Re: What does disclaiming a copyright mean?
Andrew Donnellan writes: I'll disagree further - Burkhard Morgenstern is a professor at the University of Gottingen, and he is listed specifically as one of the authors. If it was an employer disclaiming copyright interest, wouldn't it be done by an authorised representative of a company/organisation? That's a good point. It makes me think that Prof. Morgenstern may have been using the FSF's disclaimer language for a purpose other than the purpose for which it was originally intended. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | This is a new focus for the security http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | community. The actual user of the PC http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/ | [...] is the enemy. | -- David Aucsmith, IDF 1999 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: What does disclaiming a copyright mean?
Andrew Donnellan writes: Disclaiming a copyright means releasing into the public domain. (as in no copyright at all). IANAL, but looking at what the license file says, I would assume it to be copyrighted by Said Abdeddaim and released under the LGPL, but the parts written by Burkhard Morgenstern are PD. I disagree. This paragraph is boilerplate from the GPL (in the section on applying the GPL's terms and conditions to your own work). I believe the goal is to have a third party (like an employer) state that it does not have a copyright interest in a work, so that other people can rely more easily on the licensor's statement that the licensor licenses the work under the GPL. The goal of the copyright disclaimer would then be to reduce uncertainty about whether the employer might later claim copyright (perhaps because the program could be considered a work made for hire or perhaps because the employer's contract with the employee normally gives the employer rights in programs written by the employee) and then try to apply terms inconsistent with the GPL terms to it. The person who issues a copyright disclaimer is not saying that there is no copyright -- just that he or she doesn't claim any copyright. I don't know if there are court cases that interpret the effect of this disclaimer in various jurisdictions. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | This is a new focus for the security http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | community. The actual user of the PC http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/ | [...] is the enemy. | -- David Aucsmith, IDF 1999 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Attribution-ShareAlike License
David B Harris writes: However, I'm not one who believes that just because a file format only has non-Free editor implementations that the file format itself is non-Free. There are many ways one can edit PDFs with Free tools, but this is beside the point for me. It's not (to my knowledge) patent-encumbered, and Adobe hasn't (to my knowledge) attempted to stop anybody who has written those tools that manipulate PDFs. Adobe has patents which it claims apply to PDF and has licensed them only for the purpose of creating compatible implementations. http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/legalnotices.jsp If you modified an application which implements PDF so that it was incompatible with Adobe's specifications, you might be outside the scope of Adobe's patent license grant. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Very frankly, I am opposed to people http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | being programmed by others. http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/ | -- Fred Rogers (1928-2003), |464 U.S. 417, 445 (1984)
Re: Netscape (Mozilla) NSS and PSM
Frank Belew writes: NSS and PSM (crypto library, and ssl support in mozilla) are dual licensed under the MPL and GNU GPL. On the NSS/PSM home page at iPlanet, the following clause can be found - PSM software contains encryption technology that is subject to the U.S. Export Administration Regulations and other U.S. law, and may not be exported or re-exported to ineligible countries or to persons or entities prohibited from receiving U.S. exports. Ineligible countries are currently Afghanistan (Taliban-controlled areas), Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Serbia (except Kosovo), Sudan, and Syria. Persons or entities prohibited from receiving U.S. exports include Denied Parties, entities on the Bureau of Export Administration Entity List, and Specially Designated Nationals. For more information on the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR), 15 C.F.R. Parts 730-774, and the Bureau of Export Administration (BXA), please see the BXA home page. PSM software may also be subject to import and/or use regulations in other countries. - is all of this DFSG free, and able to be put in main by a US citizen? Oh boy, export clauses again! If that software was separately licensed under a free license which doesn't mention exports, then this clause may just be meant as a warning to prospective exporters (may not legally, not that the copyright holder intends to forbid it) and not as a license condition. In other words, perhaps Netscape doesn't actually (independently) forbid you to export the software, but they just want you to know that the BXA might forbid you (for instance, because the idea of software export controls seems bizarre and surprising to many people). An analogy might be if someone indicated on a web site that [local law cite] forbids anyone to write a virus, so therefore you are not allowed to write a virus based on this code -- but separately licensed the code under the MIT license, which would certainly allow you to make a derived work which was a virus. Then the interpretation could be that this was just a warning for your information, so that you wouldn't accidentally write a virus (thinking it was legal). But the original author is not necessarily trying to reserve the right to sue you for copyright infringement if you do write a virus. It seems that a recent way to handle the ambiguity has been to get someone to add a note like This notice is provided for your information and is not a condition of license of this software; the licensee is responsible for assuring compliance with applicable laws. at the end. A clause like that seem to make free software people happy and some corporate lawyers nervous. But nonetheless some large organizations were willing to stick a phrase like that in after their export notifications. (I should try to dig up examples.) I guess the more popular version was something a bit closer to The export or dissemination of this software may be restricted by law. For example, in the United States, at the time of release of the software, [...]. Licensee bears sole responsibility for assuring compliance with applicable local legislation. The general point would be that a free software author can warn people about the existence of discriminatory laws which might restrict the dissemination or use of the software. But the author should not be able to sue people or revoke their license just for violating those laws, or for receiving the software as a result of somebody else's violation of those laws. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: About MPEG2 and DVDs
Samuel Hocevar writes: Hello, I plan to package vlc [1], an MPEG2 player which can also play DVDs. There is no MPEG2 Layer 3 support, nor is DeCSS included, so I do not think there are any legal issues with including it in Debian (the license is 100% GPL, no parts of the MPEG group's reference decoder have been included), though I'd appreciate any comments about this. My main concern is with CSS [2]. DeCSS [3] is not included, but (as I happen to be one of the main developers), I'd like to add support for it so that everyone can freely play all DVDs. I see several options : - no CSS support at all - integrate DeCSS. This would put it at least in non-US, or even into non-free or (even worse) not be legal in most countries outside Europe and would therefore not be possible at all. One of the problems is that DeCSS includes a cracked key from Xing. - implement a brute force algorithm that has been found and which lets you crack the CSS key of a single disk in a few seconds. I think this one would be legal everywhere, but not sure. Not everyone agrees that DeCSS is illegal in the United States for the Xing key reason. (California lawsuit.) On the other hand, not everyone agrees that the brute force algorithm is legal in the U.S. (Possible implications of New York lawsuit.) If you can wait a while, these legal issues might become a bit clearer. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: GNU License and Computer Break Ins
Paul Serice writes: Mark Rafn wrote: Some authors' wishes are dishonorable (in some opinions). That's a good point. I'm not sympathetic when they try to abuse the system. If pressed, I will break. At some point, technology should fall into the public domain or a GPL-like public domain even against an author's wishes, but people have already reached this tradeoff. Why? From a pure theoretical sense, if bits and ideas can be owned and their use and distribution limited by an author, shouldn't that ownership be permanent? Or do inventors/authors just lease their ideas? What justification for having it expire in X years cannot be applied to having it expire in X-1 years? Yeah, I get squeezed in on both sides. The other question I need to be able to answer is: What justification for letting it survive X years can't be applied to X+1 years? This particular belief of mine is partly subjective and partly objective. Subjectively, it seems right that, if somebody spends 30 years writing the best novel of the 21st century, she should be allowed to give the proceeds to the charity of her choice for as long as she wanted. After all, the book will be in the public library system soon so no one can claim that they are being denied access to it. Well, the process of giv[ing] the proceeds to someone involves _obtaining_ the proceeds, which, without copyright, might belong to a third party, not the author's agent. So you first have to seize the proceeds of someone else's sale of a copy of the document, and then give them away. On the other hand, in cases where there aren't any proceeds, you have to obtain the proceeds by estimating how much they _might_ have been, and then trying to compel payment of the estimated hypothetical proceeds... As was recently noted, since the aftermath of the LaMacchia case, non-commercial copyright infringement has been a crime in the United States. So if you give away copies of the text of the best novel of the 21st century, the author gets to punish you for not collecting proceeds of this sale in order to give those proceeds to the charity of her choice. It's not just like the proceeds are an object sitting out there somewhere in a publisher's office, and the copyright just means that the author can come in and collect them. Copyright is implemented as a set of regulations and restrictions on all third parties' behavior. Subjectively, it seems wrong that someone could abuse the copyright or patent laws to produce a monopoly like the one the justice department is in the process of breaking up. Objectively, by combining both subjective paragraphs above, you more or less end up with my general rule that copyrights are fine until they are abused. I'm working on the argument that copyrights are so confusing because they are really an attempt at a government subsidy to authors (to promote the Progress, etc.), cleverly disguised as a minor market regulation. The copyright strategy for compensating authors is unfortunate, because it produces murky concepts like intellectual property and hides the nature of the underlying goals. And, as Richard Stallman has pointed out, it also works by denying individuals the ability to do things that (if they didn't happen to undermine this indirect subsidy) would otherwise be thought of as perfectly natural and praiseworthy. I think it's correct that copyright in the U.S. was originally, quite explicitly, all about money. It would promote the Progress if authors were paid: so here is an indirect strategy to try to get them to be paid. No moral rights, no natural rights, just an effort to subsidize creativity. Since then, all kinds of other things have accreted on top of the copyright system, so that authors have become quite insistent about their absolute ownership of their work, and the dire necessity of expanding legal protections for that ownership. (Never mind how incredibly weak the analogies between physical property and intellectual property are.) This isn't to say that copyright might not be one of the most effective ways of implementing a public subsidy to promote creativity. But it is definitely one of the most confusing. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: GNU License and Computer Break Ins
Seth David Schoen writes: accreted on top of the copyright system, so that authors have become quite insistent about their absolute ownership of their work, and I should probably say that agents and publishers have become quite insistent about their absolute ownership of the authors' work. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: GNU License and Computer Break Ins
