Re: discussion with the FSF: GPLv3, GFDL, Nexenta
On Mon, 2007-06-04 at 02:45 +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote: What I was trying to show is that the relevance of a copyright case brought against you in a jurisdiction outside of your immediate concern is zero, for all practical matters; that means you can simply ignore it, and nothing Bad will happen. Therefore, I don't think it makes it anything even remotely representing non-freeness. This is not true. There is such a thing as comity, in which those who have won judgments in one court can get another court to recognize the judgment and compel payment. This happens in international contexts, even without a treaty. For example, if a French court issues a judgment against a US citizen, a US court will at least seriously consider giving effect to the judgment. And this happens *without* anything like retrying the case. In federal states, such as the US, this is particularly serious, because the federal constitution *compels* states to give effect to each other's court judgments. Thomas signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Kernel Firmware issue: are GPLed sourceless firmwares legal to distribute ?
Anthony Towns aj@azure.humbug.org.au writes: On Tue, Oct 17, 2006 at 03:49:25PM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote: The answer to the question in the subject is simple: NO. Thankyou for your opinion. I note you seemed to neglect to mention that you're not a lawyer. So, do you have anything to say about what Nathanael said? How does his not being a lawyer make his statement false? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: cdrtools
Daniel Schepler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Saturday 12 August 2006 02:47 am, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: Daniel Schepler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: According to the GPL, section 0: The act of running the Program is not restricted... And since dynamic linking is done at the time the program is run, this would appear to me to be what applies. In particular, it appears to me that you could satisfy the GPL and still dynamically link against a non-free library, and distribute both, by invoking the mere aggregation clause of section 2. This does not mean that anything that happens when you run the program is not restricted. For example, the act of running GNU cp and sed is not restricted, but that cann't possibly mean that the GPL gives you carte blanche to go ahead and violate the GPL through use of cp and sed. I'm afraid I don't see what your point is, here. Of course the GPL allowing me to use a GPL'd httpd to distribute non-free software doesn't automatically mean I would be blameless if I used it to distribute, say, a non-free program foo linked against libmad. The point, I think, is that distributing such a thing as the non-free binary of foo along with a package of a shared libmad is essentially the same as distributing a binary with libmad linked in statically, which is clearly disallowed. Both are just different ways of distributing the combined work of foo + libmad. Yes, I agree completely. This seems to be the exact opposite of what you said in the quoted text above. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Non-DD's in debian-legal
Theodore Tso [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: However, I *do* believe that d-l is a cesspit, and I for one am very glad that in its current incarnation, it is not at all binding and has no value other than being a debating socity --- a debating socity that I am very glad that I can avoid, thank you very much. I suspect that if it were confined to Debian developers, this problem would be much reduced. Not eliminated, but reduced. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Who can make binding legal agreements
Russ Allbery [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: John Goerzen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Sure. SPI owns many of the machines that Debian owns. If any of these machines are being used to distribute this software, as I think is likely, then SPI could be liable. Oh, very good point. I hadn't thought of this. No. SPI is liable under the terms of copyright law; at most, it can be told to stop distributing things. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A new practical problem with invariant sections?
Craig Sanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: the GPL says you must include the full machine-readable/editable source code, so if you can't do that in a given medium (say, a chip with 1KB capacity) then GPL software is not free in any medium. Of course, but that isn't an imposition on changes. If a GPL'd program comes with a bunch of Japanese text, then I could always remove that text if I must transmit the program on ASCII. I might have a weaker less useful program, but I can at least do something. I might also translate the Japanese into English and distribute that instead. I have many options. By contrast, if there is an invariant section written in Japanese, I cannot remove it, I cannot distribute a translation instead, I must instead simply not transmit the document *at all* if I am stuck with an ASCII-only medium. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A new practical problem with invariant sections?
Craig Sanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: why are you obsessing with a convenience issue and pretending that it has ANY BEARING AT ALL on freedom issues? it doesn't. I think if you'll look at the header you'll see that this is about a new practical problem. If you aren't interested in the practical problems, then you don't need to worry about them. Those of us who are interested in them should be able to discuss them, right? We have also been told by some that the DFSG should be interpreted only to require permission to make useful modifications. If that is correct, then it immediately becomes relevant whether a given modification is useful, and whether that modification is prohibited. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: The Curious Case Of The Mountainous Molehill
Craig Sanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, Feb 13, 2006 at 01:42:44PM -0700, Hubert Chan wrote: 3a only says that a binary has to be *accompanied* with the source code. Hence it can be on a separate medium. So you can distribute your 1KB chip, stapled to a CD-ROM that contains the source, and still comply with the terms of the GPL. you can do the same with GFDL documents. e.g. the stupid coffee cup example so popular with you zealots - if you can't fit the invariant sections on the cup itself, then print it on paper and include it in the box. problem solved. Of course you can distribute it. What you cannot do is *modify* it in a particular way (or rather, any way at all). The DFSG requires the right to *modify*. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A new practical problem with invariant sections?
