termination clauses, was: Choice of venue
On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 03:27:13PM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: I haven't promised the FSF anything, but I distribute and modify their software all the time. Maybe I don't agree to the GPL. Maybe, someday, I'll fail to note my changes at the top of every file! Bwahaha. And if I ever do that, what would they be able to do to me? Get mad because I broke a promise? No. Get mad because I violated their copyright? Yes. The GPL is not a promise I've made. It's an offer, and a nonrevocable one at that, from them to everybody else. Then how does this differ from the QPL exactly? If you fail to comply with the terms of the license you're in violation of the copyright. You never made a promise to the lessor with the QPL by your interpretation of the word, so I see no difference here between the two licenses that would allow one to be non-free. - David Nusinow
Re: GUADEC report
On Sat, Jul 10, 2004 at 02:07:08AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: Well, while you're all vigorously agreeing with each other, it would be nice if you guys would cite actual examples of debian-legal people beating upstreams about the head and shoulders with ideology. I never meant to imply that debian-legal was actually doing this, since I don't have any examples (in no small part because I haven't gone looking for them) but rather that the post I replied to was demonstrating the kind of arrogance that debian-legal has been accused of. Sorry for being unclear. This isn't to say this sort of arrogance doesn't go on in -legal, just that I don't know one way or the other. As a subscriber to -legal for years now, my experience is quite different. On many occasions, upstream licensors have thanked us for working with them to come up with a better license. There are even *recent* examples[1][2] of this. This is always a good thing, and I've heard about one or two of these occassions myself in the past. The most frequent and bitter acrimony on (and about) -legal seems to come not from upstream developers, but from Debian package maintainers who can't articulate why a license is DFSG-free beyond because I said so!. In many cases, this comes not from the maintainer of a package whose license is being studied, but from some third party Debian developer who seems enraged that questions are even being asked.[3] The acrimony stimulated by the questioning of the mozilla license this late in the sarge release process is no small matter. Getting rid of Netscape was a major accomplishment, and to essentially move backwards by kicking mozilla in to non-free is a scary thought, especially after we have worked for so long to get sarge out the door. Similar issues apply with the firmware and any other major piece of software you might care to bring up (I can't think of any others off the top of my head). Debian needs to release, and the GR vote reflects that this opinion is shared amongst the majority of DD's. I think the idea of questioning mozilla's license, among others, triggers the fear that we will never release because of the constant wrangingling over freeness. The fact that this sort of wrangling is done based on tests (Chinese Dissident, etc) which few are aware of makes the situation worse. - David Nusinow
Re: XFree86 is changing their license
On Sat, Feb 21, 2004 at 10:27:26AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote: o The licence is said to be free, probably DFSG free, not sure though. The sole restriction is that : if there are ackonwledgement for third party software (as opposed to artwork and other non software, probably documentation and other text data), then xfree86 should also be acknowlegded in the same way. Please see the disucssion on debian-legal about the X-Oz license for discussion about this, specifically Branden's message: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/debian-legal-200402/msg00162.html - David Nusinow p.s. If someone cares to forward this to -private, they are welcome to, but as I'm not a DD I'm not going to send it there myself
DFSG audit of X-Oz license wanted
Hello, The X-Oz license that follows covers an autoconfiguration portion of the XFree86 codebase that may be used in a future revision of the Debian configuration scripts. If there could be some sort of determination of whether or not this license is DFSG compliant, we can push ahead and potentially use it. Commentary is appreciated. The original HTML text of this license is located at http://www.x-oz.com/licenses.html for any who are interested. - David Nusinow --- All the source code and source patches that X-Oz Technologies provides in our download section are licensed under the following terms, which is a derivation of the XFree86™ license and the Apache License, version 1.1: By downloading, copying or using this software you have agreed to this license. Copyright © 2003, 2004 X-Oz Technologies. All Rights Reserved. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the Software), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions, and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. The end-user documentation included with the redistribution, if any, must include the following acknowledgment: This product includes software developed by X-Oz Technologies (http://www.x-oz.com/). Alternately, this acknowledgment may appear in the software itself, if and wherever such third-party acknowledgments normally appear. 4. Except as contained in this notice, the name of X-Oz Technologies shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization from X-Oz Technologies. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL X-OZ TECHNOLOGIES OR ITS CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