Paul Serice writes: Do I read you and others correctly? Is the GPL a strategy designed to basically reduce the time to zero between when an author publishes and when the work falls into a GPL-like public domain? (Much like the use of proprietary operating systems was a strategy when the GNU Project first started.) It obviously has that effect on software which is published under the GPL. It doesn't have that effect on other software. If so, I consider myself a reasonably diligent person, and I consider other people on this list to be more diligent than myself. Yet, some of us missed this rather critical piece of information. In my case, I missed it for years. Of course, there were a good number who understood already, but for the benefit of the rest of use, I would recommend an addition to the GPL's preamble so that this bit of information is as widely distributed as the GPL. The GPL doesn't contain ideological or political arguments for a bunch of reasons. It's supposed to be easy enough for people to find out about those (read Why Software Should Not Have Owners, the GNU Manifesto, etc.). For example, While using the GPL is a volitional act and takes advantage of current copyright laws, the ultimate goal is to undermine copyright law to such an extent that the GPL will no longer be necessary as all software will then be free. Making all (generally useful and published) software free is a long-time public goal of the FSF. http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/why-free.html The FSF has other interim goals, which are less extreme. People who don't agree with the FSF's long-term goals still have plenty of reasons to use the GPL or support the FSF in other ways. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: GNU License and Computer Break Ins
Raul Miller writes: On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 06:32:49AM -0500, Paul Serice wrote: I guess I didn't say that too well. I feel betrayed because I thought the GPL was about respecting the work of other people. If those people only want their work to be used openly, then GPL is the license for them (or so I thought). If you want your work used in a different manner then just say so. After all, it's your work. Of all the people in the world, you should have the largest say regarding how your work is used. Let's distinguish you should have the largest say regarding how your work is used from you should have legal authority to control how your work is used. The GPL is about one thing, and the social and political program of Richard Stallman is about that _and other things, too_. You can still use the GPL even if you don't agree with those other things -- there is no clause in the GPL which constitutes a loyalty oath. Of course, if you don't think the FSF is trustworthy, don't use Version 2, or, at your option, any later version. But this is not what GPL is about . . . apparently. Apparently, even if the original author wants his or her work used in a certain non-GPL-ed way, it doesn't matter. The moral thing to do is to disregard the wishes of the author and to copy it anyway -- even in violation of laws of a democratic nation. [...] I don't see *any* justification for the assumption that he was illegally trading anything. And, since your entire rant seems to be based on the idea that laws are being broken, I think it's up to you to come up with the details. It is true that Richard Stallman has said that violating current copyright laws is not wrong in all circumstances, and that he would not want to make legality under 17 USC the only consideration in whether or not he does something. That would be the same Richard Stallman who wrote Copyright apologists often [...] ask us to treat the legal system as an authority on ethics: if copying is forbidden, it must be wrong. [...] The idea that laws decide what is right or wrong is mistaken in general. Laws are, at their best, an attempt to achieve justice; to say that laws define justice or ethical conduct is turning things upside down. http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html shock horror -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Mirror site (fwd)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Tue, Apr 04, 2000 at 03:12:14PM -0700, Seth David Schoen wrote: That scheme is totally consistent with the intentions of DFSG-free licenses. Unfortunetly, it's not consistent with many of the non-DFSG-free licenses. You'd be violating licenses if you did this with many of the packages in non-free, so if you want to do it for any of those, you should take a look at the license first. (Because of your description of your buisniss, it would probably be more feasible to just not include anything from non-free.) I am remembering that several people around here have recently told me that non-free is not part of Debian. When someone asked what they meant by this, they clarified that non-free is not part of Debian. I guess that was what they meant. :-) Redistributing non-free is definitely a tricky proposition, since things are there for all sorts of peculiar reasons. I doubt that anyone on debian-legal would be comfortable saying You have a right to distribute the contents of non-free -- it would probably be more like We hope that the people already distributing non-free have a right to distribute non-free. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: webmin license
Brian Behlendorf writes: On 15 Dec 1999, Henning Makholm wrote: Brian Behlendorf [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, 13 Dec 1999, Marc van Leeuwen wrote: a) REMIND may not be used under Microsoft Windows (3.0, 3.1, 95 or NT) or any future version of Windows. Such use constitutes a violation of copyright. b) REMIND may not be used by Cadabra Design Libraries Inc. or its directors, nor by any of Cadabra's subsidiaries or their directors. Such use constitutes a violation of copyright. c) Except for situations (a) and (b), REMIND may be used and distributed according to the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2, which follows: [...] a) and b) contradict c). No, because (c) explicitly states that (a) and (b) takes precedense over the terms of the GPL. It doesn't matter that (c) says (a) and (b) take precedence - the GPL itself says no other conditions may take precedence. So either what is distributed as the GPL is *not* the GPL, (nor should it be called a patched GPL, as it reverses a significant part of what the GPL stands for) or the GPL takes precedence. I'm sure Stallman would say the same thing, with a bit more of a bite too. This document is self-contradictory. I don't know what copyright or contract law says about a license that self-contradicts. Well, the GPL itself handles that case: If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. So I don't think there's a problem of interpretation. :-) I'm going to reply to another message soon on the subject of whether you can modify the GPL, directly or indirectly. But that particular issue is moot as far as this license goes. Since this license does not even _attempt_ to modify the GPL, the interpretation of the GPL is very clear and unambiguous: just as Brian says, the GPL forbids this sort of thing (in particular, it forbids prospective distributors from imposing or passing on additional restrictions). Therefore, these terms _do_ contradict the GPL, and the GPL leads us to the conclusion that, in this case, you (a third party receiving a copy somehow) may not distribute the Program at all. That conclusion is not at all accidental. If I write the Big Beard License Version 2, which says You may use, copy, modify, distribute, and sublicense this software without restriction in any form and through any medium, provided that you both (a) have a big beard, and (b) do not have a big beard. If you do not meet both of these conditions, this license grants you no right to redistribute the software. then I don't think that it would be a big shock that I haven't given anybody permission to redistribute software. So when somebody writes a license that boils down to You may distribute this software, provided that in every instance you both (a) distribute it under the GPL, and (b) do not distribute it under the GPL it shoulnd't be a big shock that this means no permission to distribute. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: webmin license
Henning Makholm writes: On Wed, 15 Dec 1999, Seth David Schoen wrote: But that particular issue is moot as far as this license goes. Since this license does not even _attempt_ to modify the GPL, the interpretation of the GPL is very clear and unambiguous: just as Brian says, the GPL forbids this sort of thing (in particular, it forbids prospective distributors from imposing or passing on additional restrictions). That applies to works that have been licenses under the unamended GPL. We're talking about a work which has *not* been licensed under the unamended GPL. The uamended GPL has *no* force whatsoever on which license terms are legal for that program. That document did not attempt to amend the GPL. It imposed _additional conditions_. The fact that the author choses a set of license terms that share some clauses with the unamended GPL does not make the unamended GPL have any say over his actions. He chose a different license than the unamended GPL, and that different license is the *only* thing that can allow or forbid anything. I have to ask you to look at the permission grant again. Where and how did the author in any way alter the GPL? Therefore, these terms _do_ contradict the GPL, That is irrelevant. The GPL is not in force for the program in question. Funny that the author says that (subject to some conditions) the program may be distributed under the GPL, rather than some other license. Sorry, the GPL is _very clear_ about the impermissibility of additional restrictions outside of its own text. It doesn't make any sense to say that the GPL can be casually amended and modified by the wave of a magic external clause when every ounce of the GPL is specifically designed to resist and contradict an attempt to do that. You may say that the author's obvious intent (or at least obvious desire) was to amend the GPL, which is true enough, but that doesn't save the program from the sin of contradiction. If I put out a program under a self-contradictory set of requirements, I can't be saved by my fervent wish that these contradictory values _should have been_ compatible. Perhaps a court will pick and choose which one prevails. The clearest way to show that the GPL can't be amended by the simple expedient of imposing discriminatory restrictions on a program from the outset is to look at all the places in which the GPL talks about distributors' obligations with respect to this License. You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. [...] If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. Note the capital l in License. When the GPL says this License, it is obviously referring to _itself_, the GPL, and not to some other conditions that happen to have been imposed by a program author in a particular case. It is easy to see that; just look at the beginning the GPL: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. and By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. So the new hypothetical amended GPL (on the strength of some additional stipulations that were imposed by an author) applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software? People have used GPL-based licenses in the past -- _with explicit changes in the license document, and with the permission of the FSF_. They thus avoid the confusing situation of having a program that might appear to be licensed under a hypothetical license of which no copies actually exist and which claims to be used by the FSF for most of its own software while discriminating against a particular company. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: webmin license
Henning Makholm writes: Marc van Leeuwen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But this is not just an exercise for the lawyers; it means for instance that Debian should immediately stop distributing remind, even in non-free, since they obviously lack the right to do that! That reasoning is plain wrong. OBVIOUSLY the author want to permit e.g. Debian to distribute the program. And what the author wants and clealy states is the ONLY thing that matters when it comes to copyright. It does NOT matter what another random license that does not apply to the program says. The KDE/GPL issue provides an instructive precedent for refusing to distribute something because of a contradictory license even when the authors of the program obviously ... want to permit e.g. Debian to distribute the program. In that case, free software distributors declined to distribute something even though the authors wanted it to be distributed, because the license terms were still found to be contradictory. If you want to ridicule this phenomenon, you could compare it to an autoimmune disease, where the natural processes that protect us against bad things also have some unintended consequences and may result in an outcome you would not approve of. Then you could say that the free software movement's very strict construction of the GPL is something like an autoimmune disease (which fits interestingly with the virus metaphor). Unfortunately, the KDE/GPL issue also caused interminable flames and acrimony, and it is perhaps better not to bring it up again, except to indicate that there is a (very controversial) precedent. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: webmin license