Craig Sanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: once again: you *can* modify an invariant section by patching it. the GFDL does not say you can not modify at all, it says you can not delete or change these small secondary sections, but you can add your own comments to them. A patched version of the manual, which omits the invariant section, cannot be distributed. no, you can not steal credit for someone else's work, or gag someone by removing their words, nor can you put your own words in their mouth. you do have the freedom to add your own words commenting on theirs. i.e. modification-by-patch is allowed. This is true, but it is irrelevant. The DFSG does not only say that I can add my words to the original; it requires that the license preserve my ability to modify it. Of course, the license can require attributions of credit and notice that a change was made; the GPL requires these and causes no problem. for a document, that is more than adequate. hell, it's good enough for actual software according to the DFSG. It doesn't matter whether it's adequate in your opinion; the DFSG demands modifiability. oh, and once again (because i *KNOW* you'll try to obfuscate the crucial fact about invariant sections, you do it every time the argument gets to this point) - AN INVARIANT SECTION CAN *ONLY* BE A SECONDARY SECTION. That's certainly true; nobody has challenged that. However, the DFSG does not just say that the primary parts of the work need to be modifiable; it says that the whole thing must be. Use of the word bullshit constitutes a violation of the policy for this mailing list. your offensive presence is a violation of policy, but hey - i'll let that slide. Whether my presence is a violation of policy is irrelevant to the question of your use of the word bullshit. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A new practical problem with invariant sections?
Craig Sanders [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: don't be an idiot. you only have to keep the invariant sections if you are DISTRIBUTING a copy. you can do whatever you want with your own copy. Right, so you can't *distribute* a copy on an ASCII-only medium, even of the English translation of a Japanese manual, if the Japanese version... Oh, never mind. Craig is not listening, he's just vomiting words out his mouth. Sorry. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco d'Itri) writes: On Nov 13, Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think the best reason to ask or require contributors to licenses their papers in a DFSG form is so that Debian can distribute the papers as part of Debian. I think this is an awful reason, considering that Debian already contains too many non-software packages. I'm sorry, I was under the impression that every package in Debian was software. Are you confusing software and computer programs? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco d'Itri) writes: On Nov 13, Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm sorry, I was under the impression that every package in Debian was software. Are you confusing software and computer programs? No, I just do not believe that this specious distinction is useful. And yet, here's a case where it would be useful! Are you saying that Debian has too much documentation? What is the non-computer-program which we have too much of? I would venture to say that *most* of the archive is non-programs: web pages, documentation, and all kind of other such stuff. Could you prepare a list of which man pages you think we should drop? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco d'Itri) writes: On Nov 13, Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Are you saying that Debian has too much documentation? What is the non-computer-program which we have too much of? No, I am saying that debian has too many stuff which is not programs nor their related documentation, like e-zines, books, etc. It seems to me that the papers at a Debian conference are almost all related to programs in Debian. I haven't been to a conference, so maybe they are actually about beer, religion, and porn. Personally, I'd like to read the papers. It's a shame that Debian can't distribute them to me. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco d'Itri) writes: Personally, I'd like to read the papers. It's a shame that Debian can't distribute them to me. Debian does not want, it's quite a different issue. Debian does not want what? To distribute them? Hogwash. I'd be happy to upload them. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
Henning Makholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Scripsit Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] It seems to me that the papers at a Debian conference are almost all related to programs in Debian. You expect no contributions about release procedures, bug report management, the NM process, dealing with disappearing maintainers, models for collaborations with upstream authors, port status and buildds, NMU policies and etiquette, etc? All of that seems to be related to programs in Debian. Who knows? I can see no good reason not to distribute it. We should be distributing the software which implements all these things anyway. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Licenses for DebConf6
I think the best reason to ask or require contributors to licenses their papers in a DFSG form is so that Debian can distribute the papers as part of Debian. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDDL, OpenSolaris, Choice-of-venue and the star package ...
