Re: W3C Excerpt and Citation license
On Mar 6, 2009, at 02:16, Ted Guild wrote: W3C is creating an excerpt license (current draft online [1]) and hoping to get public review and feedback, including particularly from the Open Source community. For background, this has been discussed in the following threads on public-html: Before the license draft: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Feb/thread.html#msg52 http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Feb/0388.html After the license draft: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Mar/thread.html#msg101 -- Henri Sivonen hsivo...@iki.fi http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Re: Why TPM+Parallel Distribution is non-free
On Oct 16, 2006, at 10:42, Don Armstrong wrote: If you're seriously interested in discussing how to do copylefted TPM and DRM properly, I strongly suggest reading my position statement from committee D on the first discussion draft of the GPL URL please? http://svn.donarmstrong.com/don/trunk/projects/gplv3/issues/ drm_allowing_authentication/ I don't see anything in that position statement that would indicate a flaw in CC's 3.0 draft wording. Is there something specific that I missed? As drafted, the early August wording of CC does not conflict with systems that make it possible for the user to verify the authenticity of a package. (If the authenticity checker is user-configurable in what it approves, it is not TPM that prevents the user from exercising rights granted by the license.) Measures used for preventing access altogether do not conflict with the anti-TPM clause, because preventing access altogether is allowed (there's no recipient if nothing is received). -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CC's responses to v3draft comments
On Oct 1, 2006, at 21:51, MJ Ray wrote: Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sep 27, 2006, at 18:14, MJ Ray wrote: [...] as long as a mutable copy is available to developers and end users, because it widens the audience who will see free software and may become interested in its development and advancement. The mutable copy doesn't help much if the platform is designed to refuse to run modified versions. I disagree. It helps by advertising that mutability to users who are otherwise trapped by the platform they are using - it shows them that there is a world outside the Windows of their prison. It also lets them modify it as soon as they get a fully-working platform. It's an incentive to make a better choice next time. I believe having a compelling body of content with anti-TPM language attached as a disincentive for creating TPM-only platforms is more important than being able to publish *effectively* non-free copies of *theoretically* free works as adverts of non-TPM-only platforms. I think saying no would be arguing against porting free software to Microsoft Windows [...] If you get the source of e.g. Firefox or Gimp and modify the source and recompile for Windows, Windows will still run your own versions without you having to ask Microsoft to sign your binaries. On the Windows computer I tried to help most recently by giving its user free software, the system complained bitterly that an unsigned binary was being installed. I understand it is possible for the sysadmin to lock them out. Do you think it would help to ban users of those systems from running Gimp and IceWeasel? I believe that the owner of the computer should be free to use cryptographic signatures to verify the origin of the software they install and to select their installation sources. If the originator of the platform locks down these decisions, the owner of the computer is deprived of freedom and that is wrong. This case is clear-cut as long as the owner of the computer is the user. In cases of e.g. universities, I consider the university as a whole as a legal entity making choices for itself as opposed to the admins being separate entities distributing software to the students. I believe that e.g. for interpreting the GPL, it is customary to consider a university or a company as a whole, so they don't need to provide source to their internal users. TPM-bans are a sort of digital Iron Curtain - these platforms may have this free software; those ones may not. It's tactically stupid too - the population on our side of the Iron Curtain is not yet sufficiently compelling to deter more neutral platforms from joining the other side. Are you sure? The existing collection of free software is already so valuable that companies choose to build products on it complying with the licensing terms. I'm fairly sure. It seems to me that e.g. Nokia and IBM are complying with GPLv2, because the software they can get that way is more valuable to them than following their previous proprietary instinct would be. Also, what good it is to have population on our side if they aren't de facto able to exercise freedom because the platform owner refuses to bless their modification? They may choose to migrate in the future. Once informed, they know there is a choice to make when they buy their next platform. Think about it: why do controllers of some closed countries try to prevent their residents from visiting more open countries? We must not collude with those wannabe-dictators to hide our state from the view of their potential victims. We should set up our equivalents of the World Services, Radio Free X and 'Voice of...' - unnecessary blanket bans hinder this. Use counter-measures, not prohibitions. Sure, anti-TPM language in licensing is about taking the users of TPM- only platforms as hostages for leverage against TPM-only platform providers. Your victimization scenario assumes that users of TPM-only platforms cans only get information about non-TPM-only platforms though the platform itself. However, in practice they can hear about alternatives in the world through other channels. But to continue with you metaphor, the BBC was able to broadcast into Communist countries without the permission of the governments of such countries. If you want to ship advertisements onto a TPM-only platform itself, you need the cooperation of the platform owner. I am in no way advocating any language that would prohibit the application of TPM in private. I think recipients of copies of works should be allowed mash the works any way they wish in private. OK. I look forward to you making this point when requesting a change in the current CC draft. I did mention this point on cc-licenses, but as far as I can tell, the August 9 draft scopes the anti-TPM language to cases where there is a recipient of the Work from You, so it doesn't apply when you are not distributing