is consistent with the GPL, where a distribution with restrictions not authorized by the GPL is inconsistent with the GPL, and has the effect of not authorizing any further redistribution at all. Summary: if someone says You may distribute this under the GPL, except never to person X, then either - You may distribute it to someone under the pure GPL, without that additional stipulation, and then that person may distribute it to person X, or - [A]s a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. Which of these is true is left as an exercise for the lawyers, but the GPL does not contemplate a third alternative. If you can get away with effectively modifying the GPL, then the situation is different, but certainly the GPL would like to be polymorph-resistant. (Sorry, new NetHack release, you know.) -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL
William T Wilson writes: On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, Seth David Schoen wrote: Depends on how that's accomplished. If it's a license for the entire distribution as a whole, it should be possible. That's what I was assuming: a EULA for the distribution. In short, you can't do that. You can't circumvent the provisions of the GPL just by saying that your license applies to the distribution as a whole, rather than any specific part. Section 6 of the GPL overrides that, by specifying that you may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. Preventing them from using or distributing the GPL software for any purpose, including that which you deem morally bankrupt, is against the rules. Section 6 also specifies that the recipient of a GPL program receives their license for that program from the original licensor. Unless that entity is willing to go along with your desire to restrict the use of the software, your restrictions would (again) be void. You can call your restrictions simply restrictions on the distribution as a whole, but the fact remains that they are also restrictions on the further redistribution of the GPL-covered software, which is expressly forbidden. The only thing you could do would be to restrict the use of the distribution as you have laid it out - for example the installer, by making it non-GPL. But the components that make up the system are untouchable. This is not at all obvious to me. Whether this is true depends on the interpretation of all this material: These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program. In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License. What is the difference between mere aggregation and a collective work based on the program? It's obviously possible to write a EULA for a distribution which is quite discriminatory and proprietary, but which guarantees the right to separate out the GPLed portions and distribute them to anybody under the terms of the GPL. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL
Anthony Towns writes: On Thu, Dec 02, 1999 at 01:05:58PM -0800, Seth David Schoen wrote: Peter S Galbraith writes: (I'm not saying that slapping an EULA on top of GPL software is legal; I don't know that it is. If it's called a `license', it's different that saying you can have this GPL code for $1) Obviously _some_ EULAs on top of compilations containing GPLed software are legal. Presumably not all of them are. Eh? EULA, is an `End User License Agreement'. The `End User' part's fairly plausible: it applies to people downloading from the Corel website. `License agreement' is, according to dict: 1. Authority or liberty given to do or forbear any act; especially, a formal permission from the proper authorities to perform certain acts or to carry on a certain business, which without such permission would be illegal; a grant of permission; as, a license to preach, to practice medicine, to sell gunpowder or intoxicating liquors. . This isn't necessarily overriding anyone's copyright, it needn't be anything more than permission to use their ftp server. Sure, but _some_ EULAs are infringing: END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT By downloading or using the Software, you agree to be bound by the following: This software is Copyright (C) 1999 IlliberalSoft. All rights are reserved. This software is licensed, not sold. The following conditions apply to the software. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO REDISTRIBUTE THE SOFTWARE. YOU MAY NOT DECOMPILE, DISASSEMBLE, OR OTHERWISE REVERSE ENGINEER THE SOFTWARE. YOU MAY NOT DISCLOSE THE SOFTWARE, OR ANY PORTION THEREOF, TO ANY THIRD PARTY WITHOUT EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION OF ILLIBERALSOFT. NO ONE HAS AUTHORITY TO MODIFY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE AGREEMENT. ANY STATEMENTS TO THE CONTRARY BY ANY PARTY, OR IN ANY DOCUMENTATION ACCOMPANYING THE SOFTWARE, ARE VOID. YOU MAY INSTALL AND RUN ONE COPY OF THIS SOFTWARE FOR YOUR OWN PERSONAL NON-COMMERCIAL USE. Some EULAs are _not_ infringing: END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT You hereby acknowledge that this software is provided with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain warranties, so the preceding limitation may not apply to you. Portions of this software were written by Friendly Partners LLP and other contributors. All of this software is licensed under various free software licenses, which permit you to use, modify, and redistribute the software. Please see /usr/doc/copyrights for the precise details of the license terms applicable to each component of the software. Friendly Partners LLP thanks you for using this software, and hopes that you have a great day. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL
Peter S Galbraith writes: I wrote: If you don't own the code that is GPLed, you can't relicense it under a different license. How could you then use `a license that prohibits putzen like those at Corel from pulling the sort of nonsense they've been pulling' if the GPL allows it? Seth David Schoen wrote: Depends on how that's accomplished. If it's a license for the entire distribution as a whole, it should be possible. That's what I was assuming: a EULA for the distribution. If it's a matter of relicensing GPLed code to forbid the use of EULAs, at all, then no, it's presumably not allowed. :-) You misunderstand what I meant. Even if your `EULA for the distribution' said corporations weren't allowed to download it, nothing could prevent a company from obtaining the GPL components of the distribution from a third party and then `pulling the sort of nonsense they've been pulling' I'm sorry for the misunderstanding; that's absolutely correct. I was thinking that you were talking about a different issue. (I'm not saying that slapping an EULA on top of GPL software is legal; I don't know that it is. If it's called a `license', it's different that saying you can have this GPL code for $1) Obviously _some_ EULAs on top of compilations containing GPLed software are legal. Presumably not all of them are. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL
Joseph Carter writes: On Wed, Dec 01, 1999 at 02:21:08AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: 9. License Must Not Contaminate Other Software You may have a point. If you have to click something that says you are 18 _before_ you download the GPL part, that's probably part of a contaminating license. But please note that my original criticism never even got to whether or not it was Open Source, I was considering whether or not other software licenses in the distribution were being violated. If there is _ANY_ EULA that you must agree to before you can have the GPL code it's forcing you to agree to their proprietary software terms. Having to be 18 has nothing to do with it (other than that it's a OK, you leave me no choice: http://ishmael.geecs.org/~sigma/reductiones-ab-absurda/big-beard-software/ -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL
Peter S Galbraith writes: Seth David Schoen wrote: Henning Makholm writes: Caspian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'd just like to state that if anyone out there is interested in making a completely, utterly free software GNU/Linux dist, with a license that prohibits putzen like those at Corel from pulling the sort of nonsense they've been pulling, Note that you won't be able to include any GPLed software in your distribution if you want to make restrictions about how and when other people or corporations are allowed to redistribute it. Where does the GPL say that? I can give you several examples of distributors who have made this their regular practice. ? If you don't own the code that is GPLed, you can't relicense it under a different license. How could you then use `a license that prohibits putzen like those at Corel from pulling the sort of nonsense they've been pulling' if the GPL allows it? Depends on how that's accomplished. If it's a license for the entire distribution as a whole, it should be possible. That's what I was assuming: a EULA for the distribution. If it's a matter of relicensing GPLed code to forbid the use of EULAs, at all, then no, it's presumably not allowed. :-) -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL
On Wed, Dec 01, 1999 at 02:21:08AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: From: Joseph Carter [EMAIL PROTECTED] 9. License Must Not Contaminate Other Software You may have a point. If you have to click something that says you are 18 _before_ you download the GPL part, that's probably part of a contaminating license. But please note that my original criticism never even got to whether or not it was Open Source, I was considering whether or not other software licenses in the distribution were being violated. That is an essential distinction. The Corel EULA is clearly _not_ itself an open source license. But that doesn't mean that it conflicts with the open source licenses of components of the system. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL
Oops, my example is less useful than it should have been because of a DNS problem. My Big Beard Agreement distribution of GCC may be found at http://ishmael.loyalty.org/~sigma/reductiones-ab-absurda/big-beard-software/ -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL
Richard Stallman writes: Putting GPL-covered programs together with non-free programs in a collection such as an operating system does not violate the GPL, and Corel is not the first to do this. I think this is a harmful practice, and that even Debian goes too far in this direction, but there is no use singling out Corel for criticism. Yes, the criticism seems to come mainly from particular phrases in the license, and not from the general practice of mixing free and non-free software in a collection. Making people agree to a license with conditions about the use of the non-free programs, as part of obtaining the GPL-covered programs, might be a violation, but I am not sure. **As long as the license imposes no conditions on the use of the GPL-covered programs, other than the GPL,** one can argue that this is simply a way of choosing to distribute the GPL-covered programs only to those who are customers for the others. That is legitimate. That makes sense. There seems to be a lot of disagreement about whether or not Corel's license, as written, imposes new conditions on the GPLed packages. I thought that it didn't, but many people seem to think that it does. I suggested that Corel might just wish to resolve the confusion by adding a disclaimer which states unambiguously that their license does not attempt to restrict licensees' exercise of their rights under the GPL or other free software licenses. I wondered if the FSF had a recommended form for such a clarifying statement, or whether you think one is useful. Obviously, the GPL does not require the use of such a statement, but it might be useful to authors of license terms for aggregate works containing packages licensed under a variety of licenses. I think the crucial question here is, has Corel written significant new free software? And what license(s) are they using for it? I have yet to try their distribution, so I don't know whether the software is significant, but they've said that they have written new free software under the GPL, LGPL, and MPL. Whether Corel might have violated the GPL is also a fairly important question, since some people in this discussion initially proposed suing Corel for alleged copyright infringement. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation o