Henning Makholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: | The Covered Code is a commercial item, as that term is defined in | 48 C.F.R. 2.101 (Oct. 1995), consisting of commercial computer | software and commercial computer software documentation, as such | terms are used in 48 C.F.R. 12.212 (Sept. 1995). Consistent with 48 | C.F.R. 12.212 and 48 C.F.R. 227.7202-1 through 227.7202-4 (June | 1995), all U.S. Government End Users acquire Covered Code with only | those rights set forth herein. I have managed to find out what C.F.R. means and to locate the text of the referenced sections, completely without becoming wiser about what that text is supposed to achieve (and whether a private party *can* at all stipulate a different application of the U.S. federal administration's _internal_ purchasing regulations than would otherwise be used) ... CFR means the Code of Federal Regulations, which are implementing administrative rules (with the force of law) for statutes. In this case, the point is only about US Government End Users, a specific category of users, and the provisions of US law which require special copyright thingies to be said like this. The private party *can* make this stipulation, but only because the internal purchasing regulations *grant* that right to private parties. Also, CFR is not just internal purchasing regulations; the CFR has the force of law about just about everything the regulatory state is concerned with. You can read the text at http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re:
Michael K. Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Um, it is true that the rules for interpreting the meaning of licenses are more or less the same as the rules for interpreting contracts. It does not follow that licenses are therefore contracts. The words license and contract are indeed not synonymous under law. But the law applicable to offers of contract containing grants of license is contract law (or the equivalent codes in civil law systems). You're speaking too vaguely. The law applicable to offers of contract is of course contract law. It does not follow that the GPL is thus an offer of contract. Indeed, it explicitly disclaims any such intention itself. It would be a curious offer of contract indeed that labelled itself not an offer of contract. Huh? What about the license as just what it purports to be: a license? You're a little bit late to the party. Check the debian-legal archives for debate and case law out the yin-yang. There's no such thing as a copyright-based license. I didn't call it a copyright-based license. I said it's a license. There is a thing you are not considering: it is a unilateral grant of conditional permission. This is a perfectly well-traveled area of law. Also part of contract law; and not applicable to the GPL, which does not lack for acceptance or consideration. Thread at http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/12/msg00209.html . I don't care what is part of contract law. I care if the GPL has the legal status of a contract. You keep discussing *other* questions instead of that one. The GPL is a unilateral grant of permission, a concept which is independent of contract (whether you lump it together with contracts, in one thing called contract law is irrelevant to me). A unilateral grant of permission lacks the features of contract, but is still a perfectly real thing. Estoppel (which you have noted) indeed attaches upon such grants of permission: having granted me permission to enter your land, you cannot then sue me for (say) trespass. If your grant of permission to enter your land was simply a unilateral grant, it is not a contract, it is a grant of permission. It is also binding on you: having granted me permission, you cannot then sue me for trespass when I take you up on it. Now a grant of permission can be revoked, which is a different question. If the FSF turned nasty, could they revoke the permission? The question here is likely one of reliance. If I have relied on a future-tense permission (perhaps if you told me you may enter my land forever) then to the extent of my reliance, you can't sue me for trespass. The bindingness of such things is tricky, and nobody knows how far it goes if the FSF actually attempted to revoke the permissions given. Indeed, for this reason the FSF acquires copyright through a contract with authors such that the authors retain permanently the right to distribute their work under any terms they like, and in which the FSF is contractually bound to distribute only under free software licenses. In this way, the FSF can assure authors and the world that its hands are tied and one need not worry about such a revocation of permission. (This is relevant, because a legal judgment against the FSF could result in its assets being transferred to some nasty person.) But the point is really almost irrelevant. If the GPL is actually a contract and not a grant of permission, then what follows? If you have agreed to the contract, it's binding, and that's that. If you have not, then there is no arrangement under which you are permitted to distribute the software, and so you can be sued for copyright violation by the FSF. Since this is exactly the state of affairs which the grant-of-permission argument claims would obtain, what is the practical difference? Indeed, reduction to practice is the point. If the GPL successfully achieves its ends, then it works. And it does, in fact, achieve them. On numerous occasions the GPL has shown that it is a powerful instrument for insuring compliance with its provisions as they were intended, even upon reluctant or recalcitrant redistributors. And finally, for Debian's purposes, it's even more irrelevant. Our standing policy is that if there is doubt about the force or intention of a license, we err on the side of simply doing what the licensor demands. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re:
Michael K. Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At this point, there seem to be quite a few people who agree that the FSF's stance (copyright-based license) and the far-from-novel one that you advance (unilateral license / donee beneficiaries) are untenable in the jurisdictions with whose law they are to some degree familiar. You are choosing to post on three different forums. Having made that choice, it is your obligation to make your comments relevant to them all; you cannot post on debian-devel, and then insist that your interlocutors there read a different list. Please don't put words into my mouth. The quotes you give are not my words; I have not spoken of a unilateral license / donee beneficiaries, though you words suggest I have. You have not explained here (on debian-devel, that is) at all why we should disgregard the actual success of the license in convincing reluctant people to comply with its provisions. Indeed, to date there is nobody who is willing to risk a lawsuit due to noncompliance with the GPL when the FSF's compliance folks have come after them. This in itself suggests very strongly that those who have money to lose on the question think the GPL is binding And you haven't answered my question. Please explain how the difference in legal theory here affects the bindingness of the GPL on those who choose to distribute GPLd software. And finally, for Debian's purposes, it's even more irrelevant. Our standing policy is that if there is doubt about the force or intention of a license, we err on the side of simply doing what the licensor demands. Which is great, until you find yourself estopped from arguing otherwise in a courtroom. It matters both what you do and why you say you do it. Please be specific. Where are we hurting ourselves? (Or, if we are not, then why is this relevant?) Thomas P -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re:
Michael K. Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Sorry about that; I skipped a step or two. Your unilateral grant of permission is not in fact a recognized mechanism under law for the conveyance of a non-exclusive copyright license. I'm sorry, can you point me to the statute here? The US statute simply prohibits copying without permission. It says nothing about how permission is granted. Can you point me to a court case which said that grant of permission is not contractual, and therefore no permission has been granted? We aren't concerned with a browsewrap or shrinkwrap license; all the cases you point to are about that. Those are about licenses which attempt to take away rights that a person would have had if they had never agreed to the license. Since the GPL only gives you new rights, never taking away any, it's not clear how objections to those kinds of licenses would matter. There's also no question that the GPL is enforceable (and has been successfully enforced by Harald Welte in Deutschland) using a breach of contract theory against people who don't release source code to GPL works when they modify and distribute them. But applying contract law standards of construction against the offeror, notice and cure of breach, grounds for preliminary injunction, and all that -- together with a correct reading of phrases like derivative work under copyright law and mere aggregation -- results in a GPL whose utility as a club against the Wicked Linker is greatly weakened and possibly (IANALIAJ) zero. Which is, in my personal view, as it should be. I see, so this is what you're claiming. Since the proponents of the unilateral-grant-of-permission theory completely agree that contract law is the normal rule for the interpretation of such documents, there isn't any debate there. If you only reason for invoking contract law is to say the license must be interpreted in accord with the standards of contract construction, there is already broad agreement about that point. There's a world of difference between we can't link Quagga against an OpenSSL-enabled NetSNMP because it's illegal; whoops, we already did so (and a thousand similar things), which means we have to beg the FSF to un-automatically-terminate all of our GPL rights and as a matter of courtesy to the FSF, we usually make a reasonable effort to obtain OpenSSL 'exemption riders' where their FAQ recommends them, irrespective of whether the assertions in their FAQ and related statements are legally valid. Yes, and we can simply make neither statement, but ask for the rider, make no statements to the FSF about whether our past actions were right or wrong, and if the rider is not granted, stop distributing (which we would do anyway). So this is a tempest in a silly teapot. I'm happy to leave the thread here, since the upshot is a no-relevance-to-important-issues. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re:
Michael K. Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [a lot of repetition that pretty much ignores what I said, and especially where I said:] So this is a tempest in a silly teapot. I'm happy to leave the thread here, since the upshot is a no-relevance-to-important-issues. So, since you ignored that last sentence, please re-read it. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re:
Michael K. Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The FAQ is not merely an interesting commentary -- it is the published stance of the FSF, to which its General Counsel refers all inquiries. Although I am not legally qualified to judge, I believe that he can have no reasonable basis under the law in his jurisdiction for many of the assertions that it contains, particularly the assertion that the GPL is a creature of copyright law and not an ordinary offer of contract. That may yet become a problem for him personally as well as for the FSF. If it is merely an offer of contract, then because no written or verbal acceptance has been given, nobody has permission to copy anything GPLd. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re:
Michael K. Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: An action for copyright infringement, or any similar proceeding under droit d'auteur for instance, will look at the GPL (like any other license agreement) only through the lens of contract law. IANAL, TINLA. I don't believe you have succeeded in providing any evidence to the contrary. Um, it is true that the rules for interpreting the meaning of licenses are more or less the same as the rules for interpreting contracts. It does not follow that licenses are therefore contracts. Contract law (or its equivalent in a civil law system) always applies to offers of contract; that's kind of tautological. And the GPL has no legal significance as anything other than an offer of contract, except perhaps as a public statement by the FSF and hence conceivably as grounds for estoppel. Huh? What about the license as just what it purports to be: a license? There is a thing you are not considering: it is a unilateral grant of conditional permission. This is a perfectly well-traveled area of law. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: LCC and blobs
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Let's pretend that Debian actually has a significant amount of leverage on this sort of issue, and that vendors see their drivers appearing in contrib and want to do something about it. They /could/ open the firmware and provide a toolchain for it. We'd put the driver in main, then. Alternatively, they could put the firmware in ROM. In this case, the amount of non-free code on a user's system would not change, but we'd move the driver to main anyway. So they might do the right thing! And they choose a mechanism for inhibiting users other than licensing restrictions. Either way, it ceases to be Debian's game. We are for free software, and there are a lot of ways to hurt people that Debian is not concerned with. Note that this doesn't mean I think firmware should be in main. But I think that's an entirely separate argument. Picking on drivers that force us to notice their dependencies on non-free code while ignoring drivers that are just as dependent (but in a less obvious way) is hypocrisy. No, because we have chosen a limited set of goals. We are for free software, not Curing All The World's Ills. There is nothing hypocritical about Debian deciding to attack one problem (non-free software) without attacking a different problem (unchangeable burned-in software).