Re: CC's responses to v3draft comments
On Sep 27, 2006, at 18:14, MJ Ray wrote: Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But is it good for Free Software to be ported to platforms that have been designed to deprive both developers and end users of freedom? Yes, as long as a mutable copy is available to developers and end users, because it widens the audience who will see free software and may become interested in its development and advancement. The mutable copy doesn't help much if the platform is designed to refuse to run modified versions. I think saying no would be arguing against porting free software to Microsoft Windows, which is a platform designed to deprive both developers and end users of freedom when it increases revenue for Microsoft - see the current moves that lock out third-party security software, for example, or the DRM features, or product activation keys. However, free software on Microsoft Windows is many (most?) users' introduction to free software. If you get the source of e.g. Firefox or Gimp and modify the source and recompile for Windows, Windows will still run your own versions without you having to ask Microsoft to sign your binaries. TPM-bans are a sort of digital Iron Curtain - these platforms may have this free software; those ones may not. It's tactically stupid too - the population on our side of the Iron Curtain is not yet sufficiently compelling to deter more neutral platforms from joining the other side. Are you sure? The existing collection of free software is already so valuable that companies choose to build products on it complying with the licensing terms. Also, what good it is to have population on our side if they aren't de facto able to exercise freedom because the platform owner refuses to bless their modification? If a gaming platform requires FooBigCo to sign software before it runs, exercising freedom as in Free Software on that platform is de facto prevented on a desert island. Depends if the FooBigCo platform is the only platform on the island, but discussing desert islands too much usually brings a d'Itri-flame. If I want to fix a small thing, I should have the freedom to install and run my replacement version on the *same* platform as the original. I shouldn't have to acquire a substitute platform and port to it to exercise my supposed freedom. However, if an iSuck player only played TPM files but anyone could convert non-TPM files to TPM files privately, requiring distribution to happen in a non-TPM format and requiring iSuck owners to apply TPM themselves wouldn't be any more onerous than the GPL allowing certain action only in private. Indeed. Sadly, CC's anti-TPM language may(*) prohibit iSuck owners applying TPM themselves, as the copy would violate the licence and the anti-TPM measure is not limited to distribution. (* - it's not entirely clear to me, due to the recent comments and refusal to explain.) I am in no way advocating any language that would prohibit the application of TPM in private. I think recipients of copies of works should be allowed mash the works any way they wish in private. I find it strange that Debian is so vigorously defending this fringe use case. Why? Many debian developers want to copy all sorts of things to all sorts of media in all sorts of ways. Because I thought Debian developers were more of a GPL crowd interested in protecting downstream freedom than a BSD crowd interested in their own freedom to do whatever. The anti-TPM language is designed to limit the freedom of a middle man so that the middle-man isn't allowed to limit downstream freedom. GPL is precedent that it can be free in the DFSG sense to limit the freedom of middle-men so that they aren't allowed to limit downstream freedom. One could only appeal to the GPL precedent if the anti-TPM language allowed parallel distribution, else it is also limiting the freedom of the end user to get the TPM-encoding service from a middle-man if they choose. It is obviously possible to let users get TPM-encoding from a middle-man without letting them give up their freedom, just as you can get GPL'd binaries from someone else. Does the GPL allow you to buy GNU readline integration service for e.g. AFPL Ghostscript from a middle-man? I don't think so. Still, you can do the work in private. Since the CC licenses don't require distribution of the preferred form for making modification aka. source code, it is essential that downstream recipient can extract works for modification and redistribution without violating any law that protects TPM. I think that it makes sense for CC licenses to have anti-TPM language and I don't think that anti-TPM language should make a license non-free. Should we accept as free software a program under a licence which does not allow licensees to distribute compiled files? No, but disassembly and decompilation is even specifically allowed by law in some cases. And when the law doesn't
Re: CC's responses to v3draft comments
On Sep 28, 2006, at 12:54, KWWU wrote: Since MP3/OGG files are still modifiable, so it can be considered a source. Modifiability does not make something source. Source code is the *preferred* form for making modifications. -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Fwd: Re: Problem with license of msv-xsdlib]
On Sep 7, 2006, at 14:59, Eric Lavarde - Debian wrote: Background of question 3 is that someone on the list might have an idea which other license could be acceptable to Sun (and I might suggest it to the developer). msv itself is under the new three-point BSD license plus a nuclear facility acknowledgement. Is there a particular reason why Sun isn't licensing the msv extensions under the same license? -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Bug#203211: Software patents and Debian
On Aug 17, 2006, at 16:44, Michelle Konzack wrote: Patents on decoding something can not be enforced. How so? (Note that the unenforceability of the Welch patent against LZW decompression was due to the way the claims were drafted--not due to a general rule.) -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Copyright grants for fonts?