Caspian writes: On 30 Nov 1999, Henning Makholm wrote: Caspian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But in Corel's case, they're taking a whole bundle of free software, making a little smidgen of free software themselves, adding some non-free software, then saying: [..] * GPL? What GPL? I see no mention of the GPL in our license... Excuse me, but that is grossly misrepresenting what Corel does. The EULA that was posted here a couple of days ago is quite explicit about most of the software being licenced under the GPL and other licenses that allow free modification and redistribution (or some similar language). They repeat that in several different places in the text. Okay then, and actually, now that I think about it, yes, I do remember seeing a mention of the GPL in the license. However, the segment at the top seems to be stating that all the software in Corel Linux is proprietary. Read the part that babbles on about the rights to the source, etc. being protected by copyright law on behalf of Corel, Corel (somethingorother), and other entities (i.e. the FSF?) Although the FSF has discouraged people from saying copyright protection, _all_ GPLed software is _always_ copyrighted, which is why the GPL has any effect within the present intellectual property law regimes. Legally, the GPL is a license granting certain rights with respect to a copyrighted work. In that regard, it is the same as any of Corel's proprietary licenses. When Corel says that All right, title and interest in the Software Programs, including source code, documentation, appearance, structure and organization, are held by Corel Corporation, Corel Corporation Limited, and others and are protected by copyright and other laws. they are not saying anything incorrect, unless Corel Linux includes some software which is explicitly public domain. (In that case, they could have said All right, title, and interest in almost all of the Software Programs..., but I don't think their lawyers would like that very much.) It would be legally correct to say that all right, title, and interest in GNU Emacs is held by the Free Software Foundation and others and is protected by copyright and other laws -- which doesn't mean that Emacs is proprietary software in the FSF's sense. (But it _is_ proprietary in that it has a legally recognized owner.) -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Copyright Office Notice on Anti-Circumvention (fwd)
Lynn Winebarger writes: I thought this notice is important for free software developers (in particular) to be aware of. My hope is that this clause of the DMCA will be struck down by the courts as overreaching the powers of Congress, but we should be letting the library of congress know there are legitimate fair use issues with insert your concern here. I'm most concerned with the ability to read code (through decompiling or just disassembly) to understand the underlying ideas. This is currently considered fair use of code (see Sega vs. Accolade) in the US, to the dismay of many IP lawyers. Circumventing fair use via encryption and this clause of the DMCA is not a practice that should go without criticism. Another instance is DVD video. The code in DeCSS and everything resulting from it may become illegal under DMCA. This means that all unapproved DVD video player software will be illegal, which means that writing such software for minority platforms and/or as open source will be impossible. If you want to use a system on which you insist on having only free software, and desire to play DVDs there, the DMCA will prevent you, just because you _could_ use the knowledge expressed in that software to make illegal copies. Just having the ability to make illegal copies is illegal, which means that the technology to play DVDs can't legally be included in a free system where the user has all knowledge and all ability represented by any of the installed software. If you want to use a weird new operating system that doesn't have a lot of market share to play DVDs, you will also not be allowed to write even a non-free DVD player for that system without the consent of the the DVD video standard maintainers. Explaining this convincingly to the Library of Congress might be difficult, because this as an argument against this entire provision of the DMCA. But it is based on what is probably regarded as fair use. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation o
[Apologies to anyone who no longer wants to be on this Cc: list -- I'll take future follow-ups to debian-legal only, unless anyone asks to keep receiving them.] Caspian writes: On Tue, 30 Nov 1999, Wichert Akkerman wrote: Previously Martin Schulze wrote: We are told that the installation routine is free software. Though, only stubs have been made available, iirc. If you go to ftp.corel.com and browse around you'll find the complete sources. Here's my response to that-- whooptie-do. What bothers me is the trend of making a distribution out of 99% free software produced by other people, 1% free and non-free software produced by yourself, and then doing nasty things with the resulting mix. This trend concerns me, too, but if you want to stop them, you will need to show why what they are doing is not only nasty but also illegal. Remember that the DFSG _prohibits_ licenses from forbidding the use of non-free software in a distribution. But in Corel's case, they're taking a whole bundle of free software, making a little smidgen of free software themselves, adding some non-free software, then saying: * You can't download this mixture until you're 18. I can redistribute any GPLed software I want under the Big Beard Agreement, where, to get the software from me, you have to solemnly certify that you have a big beard. Once you have obtained a copy of the software, you have the right to redistribute it freely. * This is Corel Linux (not Corel GNU/Linux). GNU who? No comment. :-) * We retain title to this software distribution, even though it's mostly not of our creation. That is a misrepresentation of what the EULA says. * GPL? What GPL? I see no mention of the GPL in our license... That is also a misrepresentation of what the EULA says. They're slapping this traditional proprietary software-like EULA on their distribution, despite the fact that it's primarily made out of free software! Right. It's not all free software. See the GPL's mere aggregation clause: the GPL does _not guarantee the freedom of an entire distribution_ because some or most of that distribution is under the GPL. As long as the proprietary license does not try to take away or limit any of the GPL's public grants of rights with respect to GPLed software, it does not violate the Corel could say that only Canadians could use Corel Linux, if they wanted to. Since Corel Linux as a whole contains some proprietary software from Corel, they are allowed to set such a condition. Canadians who got a copy of it could strip out the free portions and redistribute them. Once again: The GPL does not give you the power to dictate licensing terms to distribution developers, as long as they do not restrict the rights granted by the GPL. If you don't like Corel's distribution terms, you could - Not use Corel Linux - Discourage other people from using Corel Linux - Register EULA.org and set up you.should.not.accept.the.Corel.EULA.org, and send e-mail from an account there (acknowledging Corel's trademarks) - Discourage the Debian Project as a whole from helping Corel Linux - Take all of the free software in Corel Linux and make your own distribution. You could call it LEROC GNU/Linux, for LEROC's, Eh, Reminiscent Of Corel(R), and license it under whatever terms you prefer. All of these strategies are available to you without any requirement or suggestion that Corel has infringed anyone's copyright. Something's gotta be legally amiss here, IMHO. Why? There are all sorts of unethical, distasteful, or just unfortunate things that are not illegal. If everything questionable or regrettable was illegal, we would have much less freedom than we presently do. Corel's EULA means that they are getting bad publicity, and ill will from some Debian developers, who may be less eager to collaborate with Corel. Maybe that will cause Corel to conclude that they need to clarify some of the points that are making people upset, or maybe they will ignore the criticism. But if you want to call their behavior _illegal_, you need to show why it is illegal. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation o
Caspian writes: On Tue, 30 Nov 1999, Seth David Schoen wrote: This trend concerns me, too, but if you want to stop them, you will need to show why what they are doing is not only nasty but also illegal. Remember that the DFSG _prohibits_ licenses from forbidding the use of non-free software in a distribution. It does? This is rather disturbing news. Why does it do this? You'd have to ask the people who wrote it. Bruce? :-) I think it stems from a desire to make sure that free software is useful to people who use non-free software. You could have a Free Software Holy War License which tries to forbid people to use proprietary software at all, but there are bad theoretical and practical consequences of that. I can redistribute any GPLed software I want under the Big Beard Agreement, where, to get the software from me, you have to solemnly certify that you have a big beard. Once you have obtained a copy of the software, you have the right to redistribute it freely. Where does Corel assert that users have this right? If they don't read those very words or something extremely close to them, they are going to assume that they DON'T have that right. Corel's EULA actually mentions this: Many of the Software Programs included in Corel LINUX are distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (``GPL'') and other similar license agreements which permit You to copy, modify and redistribute the Software Programs. Please review the terms and conditions of the license agreement that accompanies each of the Software Programs included in Corel LINUX. Corel's EULA doesn't mention _some_ details of the GPL, but it does allude to the fact that users have the right to distribute some of the software, and even encourages users to read the GPL. Corel doesn't include an entire essay on free software licensing in its EULA, but it does give a capsule summary of some of the permissions which are granted and encourage users to read the licenses for themselves. I think this is reasonable. * This is Corel Linux (not Corel GNU/Linux). GNU who? No comment. :-) This is important stuff. Most people don't realize that Linux is not an OS, and most of what they think of as Linux was created by the GNU project, not by Linus Torvalds. I consider that debate much larger and separate from this one. You and other people have accused them of doing something bad in their license text. If they have done something bad in the _name of their operating system_, it's a separate issue. It _might_ be part of a larger pattern, but proving that is much harder. * We retain title to this software distribution, even though it's mostly not of our creation. That is a misrepresentation of what the EULA says. How so? Because the GPL says Corel [...] and others. Corel did not assert that it had title to all of what it was shipping. * GPL? What GPL? I see no mention of the GPL in our license... That is also a misrepresentation of what the EULA says. The license, apparently, _DOES_ mention the GPL; this is good. However, does the EULA? The EULA is the license; the L in EULA stands for license. - Register EULA.org and set up you.should.not.accept.the.Corel.EULA.org, and send e-mail from an account there (acknowledging Corel's trademarks) I'm not going to acknowledge Corel's ANYTHING. Why should I? If you name something after Corel or its products, you might infringe their trademark and get in trouble if you don't make the status of that trademark clear. - Take all of the free software in Corel Linux and make your own distribution. You could call it LEROC GNU/Linux, for LEROC's, Eh, Reminiscent Of Corel(R), and license it under whatever terms you prefer. You don't get it... by not mentioning that people DO have the right to do all the things that the GPL permits with those portions of Corel Linux that ARE under the GPL, 99.9% of their WinIdiot users are going to assume that they CAN'T do those things, since 99.9% of them haven't heard of the GPL in the first place. Corel is neglecting to remind the users of their rights; while this is not illegal, it's deceptive and nasty and very much contrary to the spirit of the GPL. The Corel EULA says: Many of the Software Programs included in Corel LINUX are distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (``GPL'') and other similar license agreements which permit You to copy, modify and redistribute the Software Programs. [...] If you follow the link which the EULA encourages you to follow for more information about license terms, you see a page provided by Corel with information such as These types of licenses are often referred to as Open Source licenses. For more information on Open Source licenses, visit www.opensource.org. [...] Please review
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL
Lynn Winebarger writes: You'll note I said title to the copy, not title to the copyright. Interesting point. I am referring to: ATTENTION:THIS IS A LICENSE, NOT A SALE. THIS PRODUCT IS PROVIDED UNDER THE FOLLOWING AGREEMENT WHICH DEFINES WHAT YOU (HEREAFTER REFERRED TO AS YOU OR YOUR) MAY DO WITH THE PRODUCT AND CONTAINS LIMITATIONS ON WARRANTIES AND/OR REMEDIES. You know, the typical EULA claptrap that attempts to circumvent the first sale doctrine and subsequent fair use. There's no reason to make this pretense with the free software portion of the distribution. The way I see it (and IANAL), the GPL (and other free software licenses) are copyright licenses that accompany copies of software. If I never receive actual ownership of the copy, it's not clear that I would receive the accompanying license, or that the license would require my receipt of it. In the case of the GPL, I don't think this would be a problem (since public distribution has occured even without transfer of ownership - I _think_). Nonetheless, I'd rather not anyone view this as a potential way to circumvent free licenses, if it is, in fact, not. This is why the GPL, at least, says 4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance. In other words, they can't add new restrictions, and, if they do, it doesn't count. (Cf. GPL section 6.) This is one reason that I am skeptical that the Corel Linux EULA is actually harmful, at least in regard to GPLed programs: with the possible exception of the export restrictions clause (depending on the legal meaning of responsibility in that context), I don't see where the EULA actually attempts to restrict the exercise of any rights under the GPL. (If it did, then, according to the GPL, it would be void, a copyright infringement, and irrelevant. Whether that provision of the GPL is actually enforceable is anybody's guess -- preferably a lawyer's.) Some other free software licenses do not contain this restriction; the MIT license explicitly permits sublicensing. I don't know or even have a guess about the situation of public licenses which don't make any statement about sublicensing or the incidental imposition of additional restrictions by some other means. (For instance, the GPL has been interpreted as forbidding binding NDAs that cover GPLed software; I don't see that other licenses even attempt to do that.) -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL
Erich Forler writes: As a guess, perhaps the distinction is raised to differentiate between the Product - Corel Linux and the programs included on the disc. In some circumstances, there is a differentiation. This is a distinction which some people have seemed unwilling to acknowledge, but it is important. There is no reason that Corel is _not_ allowed to apply any EULA it chooses to the product as a whole, as long as that EULA does not prejudice users' rights under existing licenses. Since almost all of the people reading the EULA are not lawyers, they are not sure, offhand, whether or not the EULA has the effect of trying to impose any further restrictions upon or sublicense GPLed software. A lot of them seem to believe that is does. Since the EULA explicitly acknowledges the existence and applicability of a variety of license terms, including the GPL, for the various components of the system, I suspect that is does not -- but I'm not a lawyer. For the benefit of the general public, which is mostly neither lawyers nor specialists in this peculiar world of free software licensing, it would be very useful if the Corel Linux EULA contained an explicit, unambiguous statement about the status of the licenses of free software packages within the product. That statement could say that these licenses are public licenses, whose permissions are automatically granted to anyone receiving a copy; that they allow (use,) modification, and redistribution subject to certain terms; and that their grant of rights is not in any way restricted or modified by the EULA. This may already be the legal consequence of the EULA, but, for the benefit of people who are not familiar with all of the free software licenses, and not easily able to determine this for themselves, it would be helpful to have this clarified. I would also like to see something done about that export paragraph. :-) Corel should avoid any suggestion that its EULA makes illegal export of free software into a civil copyright violation, since that would certainly be resisted by many of the original package authors and contributors. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation o
Erich Forler writes: What Corel-written programs are in the distribution, and what are their licenses? Are any of them free software? There are several Corel apps included. They are either GPL, LGPL or CPL (Corel public license which is in all matters of substance the same as the Mozilla license). I guess you don't include Corel WordPerfect in the downloadable version of the CD image, but that's a non-free program from Corel which is mentioned in the Corel EULA: ... some versions of Corel LINUX may also include certain Software Programs, such Corel WordPerfect 8 for Linux and Bitstream fonts included with Corel LINUX, that are not distributed under the terms of the GPL or similar licenses that permit modification and redistribution. The fact that this text appears in the EULA that people are asked to accept in order to download Corel Linux made me assume that _some_ proprietary Corel software must have been included. Is there anything that Corel has originated which is included in the download version which Corel doesn't license to the public for modification and redistribution? Concerning Netscape: It's peculiar that the copy of Netscape Communicator included on my local installation of Red Hat 6.1 has an extremely restrictive traditional proprietary software license. (about:license) It includes almost all of the usual restrictions on proprietary software, with the possible exception of giving up the right to publish benchmarks. I thought that the contents of the standard Red Hat Linux CD were now supposed to contain only free and semi-free software, or only redistributable software, or something along those lines -- I thought that all proprietary software had been purged from Red Hat's main distribution. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: is cryptography legal in Argentina ?
Pablo De Napoli writes: Hello! I'm a debian user from Argentina. I want to ask you a question. Is it legal to use secure cryptography here in Argentina ? (for example PGP international version or ssh) I'm asking you this because I've heard that in certain countries it is forbiden. If someone knows about this , please answer my message. A good general source on international cryptography legislation is http://www.gilc.org/crypto/crypto-results.html Another survey is http://cwis.kub.nl/~frw/people/koops/lawsurvy.htm with a handy set of maps, suitable for framing, at http://cwis.kub.nl/~frw/people/koops/cls-sum.htm The study at GILC has been updated by EPIC for this year: http://www2.epic.org/reports/crypto1999.html According to these studies' sources, there are no legal restrictions on the domestic use of strong encryption in Argentina. Congratulations. :-) You might wish to consult a local lawyer and/or verify the sources given in these studies yourself, though. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL
[debian-legal added explicitly; Debian webmaster trimmed] Caspian writes: On Sat, 27 Nov 1999, Richard Stallman wrote: If the license is a free software license, then it permits you to put the software on your own ftp site and allow anyone to copy it. So that is a thing you could do about the situation. Provided that that is allowed by Corel... I do not have a site with such bandwidth to spare. :/ Perhaps someone out there would be willing to put up their dist for download, for the sole purpose of bypassing that EULA. However, I am under the -distinct- impression that Corel would consider anyone obtaining their distribution without agreeing to their EULA 'illegal'/'immoral', or in other words against their rules. You might be forgetting that the product called Corel Linux is a collection of software containing both proprietary software _and_ free software. Because this collection contains proprietary software from Corel, you do not have the legal right to redistribute it without Corel's permission. Corel probably _would_ consider people redistributing their proprietary software without their permission illegal, immoral, or against their rules. The GPL says that In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License. Corel Linux is an aggregation of software from several sources, including Debian and Corel. Not all of this software is covered by the GPL, or even by any free software license. For this reason, and this reason only, Corel might object to redistribution of the entire project. There is no indication anywhere, in the Corel Linux EULA or in any statement from Corel, that Corel objects to the free and unlimited redistribtion of the portions of Corel Linux that are free software. I've written a longer message about this on another list, and I might send portions of that message to this list. Richard, has the Free Software Foundation formed any recommendations for distributors of compilations or distributions made up of software packages which are under a variety of different licenses? What would be the most appropriate way for a distributor to explain that some, or the majority, of the components in a system were licensed under the GPL, but that the system as a whole was not? The GPLed programs within Corel Linux presumably retain all of the notices required by the GPL. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Dangerous precedent being set - possible serious violation of the GPL
[trimming RMS] Caspian writes: On Sat, 27 Nov 1999, Seth David Schoen wrote: You might be forgetting that the product called Corel Linux is a collection of software containing both proprietary software _and_ free software. Because this collection contains proprietary software from Corel, you do not have the legal right to redistribute it without Corel's permission. Good point; I DO have the legal right to distribute the parts of it that ARE free. This was actually the case with earlier versions of Red Hat Linux, for instance, which contained proprietary software, and it's the case with the retail version of SuSE today. The FTP sites for those distributions _do not_ contain the complete contents of the CD-ROMs (though they do provide a usable proper subset), and you are _not_ allowed by the license to post the entire contents of those CD-ROMs on the net. But you are certainly allowed to redistribute all of the free parts. If a license _prevented_ people from making aggregations with proprietary components, it would violate the OSD/DFSG! 9. License Must Not Contaminate Other Software The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be free software. http://www.debian.org/social_contract If Corel did not have the right to make proprietary additions (I forbear to say enhancements) to Debian, then Debian itself would violate the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Corel probably _would_ consider people redistributing their proprietary software without their permission illegal, immoral, or against their rules. ...and good for them... The Debian Project chose to collaborate with Corel. So the Debian Project should appreciate that Corel may have a perspective on proprietary software which is different from Debian's own. This certainly doesn't mean that Corel is entitled to violate the GPL -- but I really don't think it should be a Big Shock and Outrage to anybody that Corel writes proprietary software. So let's see what happens if we create a Corel Linux workalike by: A: Downloading Corel Linux B: Ripping out all the non-free software parts and C: Replacing them. then... D: Publicizing this heavily. Hm, I think someone has already done this. It was called, um... uh... oh, yeah... Debian GNU/Linux. :-) :-) OK, Corel has contributed a bunch of things under the GPL. If you (Caspian) separate those things out of Corel Linux and distribute them for some other purpose under the terms of the GPL, with the result that Corel Corporation makes _any_ complaint to you about copyright infringement, abuse, or this redistribution being against [Corel's] rules, I will send you any five O'Reilly books of your choice. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Corel Lawsuit