Re: Reproducible, precompiled .o files: what say policy+gpl?
John H. Robinson, IV [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The only difference is in *performance*. If there are other differences, then there is a bug in one of the two compilers. If you are equating performance with functionality, then we are going to have a very hard time communicating. This is not true. The program may depend on the details of how a compiler in fact works (for example, how structure members are packed). Such a thing might be a bug, but it is there nonetheless, and is not a compiler bug. And if the binary in the archive was made by some other tool, then debugging resulting problems is a nightmare. Thomas
ttfn
The growth of other commitments and my increasing disgust for the anti-free positions of the FSF are causing me to reevaluate many of my commitments. As a consequence, I am signing off many of the Debian lists I have been active on, most notably, debian-legal. I am still interested in the issues discussed here, and upon request I will gladly take a look at an issue or post and respond, if someone brings it to my attention. Thomas
Re: MPlayer DFSG compatibility status
Glenn Maynard [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The trademark restrictions could probably be written in such a way as to fall under the spirit of the if you change it, don't call it foo allowances. We just need to be wary of any precarious slopes in doing so. Agreed.
Re: GFDL and Anonymity --- another problem?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Måns Rullgård) writes: Anthony DeRobertis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The copyright holder can be an individual or a group, but in any case an entity recognized by the law. Sure. But he doesn't have to identify himself, and certainly not by his actual name. I've seen lots of files copyrighted by Monty or Xiphophorus. Does anyone know who they are? Monty's a real person, I know him. Xiphophorus is, last I knew, the name of his company or the moniker he uses to identify his stuff.
Re: MPlayer DFSG compatibility status
Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Tue, 07 Oct 2003, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Now, 287(a)[2] limits the damages that can be assessed against an un-notified infringer, but doesn't change the illegality of the infringing. So what? We have an existing policy. You've lost me here. I have no clue what our policy has to do with the legality/illegality of patent infringing... It was already explained. Unless we have a particular reason to fear an enforcement action, we don't fret about patents. We know many many companies (IBM, for example) that have large war-chests of software patents, but say they won't enforce them against anyone who doesn't try to enforce one on them. This is the unofficial policy of many more patent holders. So our policy is to not fret at all unless we have real reason to worry. Thomas
Re: MPlayer DFSG compatibility status
Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Tue, 07 Oct 2003, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: So our policy is to not fret at all unless we have real reason to worry. Oh sure, but that's unrelated to the legality/illegality of infringing a patent which was what I was discussing. It's also an overstatement to say that any legal patent violation is illegal. First, it's important to distinguish crimes and civil violations. But beyond that, it's also important to know that a consented-to violation, even implicitly consented-to, is not illegal.
Re: MPlayer DFSG compatibility status
Glenn Maynard [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: More importantly, the DFSG talks about required freedoms. If freedoms for a work are actively being restricted by eg. trademark or patent law, then the work is just as non-free as if they were restricted by copyright. For example, if the Official Use Logo was placed under a permissive copyright license, but maintained strict restrictions under trademark law, then the freedoms required by the DFSG are not available--it would still not be DFSG-free. Actually, I believe it still would be DFSG-free. You are right in general that it doesn't matter which law is being used to impinge freedom. But a free Official Use Logo could (I think) be written in such a way as to be clearly DFSG-free, given that we already allow labelling and naming restrictions. So we can permit people to modify the bottle, but still not use it for non-Official things, and that doesn't imping freedom, just as people can use and modify the special code for the TeX logo, but they can't apply it to anything that doesn't pass Trip. Thomas
Re: GFDL
Fedor Zuev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Plagiarism and|or corruption of social, political and, especially religious texts was unanimously considered harmful and was punishable a millennia before invention of the first copyright law[*]. This was solely in the interest of public, without any care about author's revenue. You have confused the issues. Nobody is suggestiod plagiarism or corruption. If the license required that changes be clearly identified and the name of the original author be preserved, that would be fine. Thomas
Re: MPlayer DFSG compatibility status
Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Now, 287(a)[2] limits the damages that can be assessed against an un-notified infringer, but doesn't change the illegality of the infringing. So what? We have an existing policy.