On Jun 27, 2006, at 19:14, Robinson Tryon wrote: Does anyone know where I could find the explicit license from Adobe/Digital for these fonts? IANAL, but: I believe that as far as bitmaps go, Adobe believes it has no case against the 1988 U.S. Copyright Office opinion[1] that held that images of glyphs are not copyrightable. Adobe asserts that Type 1 fonts and OpenType fonts are font programs (i.e. more than mere graphics), but apparently even they don't believe that legacy screen bitmap fonts are font programs. In the old days, when printer Type 1 outlines and screen bitmaps were separate, Adobe made it a policy that the bitmaps can be distributed free of charge.[2] I guess that under the stated Adobe policy the legacy bitmap fonts are only free as in beer, but if you trust that they aren't copyrightable in the United States at all, then they are free as in speech at least in the United States. [1] http://ssifonts.com/myths2.HTM [2] http://store.adobe.com/type/topics/licenseqa.html#q5 -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Freeness of anti-DRM (was: Re: Against DRM 2.0)
On May 19, 2006, at 16:14, Evan Prodromou wrote: Of course you know that the anti-DRM clause makes the license incompatible with the DFSG, right? Do they necessarily or just the ones so far proposed? I wrote an essay about it earlier this week, and I think there can be free anti-DRM clauses: http://hsivonen.iki.fi/free-anti-drm/ -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Free documents using non-free fonts - can they be in main?
On Mar 5, 2006, at 03:06, Marco d'Itri wrote: The characters in the document are not subject to copyright. Yes, in the U.S. if all alleged computer programness of the font is gone and the glyphs are bitmapped or on paper but is that also true of embedded hinted fonts in PDF? (I thought such embedding is subject to license but foundries generally grant the permission to embed in final-form formats like PDF.) -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: fresh review of: CDDL
On Sep 9, 2005, at 22:16, Joe Smith wrote: [...] o 1.13. You (or Your) means an individual or a legal entity exercising rights under, and complying with all of the terms of, this License. For legal entities, You includes any entity which controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with You. For purposes of this definition, control means (a) the power, direct or indirect, to cause the direction or management of such entity, whether by contract or otherwise, or (b) ownership of more than fifty percent (50%) of the outstanding shares or beneficial ownership of such entity. By the way, this (b) seems an unusual definition of control. When I've seen this defined for cybercrime, it's usually the executive directors, not the majority shareholder too. I don't think it has clear implications for meeting DFSG, but it smells odd. Is it usual in the US to class all companies someone owns more than half of as an extension of that person? Um... The phrasing there talks about legal entities. Legal entites are things like corporations not people. Note that the word control is used only under the section speeking about legal entities, not individuals. It is very normal in the US to class all companies of which a legal entity owns more than half as an entention of the legal entity. FWIW, the phrasing comes verbatim from MPL 1.1. MPL 1.1 is DFSG-free, right? -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Font licencing
On Aug 13, 2005, at 07:27, Mahesh T. Pai wrote: roucaries bastien said on Sat, Aug 13, 2005 at 02:32:34AM +,: Thank you that do you think about zlib licence about a font? I know it is a little bit weird. Do you have objection? Why don't you simply use the GPL with the font exception?? http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FontException Simply? GPL? GPL with the Font Exception does not allow all the cases the OP wanted to allow. (I don't like the way GPL is offered as a panacea even when the person asking about licensing obviously wants something more permissive.) -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: quake2 and german youth protection law
On Jun 18, 2005, at 17:25, Michael Below wrote: non-German It is highly likely that you'll find similar laws all over the EU if you start looking. In Finland, for example, distribution of interactive image programs (or is photoplay the correct legal term?) ie. games requires informing the State movie inspection bureau. Inspection before distribution is not mandatory, but the bureau may take an interactive image program in inspection if there is a reason to believe that it contains material harmful to children. The age limit (inspected or unchallenged voluntary limit) must be presented on packaging. I didn't find any rating for Quake II specifically, but the voluntary (ie. suggested by the distributors and not challenged by the bureau) age limit for other games from the Quake series that are in the database is 15. (Unlike in Germany, typical American entertainment violence in games and movies gets the 15 limit in Finland--not 18.) If one is to assume the strictest outcome (in debian-legal style) while still assuming that the content is not totally banned, one has to assume that interactive image programs are banned from persons under 18 unless inspected and shown otherwise. IANAL, INADD, TINLA, but I doubt a game engine without data files constitutes an interactive image program. -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Concerns about works created by the US government