I would again urge everyone to consider careful the difference between - Things That Annoy You About Corel - Mistakes That Corel Made - Things That You Can Sue Corel Over Again, these are not at all the same. It seems that the problems with the Corel EULA are being used as an occasion for flaming Corel, questioning Corel's motives, impugning the competence of Corel's programmers... oh, and, of course, threatening to sue Corel. With apologies to Monty Python, it seems that the Debian Project is on the verge of saying to Corel something very like Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!. Corel has good programmers, and they have done good things for free software. They've also made some fairly serious mistakes. Some people might attribute this to the attitude of the company as a whole, and others might suspect it is an artifact of the company's decision-making processes and communication problems. (It's not always easy to explain the free software world to lawyers; I've heard the story of a lawyer who, on being shown a planned free software release, expressed grave concern at the serious loophole in the license that would allow _anybody_ -- _anybody_! -- to use and copy the code.) I don't mean to suggest any enthusiasm for the present EULA, or some of Corel's previous licensing problems; it bugs me, too, and, at the best, Corel deserves some criticism. (Perhaps they are getting a little more than some.) If you don't think you can work with Corel because of these problems, don't work with Corel. This is a fairly straightforward solution. With your code under the GPL, Corel would be free to use it on the same terms as anyone else, and I suspect that they would keep contributing various work to the community. If you see an important opportunity to clear up a misconception or an ambiguous statement, and you see Corel as a colleague, as a helpful partner, or even as an annoying rival or untrustworthy parasite, by all means, clear it up. If you want to keep credibility for Debian, the free software community, and the idea of collaborative development, don't confuse behaviors that annoy you or that you regret with behaviors that are illegal. This is a test. Some day there will be even bigger companies with even more investment in free software (no offense intended, Corel). Some of those companies will have multi-million-dollar law firms (or bigger) with lots of really experienced intellectual property lawyers, some of whom may feel that free software is ridiculous and that most of our public licenses are invalid. Think you can keep those firms there, contributing real free software under real free software licenses, and resolving your differences and misunderstanding without litigation, even if you personally don't like or don't trust those companies? If you see a deliberate and malicious GPL violation, you warn the violator, you verify, with close reading and then with the advice of a lawyer or two, that the GPL is really being violated, and the problem doesn't get fixed, then, by all means, bring a lawsuit. But I don't think that most people have even begun that process. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: Corel Lawsuit
Amy Fong writes: In article [EMAIL PROTECTED], Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would again urge everyone to consider careful the difference between - Things That Annoy You About Corel - Mistakes That Corel Made - Things That You Can Sue Corel Over Again, these are not at all the same. It seems that the problems with the Corel EULA are being used as an occasion for flaming Corel, questioning Corel's motives, impugning the competence of Corel's programmers... oh, and, of course, threatening to sue Corel. All 3 items are important for consideration. The past behaviour and related items do indicate a number of relevant items including whether or not they are sincere, whether or not they take comments for granted and just ignore it, whether or not they're interested in a working relationship and so on. It's not just a simple matter of whether or not they should be sued, rather, it should be a case of where should things stand between the two parties invovled and how should future relationships be defined. That makes good sense. But note the subject of this thread: Corel Lawsuit. And note the suggestion of several people, including yourself, that suing Corel is/may be a good idea. Figuring out where things should stand and how future relationships should be defined is helpful and appropriate. Threatening to sue is -- aside from making a pretty final and irrevocable decision about the nature of the relationship -- not appropriate, unless you first try to resolve the situation out of court, and then only upon the advice of a lawyer. (The failure to send a demand letter and then wait to allow it to be acted upon is looked upon _very_ negatively by judges. And a polite, non-threatening letter is more appropriate than a demand letter, especially if you're not _sure_ that you have a cause of action. This is true whether or not you despise and distrust the other party.) It took me about four or five years of my experience writing polemics to learn how to write a polite and focused angry letter. It's still not necessarily automatic. But such a thing exists, and whoever has not at least sent one to Corel is _very_, _very_, _very_ premature in mentioning lawsuits. The lawyers at Corel are probably scrambling, now, figuring how they would respond if someone sued them. There are more useful things, all around, that they could be doing. Corel has good programmers, and they have done good things for free software. They've also made some fairly serious mistakes. Some people might attribute Consider this: they consistently make mistakes wrt licensing. How do you perceive this? Clearly it seems that Bruce has been trying to show them how things should be done and yet they completely fail to listen. What does this tell you about their willingness to learn? What does this tell you about their level on sincerity? I don't know what conclusions I would reach about their sincerity. I perceive Corel's mistakes as creating a very negative impression, of the company in general and also of its free software efforts. I lose respect for them. this to the attitude of the company as a whole, and others might suspect it is an artifact of the company's decision-making processes and communication I hate to say this but if you want to put things in that perspective, then I can argue that M$ is treated too harshly but I've got better things to do with my time so I'll stop here. I have seen Microsoft be treated too harshly on occasion. It's not a logical impossibility. A more important point: I have a friend who is a programmer at Microsoft. He's not engaged in any vast conspiracies to maintain a monopoly or suppress free software or anything. He just hacks on (excuse me, engineers according to high standards of quality and reliability) one of Microsoft's applications. Now, somewhere else in Redmond, there are people who are making business and strategy decisions about what to do with his code, how to increase market share, and so on. So the company is a complex entity with many parts, some of which might be ruthless and unethical, and others of which might be clueless and narrow-minded, and others of which are just full of programmers who write regular programs in regular programming languages. The aggregate result is the Microsoft we know. If Microsoft does something perverse, I don't attribute it to my developer friend, although I might make fun of him over it. :-) Microsoft even employs some former CS professors and pays some of them to do academic research. The place isn't _all_ lawyers and marketing, though it sometimes feels like it. :-) (One of the nice things about free software is that business and strategy decisions made by third parties produce much less harm to the end-user.) problems. (It's not always easy to explain the free software world to lawyers; I've heard the story of a lawyer who, on being shown a planned free software release
Re: is this free?
Bruce Perens writes: From: Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] I had put up a web page with my objections, and sent private e-mail about it to the OSI board. Sorry, Seth, that was not what I was talking about. We did a public review of the ATT license on license-discuss. Where were you with this objection while that was going on? Sorry, I try to follow and participate in license-discuss; I guess I might have been busy with something else at the time. (I went on two extended business trips in the past couple of months; it could have been during one of those trips, and I might not have seen it.) If I read carefully any license that says that licensees have to follow US export laws, I would object to it under the OSD. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: is this free?
Bruce Perens writes: From: Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] The OSI does worry about export restrictions as license conditions; that was a problem with the original Apple Public Source License. There is still some controversy about that license, but the OSI got Apple to remove the export-restriction language from the license entirely. The problem with the APSL export language was that it broadened the scope of U.S. law to cover other countries, etc. The ATT language does not. It says you assure ATT you won't violate U.S. export laws. This: 1. Lets ATT off the hook if you do - very important. Users should perhaps have to affirm that they are aware of the export laws when they download the software -- but _not_ promise to abide by them as a license condition! Some software distributors make you say I am aware of the export laws and some make you say I promise to abide by the export laws. There is a _huge_ difference between the two policies; the former is doing you a service by preventing you from getting in trouble by accident, while the latter is adding new restrictions on your behavior. (Whether these restrictions are new in the sense of creating previously nonexistent obligations is a very contentious political debate. But, as I will mention below, there is a practical consequence: there could be more or different penalties associated with violating the restrictions.) 2. Only applies if you violate U.S. laws in their scope. If you export the software from Europe, it's not a violation. The US government shows a tendency toward believing that the export laws have been violated when code written by US citizens ends up outside of the US _at all_ (in places where the government doesn't want it to be), even if there are theoretically legal means by which it could have gotten there. (I'm thinking of the investigation of Phil Zimmermann.) So maybe the US will even say at some point that US export laws are extraterritorial. The license certainly doesn't say anything about whether the laws are extraterritorial or not. There's no cryptography in there, anyway. I don't think there was any BXA-restricted cryptography in Apple's release of Darwin either. The applicable export restrictions are not the controls on cryptography but the prohibitions against providing technical assistance to the state sponsors of terrorism and their citizens. I believe that there there are currently seven countries on that list. I had a very broad objection to the whole idea of writing any export restrictions into a free software license at all. My original statement of that objection was a little long-windered. Let me see whether I can express it more concisely with an example. Suppose that there is some supposedly free software package which is useful to someone in country Foo, whose government is a state sponsor of terrorism, or country Bar, whose government isn't a state sponsor of terrorism, but, if this package perhaps contains cryptography, to whose citizens the US nonetheless makes it illegal to send this package. Disbelieving in the legitimacy of those restrictions, free software user Baz, a US citizen, sends copies of the package to friends in Foo and Bar. If Baz is discovered by the US government, and it's in a bad mood, he might be punished for violating the Arms Export Control Act or various other export restriction laws. OK, Baz understood what he was doing, and hopefully he encrypted the package before exporting it -- but perhaps he gets caught somehow and prosecuted. There's not much he can do about that. But now the author of the package, or a contributor, can sue Baz for _copyright infringement_ for exporting the package illegally, because this violates the license terms and so infringes copyright! So, not only is Baz potentially criminally liable for violating export laws, but he is then _also_ potentially liable for a separate civil copyright penalty. That means that the copyright holder, by writing export law into the license, has helped _enforce_ the export law by creating a new penalty for violating it. It's not reasonable to say that free software authors will never sue people for exporting packages. Free software authors are human, too -- or sometimes corporate. Perhaps they don't like Baz for other reasons, or the government encourages them to sue, or they have political beliefs of their own and may disapprove of Baz's decision to help make the software more widely available. Or they may just want to send a message or help protect their copyright. If a restriction in a license would _never_ be enforced by a copyright holder, it shouldn't be in the license. That's why the OSD/DFSG says that the license must not discriminate; I said concerning that APSL that if your license helps enforce a discriminatory law, by making people promise to discriminate or by creating an extra penalty for people who don't discriminate, then your license _does_ discriminate. I
Re: is this free?