Re: RFC: GPL plus securities industry disclaimer suitable for main?
Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If the english law definition of 'illegal' is 'illegal in England' or 'illegal in England or your locality' then this is a useage restriction. Contrawise, if 'illegal' means only 'illegal in your locality' it isn't a useage restriction. Right. My point is that whichever way it goes, adding a choice-of-law provision specifying English law can't make it worse, at least, for English users.
Re: Early Software Free?
D. Starner [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Fedor Zuev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Initially, back in 50s-60s-70s all software was free software. Proprietary software come into being only after computer programs was copyrighted. Computer programs was copyrighted relatively late, in 1976 year in USA, in 1991 year in Russia and maybe even later in some other countries. [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes: Computer Programs Political Writing Started 1950600 BC Copyright legally clear 1976AD 1700 Okay, I have an Algol68 compiler written at Oklahoma State University in 1971. (This is not a hypothetical - I have this code, and have considered porting it to a more modern system, say Fortran 77 targetting a VAX.) Is it clearly in the public domain? I could ask permission, but I get the feeling I might end up talking to the Board of Regents who would see it as a money making opportunity. I would say it's unclear. It's very unlikely it was explicitly copyrighted at the time, but it might well count as not published either, in which case it is the law at the time of first publication that matters.
Re: Early Software Free?
Anthony DeRobertis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Sat, 2003-10-04 at 02:30, D. Starner wrote: Okay, I have an Algol68 compiler written at Oklahoma State University in 1971. (This is not a hypothetical - I have this code, and have considered porting it to a more modern system, say Fortran 77 targetting a VAX.) Is it clearly in the public domain? I believe that under the pre-1976 copyright act, if it doesn't have a proper notice of copyright, it is in the public domain. Also, I believe it had to be registered to be copyrighted. Only if it was published.
Re: RFC: GPL plus securities industry disclaimer suitable for main?
Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 09:35:44PM -0500, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: snip The terms of use are to be construed in accordance with the Laws of England. It would be significantly inconvinient for a foreign user to be forced to appear in a UK court should the copyright owner file suit against them. Under UK law they _probably_ did something wrong to get this far at all, but still, it wouldn't necessarily be the case in the absence of this clause (and if it said US law, that wouldn't hold). That provision is a choice of law provision, which does *NOT* restrict which court a suit can be filed in. Only a choice of forum provision would have that problem. In my opinion, choice of law provisions are certainly not GPL-incompatibilities. Thomas
Re: RFC: GPL plus securities industry disclaimer suitable for main?
Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The first part seems to indicate that purposes that are illegal in England are prohibited by the license. This is is a usage restraint, as England might choose to make certain useages of information illegal, whereas they remain legal in other countries. No, I think that's not right. It says judge this agreement under the law of England. The law of England might well interpret the clause you cite as referring to illegal according to the local jurisdiction. Choice of law is hard for most people to wrap their heads around (reading it incorrectly as choice-of-forum, choice-of-jurisdiction, or choice-of-reference-of-terms).
Re: RFC: GPL plus securities industry disclaimer suitable for main?
Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Oh, definetly. It's clearly open for interpretation, my issue is that it's very vague and has to be interpreted. Eg, where do the laws of England stop and the laws of the jurisdiction of the licensee begin? The laws of England control *interpretation* of the contract, and a few other things, but not venue, nor jurisdiction, nor the reach of a this license bars illegal acts rule. In other words, it doesn't mean illegal in England or illegal in the US, because English law certainly doesn't give it that meaning. English law surely gives it the meaning illegal in the relevant local context. The most conservative approach is to assume that you are going to be subject to the most restrictive set of laws of either the local jurisdiction or the agreement's. No, the point is that choice-of-law isn't really ambiguous at all. Importantly (very importantly) they don't interlock in the kind of way you are afraid they might. The whole point of choice-of-law is that it doesn't do anything more than answer the otherwise uncertain question whose law governs this. For that reason, *cannot* impinge the freeness of a license, unless the chosen law would interpret a given clause as non-free. But in that case, it would *already* be non-free for domestic cases in that jurisdiction. Of course, this is all moot since as you point out, other clauses are total deal killers anyway. Thomas
Re: GFDL
Fedor Zuev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The same (see above) point is not correct for political speech. Unlimitedly modifiable political speech is _not_ a normal mode of operation and never was. Political speech has been around for about two thousand, six hundred years, at least, in substantial written form. Going as far back as, say, Demosthenes. Throughout the first two thousand, three hundred years of that time, it was unlimitedly modifiable. The notion of copyright is a late development. Even then, however, it was not applied to political advocacy, which continued to be distributed without copyright for a very long time. Such things as, for example, the Lincoln-Douglass debates or Thomas Paine's Common Sense were not copyrighted. Copyright on political advocacy only became regular around perhaps 1900. So let's make the following table: Computer Programs Political Writing Started 1950600 BC Copyright legally clear 1976AD 1700 Copyright not uncommon 1980AD 1900 Today 2003AD 2003 So you are right that copyright came about late in the game, and was not the normal thing for computer programs. But guess what! It came about even later for political writing. That is, for the fifty-three years (roughly) of software, copyright has been legally clear for twenty-seven (about half), and frequent for twenty-three. By contrast, of the twenty-six centuries of political writing, copyright was legally clear for only the last three, and has been frequent for only the last one. Copyright is thus a FAR more typical reality for programs than for political writing. Thomas
Re: RFC: GPL plus securities industry disclaimer suitable for main?