On Apr 8, 2005, at 05:00, Henning Makholm wrote: Hm, do we have anything in Debian with a this is U.S. government work, so copyright does not apply to it license status? IIRC, the Hershey fonts with Ghostscript. -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Draft summary of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses (version 3)
On Mar 20, 2005, at 00:58, Per Eric Rosén wrote: Could it be like this: if you give someone the work in a form (not preferred for editing|not allowing you to exec your rights in this licence), you shall also give them the unrestricted work, or a written offer valid for at least 3 years? I mean; isn't this very analogous to the situation of binary (crippled form) vs. source, that GPL already adresses? Could a similiar language help perhaps? I think it is in the spirit of the Creative Commons licenses not to require a transparent copy for editing. This non-requirement makes it easy to apply a Creative Commons license to any work. Suppose a hobbyist distributes his/her musical work online as an MP3 file. Having to provide the tracks as separate uncompressed audio channels would be a serious deterrent for publishing under a CC license at all. Therefore, I think it would be wrong to fix the Creative Commons licenses by smuggling in a requirement for transparent copy in a license update. However, I think it would make sense to introduce a new license element called Source or src that could be appended to any license that contains the ShareAlike element (eg. CC-by-sa-src). I think the crux of the anti-DRM clause is the *legality* of exercising the right given by the license--not the technical ease. That is, as long as a possessing and operating a photocopier or a scanner and a piece of OCR software is not as such illegal, it should be permissible to provide someone with only a printed copy of a literary work licensed under Creative Commons license. On the other hand, providing someone with only a CSS-scrambled DVD of a Creative Commons-licensed work should not be OK. To give an even more glaring example: Distributing a literary work as a PDF where all the text has been converted to vector graphics should be permissible, but distributing the literary work as a PDF where all the /ToUnicode tables are in place but the do not print and do not extract text the flags have been set should not be permitted. In the latter case, extracting the text is technically easier. That is not the point. The point is that misguided legislation could ban the possession of software that does not of honor the DRM flags. I think the anti-DRM (or rather anti-anti-circumvention) clause should make the point that: You do not have to provide a copy of the Work or the Derivative Work to everyone, but when you do provide a copy to someone, you must not take measures the circumvention of which would be both illegal in the supported jurisdictions and required for exercising the rights given by the license, unless you also simultaneously provide a copy without such measures. There is no politically correct way of defining supported jurisdictions, but it should include the jurisdictions with iCommons licenses and should probably not include North Korea. -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Binaries and MIT/expat license interpretative tradition
(My question is not Debian-related, but I figured the people who know the answer read this list.) The usual interpretation (seen in the list archives) of the MIT/expat license seems to be the that the copyright notice needs to be retained in the source but does not have to be displayed by binaries. The license does not say that the binaries do not constitute a copy of the Software. What's the basis of the interpretation and that the copyright notices do not need to be grepped from the source and stuffed in an about box or similarly placed on binaries? I have written MIT/expat-licensed code thinking that I am not placing an obnoxious notice burden on binaries. Now I have to explain that I am not, and I can't just waive the notice requirement in cases where I am not the sole copyright holder. Should I switch to the zlib license for code that I can relicense? -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Linux and GPLv2
On Mar 15, 2005, at 03:24, Kuno Woudt wrote: On Mon, Mar 14, 2005 at 08:00:24PM -0500, Jeremy Hankins wrote: A valid concern, arguably, even if it does hinge on certain ideas about how the computing field will evolve that I doubt will turn out to be accurate. But the only licenses we've seen so far that deal with this problem (if it is a problem) give up too much freedom in exchange. At least, IMHO. Can you be specific on which licenses you think attempt to deal with this problem? The license of POV-Ray 3.0 and 3.1 (free as in beer, source available; not free in the DFSG sense) addressed this issue in the section called ONLINE OR REMOTE EXECUTION OF POV-Ray. Charging for CPU time was allowed provided that the charge for POV-Ray CPU time was the same as for other CPU time. Obscuring the fact the POV-Ray was being run was prohibited. The users had to be provided with access to the files of the POV-Ray package. -- Henri Sivonen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hsivonen.iki.fi/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