Bruce Perens writes: From: Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Some software distributors make you say I am aware of the export laws and some make you say I promise to abide by the export laws. There is a _huge_ difference between the two policies; the former is doing you a service by preventing you from getting in trouble by accident, while the latter is adding new restrictions on your behavior. Where was this argument when the license was being reviewed? As far as I can tell, we got to a point where everybody decided it was Open Source although one person had a complaint about its being tear-open. I had put up a web page with my objections, and sent private e-mail about it to the OSI board. It was reprinted on LinuxToday and linked from slashdot. The OSI agreed with my concern, and Apple removed the clause from the APSL. I don't think license-discuss existed yet. You can read the slashdot discussion: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/03/26/2142207mode=thread Actually, you posted a few messages in that discussion. (A lot of people missed my point there; I wasn't proposing that Apple violate the law, but that Apple not help penalize or threaten other people who do violate the law -- or users in countries with which the US has political disputes.) The important thing it does here is let ATT off from being an accomplice. I don't believe that ascertaining that someone is merely _aware_ of the law lets you off from being an accomplice. But I'm not terribly comfortable with this clause. Can it be that US law requires private citizens and companies to help enforce the law by extracting promises like this? When I go to the hardware store and buy a tool or a dangerous chemical, I don't have to promise not to use it to harm someone. The store assumes that I have responsibility for my own actions. When I buy a BART ticket, it doesn't say on the back This ticket is void if you use it to go to the East Bay in order to commit a crime. I could make many more analogies of cases in which people are willing to do things for me without first getting me to promise to obey laws. Some of these analogies would be closer to the case of distributing software than others. With free software licenses, there is a concerted effort to be idealistic and also to attain high standards about things like being nondiscriminatory. So it's appropriate to be uncomfortable about finding a clause in a free software license which might sound perfectly reasonable and ordinary in a proprietary software license. If it doesn't meet the standards and ends up being discriminatory, it's still not a free software license even if it is necessary for the convenience or protection of the software author. (When the APSL controversy came around, I _almost_ wanted to start a thread Can corporations write free software? -- because some people were telling me that corporate lawyers would ultimately always insist on various conditions that sounded bad to me, and would reject the body of existing free software licenses as too risky. Obviously, lots of corporations _are_ contributing to free software projects under traditional licenses -- with the approval of their lawyers. The question is whether one set of lawyers or the other is misinformed, since they obviously seem to disagree with one another. Unfortunately, that thread wouldn't accomplish anything useful without the participation of some of those actual corporate lawyers.) I don't think there was any BXA-restricted cryptography in Apple's release of Darwin either. I'm sorry, I was not aware that Apple got in any sort of trouble about Darwin - and if so, it's still on the net under the APSL, so what has changed? No, I mean that I objected to the original APSL, too, even though there was no crypto in what they were proposing to release under it. But now the author of the package, or a contributor, can sue Baz for _copyright infringement_ for exporting the package illegally, because this violates the license terms and so infringes copyright! You'd have to be convicted of breaking the export law first. This is not like a civil rights violation - no conviction, no reason to sue. I don't think this would necessarily stop copyright holders from using their position to threaten people over their export activities. And I don't think that copyright holders should have that power, with a free software license. Even though a conviction under criminal law might be necessary for a justified lawsuit, lots of people are willing to bring unjustified lawsuits, even as a means of harassment or to try to get someone to settle. The protections provided to defendents under civil law are much less extensive than the protections under criminal law. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have
Re: is this free?
Joey Hess writes: Bruce Perens wrote: And in any case, whichever of obliation 2a and 2b you choose to fulfill, it requires notifying ATT This is also in the APSL and IBM licenses. What was considered non-free were the ones that required you to send them email on _every_ modification, that was judged to be too great a hardship and this was the compromise. Hm, I didn't realize that. So what if I release a program under one of these licenses, and am promptly hit and killed by a bus on the way home? You can't contact me and you haven't before, so arn't you now prohibited from modifying the software? That doesn't sound very free. Presumably you have heirs? They inherit your intellectual property, too. One of the problems with free software licenses which require you to _do something_ is that they assume that the means of doing it and the circumstances in which you can do it stay available. There are a lot of scenarios in which something major changes (the software author going out of business, or dying intestate; the Internet crashing), and then the interpetation of the license becomes pretty difficult. Really simple licenses like the MIT license just don't have those problems. You have some permissions, and you always have them, no matter what else happens. If someone else doesn't like that, that person will have to sue you. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: is this free?
Henning Makholm writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bruce Perens) writes: Regarding the monitor the web site thing, I can't think of another good way for them to notify you if there's a claim, They don't have to. They could simply say: To the best of our present knowledge we have the only copyright to this software. We can't absolutely guarantee that, however, and kindly ask you to remember that this license ouly give you OUR permission to copy the software. If a third party can demonstrate a copyright claim on the software, you'll need HIS permission to copy in addition to ours. Then they wouldn't need to revoke anything, and that is IMO the only free approach to that kind of eventualities. I felt that the IBM Public License did an excellent job of expressing this basic position. It says: Recipient understands that although each Contributor grants the licenses to its Contributions set forth herein, no assurances are provided by any Contributor that the Program does not infringe the patent or other intellectual property rights of any other entity. Each Contributor disclaims any liability to Recipient for claims brought by any other entity based on infringement of intellectual property rights or otherwise. As a condition to exercising the rights and licenses granted hereunder, each Recipient hereby assumes sole responsibility to secure any other intellectual property rights needed, if any. [...] Lovelier writing on free software from a major multinational corporation I have never yet heard. This is pretty close to what someone on slashdot proposed as a quitclaim license a while back. (This is an analogy to quitclaim deeds in real estate, where you say something like I give up to you whatever rights _I_ have in this land -- but I can't absolutely promise that someone _else_ might not also have some rights, which you would need to discuss with that person.) The IBM Public License doesn't even contain a third-party termination clause; instead, _commercial_ distributors have to agree to indemnify everyone else against the possible infringing consequences of their commercial distribution. This seems to me to be the best of all possible worlds. Again, corporate lawyers would have to decide whether they believe that this strategy provides adequate protection -- but I think it's an awfully good model of the way things might be done. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I Temp. http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | have leisure; for perhaps you will down: http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF) | not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: is this free?
Joey Hess writes: This license is said to be OSI certified Open Source, but I'd like a second opinion. It's too much legalese for me to deal with this morning: http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/license/ Who said that was OSI certified? It seems unlikely and counterintuitive to me, and it's not listed in OSI's current Approved Licenses list. It looks like a really cool package, but I think it's only semi-free. The OSI does worry about export restrictions as license conditions; that was a problem with the original Apple Public Source License. There is still some controversy about that license, but the OSI got Apple to remove the export-restriction language from the license entirely. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/| have leisure; for perhaps you will http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF)| not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: is this free?
Joey Hess writes: http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/download.html: graphviz is now OSI Certified Open Source Software. I'm checking with the OSI Board about that. I think there is likely some mistake. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/| have leisure; for perhaps you will http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF)| not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: mutt no longer in non-us?
Brian Ristuccia writes: On Thu, Nov 18, 1999 at 11:31:19AM -0800, Seth David Schoen wrote: Brian Ristuccia writes: Wouldn't seizing said machines violate the electronic communication privacy act or something similar by interefering with email on those machines as well? The ECPA doesn't prevent police from seizing computer hardware when they have a warrant, although it would be fun if it did. Hmm.. Looks like you may be right. Doies the ECPA offer hardware used to run a mail server any protection from civil asset forfeiture? The ECPA is about privacy, and it has most to do with restricting non-governmental or unauthorized governmental invasions of privacy, not with limiting legally authorized government actions. Indeed, since ECPA, the scope of those has gotten larger (e.g. through CALEA). If someone wants to seize your hardware in a civil proceeding, and that hardware contains private e-mail or other personal information, it might be a good idea to try to bring a legal action to prevent disclosure or abuse of that information. In that case, you would want to consult a lawyer about the best way to do that. A good book with a recent historical perspective on seizure of computers in the US is _The Hacker Crackdown_ (by Bruce Sterling). Operation Sundevil was almost ten years ago, though, and a lot of things have changed since then. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/| have leisure; for perhaps you will http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF)| not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: mutt no longer in non-us?