Florian Weimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: The laws of England control *interpretation* of the contract, Just interpreting the GPL according to the laws of Germany might result in further restrictions. For example, GPLed software released before 1995 is not redistributable over the Internet. Say why?
Re: RFC: GPL plus securities industry disclaimer suitable for main?
Fedor Zuev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Such provision, IMHO, is contradicts to article 5 of Berne Convention, when applied to copyright matters. Therefore, such provision may make all license either illegal or unenforceable. You are misreading the Berne Convention, here. The license cannot remove article five, but that doesn't matter, the license is a permission grant (only). A claim for illegal copying would occur in the appropriate court under the Berne Convention, and no choice of law provision could affect that, since you can simply say you have not accepted the license.
Re: RFC: GPL plus securities industry disclaimer suitable for main?
Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The whole point of choice-of-law is that it doesn't do anything more than answer the otherwise uncertain question whose law governs this. Or more acurately: 'whose law is used to interpret the meaning of this license', which basically boils this discussion down to what the English Law definition of 'illegal' is. Is it 'illegal in the local jurisdiction' or is it 'acts that are against English Law.' If you're aware of English case law that says the former rather than the latter, I'll conceed, but until then, the issue is still open. But the point is, that if it means something non-free, then removing the choice-of-law provision would still have the result that the license would be non-free in England. So adding a choice-of-law provision can't make something non-free unless it already was without it.
Re: Unidentified subject!
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I believe there was never a time when only the FSF pushed for free software. I should have said the GNU Project rather than the FSF, since the GNU Project led to FSF and has always been larger. When the GNU Project started, there was no other organized effort to make software free. We were the first to aim to make it possible to use a computer without non-free software. This may be true, but many things happen without an organized effort. There were plenty of people who then, and now, believed in free software and worked for it. They were often happy to align themselves with the GNU Project, which had no small role in the success of that project. It seems to me that a serious problem is that we don't know at all what the opinions of the members of the GNU Project are about these issues, and that a process for finding out would be of great service to the community. Thomas
Re: GFDL
Branden Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Well, I think this creates a bit of cognitive dissonance. So, presumably, does Bruce Perens, who has called upon us to kick non-free to the curb. I mean, come on. We expect people to intuitively understand distribution as something other than that which gets distributed? Yes, I agree this is a problem. I think the best way is to drop non-free.
Re: [OT] Debian developers (was Re: committee for FSF-Debian discussion)
Branden Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: That doesn't mean we regard people who were born British subjects as eligible for the office of president today. Some such people are, of course, since one can be a dual national. The requirement is that you be a natural born citizen, not that you have no foreign allegiance in your past. Indeed, now that dual nationals are no longer required by US law to renounce one or the other citizenship at the age of majority, it would be conceivably possible for there to be a President who was simultaneously a citizen of a foreign country. Don't hold your breath though. Thomas
Re: solution to GFDL and DSFG problem
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 2003-09-30 05:25:50 +0100 Andrew Suffield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This appears to be a variation on the If we can't all be rich then we should all be poor idea, which I reject. It's not. It's the level playing field idea. It's not level. Esperanto is much easier for those who already know the language. The only level playing field would be to choose a language that *nobody* already speaks fluently. Perhaps, say, Klingon?
Re: Unidentified subject!