Brian Ristuccia writes: Wouldn't seizing said machines violate the electronic communication privacy act or something similar by interefering with email on those machines as well? The ECPA doesn't prevent police from seizing computer hardware when they have a warrant, although it would be fun if it did. I'll personally go as far as to say interferance with the free distribution of software that I've written myself represents a severe and criminal violation of my civil rights. DJB seems to agree with me, but his case is still under appeal. Professor Bernstein has taken a different approach, in that he has refrained from distribution of Snuffle (although it's available from various places now) and filed a lawsuit in which he seeks injunctions against prosecution. (He says that the _existence_ of certain regulations is a violation of his rights -- a facial challenge. It's amazing that he is succeeding so far, because courts rarely approve of such reasoning.) Your version seems to be to publish software and, if you are prosecuted or otherwise given trouble, argue that your rights have been violated. If Professor Bernstein continues to win his case, the precedent it sets could be very helpful for programmers in general -- who could try to use it to argue that government interference with the free software development process was grounds for a first amendment lawsuit. :-) -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/| have leisure; for perhaps you will http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF)| not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: non-free, LZW, RSA, and mp3
Brian Ristuccia writes: Also, as best I know, the only time RSA permits its tecnology to be used is in not-for-profit programs compiled with the RSAREF library. Not all the programs in non-free do this. But the programs that use RSA without RSAREF are in non-us, and using the RSA algorithm without permission from RSADSI is not illegal under local laws outside of the US. Following the same logic, perhaps the Debian project could distribute software implementing _any_ patented algorithm from servers located in a jurisdiction known not to recognize algorithm patents, period. The existence of non-us suggests some willingness to try to work around some national laws (primarily with respect to crypto), and the same thing might be done with respect to patented algorithms. Richard Stallman once gave an interesting discussion of the distinction between free software _in general_ and free software _for a particular person_. It seems to me that the distinction has not yet been clarified enough for a world with many different jurisdictions recognizing vastly different legal rights. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/| have leisure; for perhaps you will http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF)| not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: SSH never free
Wichert Akkerman writes: Previously Ben Pfaff wrote: The TSS encryption algorithm implementation in tss.c is copyright Timo Rinne and Cirion Oy. It is used with permission, and permission has been given for anyone to use it for any purpose as part of ssh. This violates the DFSG. Clearly. However, comments in the current (non-free; 1.2.27) ssh1 sources include notes like # Revision 1.42 1998/03/27 17:28:57 kivinen # Removed TSS. and TSS has not been supported in ssh1 since that time. (I don't know quite why it was dropped: more likely security concerns than licensing.) Since the support for conventional ciphers in ssh1 is fairly modular, it should be pretty easy for someone to remove it in order to produce a free package. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/| have leisure; for perhaps you will http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF)| not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: SSH never free
Brian Ristuccia writes: On Sun, Oct 03, 1999 at 09:18:27PM -0600, Richard Stallman wrote: It looks like that version of ssh really was free software. I am surprised. Patent issues still make it not free for most people in the US. For less than a year, if they use RSA plus Blowfish. Lots of people outside the U.S. have been developing free software using RSA for a while. ssh1 is not inherently non-free software -- the patent restrictions are temporary and specific to a single country. (And most people in that country don't want to contribute to ssh1 during the next year _anyway_, because they might be prosecuted for export law violations.) ssh is already considered non-US and non-free in Debian, so its situation can only improve from there. :-) I don't see that a soon-to-expire limitation in a single country (where development generally does not occur anyway) is necessarily a reason for the world to abandon a free codebase of a very useful and important program. Considering that the older free ssh1 version probably has bugs, and the rather odious license on cs.hut.fi's ssh2, lsh remains a very worthwhile effort. Sure. An alternative would be to try to fix those bugs, which is perhaps feasible considering that the source code of all subsequent versions is available at no cost. It's probably straightforward to have a clean-room effort to fix known bugs using the released versions of ssh1: (1) Team A reads changelogs and/or makes diffs between released versions of ssh1. (2) Team A studies these to produce a high-level detailed description of each fixed bug and the general form of the solution, without including any code. (If a lawyer approves, perhaps Team A may be in the U.S. and send its work out of the U.S. by paper mail.) (3) Team B (outside the U.S., and not particularly familiar with the ssh1 source code) reads Team A's list of bugs, and implements fixes, then posts the result on an FTP site. (4) Team A studies the fixes and pronounces judgment on whether or not each fix correctly repairs a particular bug. These judgments could be a list of Yes or No and, again with the approval of a lawyer, sent back by paper mail. (5) When Team A considers Team B's work correct, the general public tests the implementation; perhaps some other team with relevant experience and interest in a free ssh1 also audits the result (e.g. the OpenBSD team, if they're interested). This is certainly a roundabout process, but allows the good parts of the original free ssh1 code base to be preserved. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] | And do not say, I will study when I http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/| have leisure; for perhaps you will http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF)| not have leisure. -- Pirke Avot 2:5
Re: SGI OpenVault
Brian Ristuccia writes: Problems: [...] * US Legislation Imperialism (7) That paragraph is a lot worse than the Export Law Assurances paragraph in the original APSL. 7. Compliance with Laws; Non-Infringement. Recipient shall comply with all applicable laws and regulations in connection with use and distribution of the Subject Software, including but not limited to, all export and import control laws and regulations of the U.S. government and other countries. [...] It requires compliance with _all_ laws of any jurisdiction, not just export laws; depending on the legal definition of in connection with, it might discriminate against use of the software for an illegal purpose. (So, for example, it could then become a license violation to use this software to help criticize certain governments.) The clause which requires people to follow all export and import control laws is ambiguous, and could be construed as a bizarre inclusion by reference of _all_ trade laws in the entire world. -- Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] They said look at the light we're giving you, / And the darkness that we're saving you from. -- Dar Williams, The Great Unknown http://ishmael.geecs.org/~sigma/ (personal) http://www.loyalty.org/ (CAF)
Re: The APSL and Export Controls
Chip Salzenberg writes: According to Seth David Schoen: If the current OSD is all they see, there's a lot of room for confusion, perhaps because of the number of things the DFSG took for granted. OSI has never made an explicit or implicit contract to call something Open Source just because it meets the OSD. So the OSD really is still just a set of guidelines. But the guidelines are so good that most of the time they need no great amount of interpretation. Well, it says on the opensource.org home page that the OSD sets the conditions for use of this mark. It's true that the branding program page then says that the OSD itself is irrelevant and all entities that write their own licenses need to ask the OSI for permission to call them Open Source, but many people don't even notice that part. (That's partly because the text of the OSD itself doesn't mention anything about the branding program.) I think if you picked 10 Linux users at random, 9 or more of them would probably say that meeting the terms of OSD 1-9 was enough to use the Open Source mark. I also think that, as more companies write public licenses of their own, these problems are going to become more significant. The average individual software developer can't easily find loopholes in the OSD, but the average corporate intellectual property lawyer can. Therefore, you might want to emphasize on opensource.org that the use of the mark is permitted _when the OSI judges_ that a license is Open Source -- not just when a developer believes that the terms of the OSD have been met. It's easy to get the impression that the lawyers who write many of these licenses don't _actually_ want to give up some sort of control over the code, and are looking for loopholes in the OSD. True. That's their job. OTOH, there's a reason they're called corporate counsel -- they give counsel, but they need not be obeyed if other factors are considered more important by management. True. But it may be difficult for management to make that decision. (Then again, that's _their_ job.) If Open Source is going to continue to be a useful and meaningful term, I think the OSI needs to be careful to hold users of the term to high standards; otherwise, the term could gradually become diluted in many different directions. That is our intent. A recent license was turned down because it might *possibly* have met the letter of the OSD, but it definitely did *not* meet the OSD's intent. Thank you for doing that. Good luck continuing to do so. -- Seth David Schoen / [EMAIL PROTECTED] He said, This is what the king who will reign over you will do. And they said, Nay, but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations. (1 Sam 8) http://ishmael.geecs.org/~sigma/ http://www.loyalty.org/
Re: The APSL and Export Controls
Chip Salzenberg writes: According to Joey Hess: I think you're quite right, this is another thing that makes the APSL non-free. There's even precedent; IIRC packages have been kicked out of debian in the past for having copyrights that explicitly said they couldn't be used in embargoed countries. For those of you who don't kno me: I'm a member of the board of OSI. Speaking for myself, not on behalf of OSI: Yes, this part of the APSL needs to change. We're working with Apple on APSL mods, and the export limit provision is already on the agenda. Unfortunately, Apple _is_ a large corporation; I don't expect to see changes in the APSL quickly. It'll take a few months at least before APSL 1.1 (or 2.0? :-)) is released. I appreciate your interest in this, and I'm glad that the OSI is aware of the issue. I would suggest that there are larger problems in the OSD itself: the Debian Free Software Guidelines were written for the benefit of people already working within the free software community, to try to articulate some quantity of shared understanding about what properties were characteristic of free software. But this document abruptly moved from a set of Guidelines to a Definition, which is now being used as though it were a legal document by many people and entities who are completely unfamiliar with free software. If the current OSD is all they see, there's a lot of room for confusion, perhaps because of the number of things the DFSG took for granted. It is a very tricky situation in many ways. Now that there is an Open Source bandwagon to be jumped on, the number of different public licenses is exploding, and many of these licenses seem to be coming from an entirely different direction than (say) the GPL. This is a recipe for endless controversy, if only because the lawyers writing each new public license seem to be able to dream up new license terms which never even crossed the minds of the people who conferred on the DFSG. It's easy to get the impression that the lawyers who write many of these licenses don't _actually_ want to give up some sort of control over the code, and are looking for loopholes in the OSD. (I'm not picking on Apple here; I got precisely the same impression when I was asked to comment on a draft license for a project in my group at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. There, as I understand it, the license had been written from scratch by a lawyer unfamiliar with free software and Open Source, who simply referred to the OSD as his only guide. The result was that, where the OSD did not explicitly forbid some condition, the license would include it.) It's really not a good thing that people would be searching for loopholes this way, but I expect the problem will only get worse. If Open Source is going to continue to be a useful and meaningful term, I think the OSI needs to be careful to hold users of the term to high standards; otherwise, the term could gradually become diluted in many different directions. Incidentally, the Why this matters part of my essay was added late last night in a hurry, and hasn't been edited nearly as much as the rest. I just wanted to have something there to try to indicate (to Mac developers unfamiliar with free software) where I was coming from in criticizing Apple's actions. What it most needs is to be made a little shorter. :-) -- Seth David Schoen / [EMAIL PROTECTED] He said, This is what the king who will reign over you will do. And they said, Nay, but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations. (1 Sam 8) http://ishmael.geecs.org/~sigma/ http://www.loyalty.org/