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I didn't say that. I said we built the community, which we did by pushing for free software when nobody else did. Of course, many others have contributed since then. I believe there was never a time when only the FSF pushed for free software. Thomas
Re: GFDL
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I have only criticized Debian for one thing, and that is the practice of distributing non-free software (programs). This is something Debian has done for many years, not something I imagine it might do. I don't think you understand the distinction between what Debian distributes and the Debian distribution. The latter is a subset of the former. Indeed, Debian is undertaking the steps that might well lead to an end to the non-free section entirely: which would, in my opinion, make it impossible to have DFSG documents distributed by Debian at all. I find it curious that you are now arguing for this possibility. I expressed some surprise at the idea that Debian might remove removable but non-modifiable essays from our manuals. That is not really criticism. In any case, this possibility was raised by Debian developers including you; I did not imagine it, and would not have imagined it. You misunderstood the posts in question, in part because you don't really grok that when a Debian developer says DFSG-free that means modifiable and removable. Some have indeed said that removable but non-modifiable essays would be removed: but precisely because they are not DFSG-free. For exactly the same reason that non-free software also is not part of Debian! Making the essay removable doesn't solve the problem in those people's minds, because a removable but non-modifiable essay is just as non-free as a non-removable one. But it is a problem that could be fixed--by removing. If the essay were removable and modifiable, Debian would happily distribute it just as it is. I don't like being unjustly accused, and that is part of the reason I decided to terminate my participation in the discussion of license matters. I will not try to convince Debian any further. You have, in my opinion, lobbed a lot of accusations. But perhaps the solution is to find people who can carry the discussion forward who are not going to be prickly, but who have a thick skin and can deal with an unfair accusation by doing something other than saying I'm taking my marbles and going home. Thomas
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: We want to have freedom over what we distribute in binary packages. We are willing to tolerate noxious restrictions like the TeX ones only because they do not impact what we can distribute in the binary package: they only restrict the hoops that the source package must go through to do create the binary package. That is a very clear place to draw the line, but I think it rejects a range of licenses, for software programs as well as for documentation, that we could accept. Which licenses (for programs)?
Re: Unidentified subject!
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 1) Because the borders between the cases are ambiguous and uncertain. I sent a message a day or two ago (perhaps after you sent this one) which addresses that issue. 2) Because we want to be able to combine works from different sources, As I explained, this desire is usually impossible due to incompatibility of licenses. To reject the GFDL on these grounds and accept some other GPL-incompatible license is a double standard. Wrong, wrong, wrong. We want to be able to combine works. I keep repeating this, you keep saying I understand you, and then you keep proceeding as if I hadn't repeated it. The desire expressed in number two is *not* about the desire to combine any two arbitrary works. We have that desire, but we agree that it isn't currently met, and it doesn't impact freeness. So let's think about *extension* rather than combination. Can I extend work X and have it be a piece of free software? Any free software license must meet that test. The GFDL does not meet that test. There is no double standard, because you have misconstrued the standard. The standard is NOT whether X meets: For all works A, A can be combined with X and still be free. If that were our test, it would be inconsistent to be bothered that the GFDL fails, since of course most free software licenses fail. We are concerned with whether X meets: There exists a work A of free software, such that A can be combined with X and still be free software. It is this test which the GFDL fails, and it fails not because it has terms which happen to be inconsistent with this or that free software license, but rather because it contains terms which are fundamentally inimical to the very concept of free software itself. It might be sensible not to care about this if documentation and programs were radically different things, but they simply are not. Thomas
Re: Unidentified subject!
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Your casual suggestion to pick whichever seems better leaves out the object: better for whom? For the Free Software community? For the Free Software Foundation, whose goals are quite different? That is a cheap shot, because it reflects only your decision to be nasty. I could make the same kind of cheap shot by saying Better for whom? For the Free Software community? Or for Debian, whose goals are quite different? I choose not to do this, but others do it to me. It's not a cheap shot. It's a serious question: Whose goals are we going to consider? You once told me that you would frequently read only the beginning of email messages, and ignore the rest as soon as you saw something you didn't like. I think you did that here. Brian went on to expalin carefully just what he meant, and to explain why having different interests here was not a bad thing.
Re: There was never a chance of a GFDL compromise
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The point I am making is that Debian might indeed remove the political essays from our manuals if they could be removed. A few months ago, some people said here that if only the invariant sections could be removed (even though they could not be modified), nobody would ever remove them. Now people are saying they would indeed be removed. NO NO NO. Nobody said that nobody would ever remove the sections; they said nobody would remove them IF they were free. But free requires that they be both modifiable and removable. If they were that, they would be there. The GFDL is doing its job by guarding against this. Debian may label our manuals as non-free, an appelation I disagree with and will criticize, but at least it cannot remove them. Yep, it can. The manuals will be removed. But now I see that this idea has a serious drawback: Debian would probably immediately remove the invariant sections and distribute the manual sans invariant sections under the GPL. I think that nixes it. Why not make the sections changeable?
Re: GFDL
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If you want to criticize the FSF based on things you can imagine we might do, I am sure you can imagine no end of nasty possibilities. The only answer necessary to them is that they are false. You are criticizing Debian based on things you can imagine we might do, and have imagined no end of nasty possibilities. When we tell you they are false, you just continue saying them. Thomas
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't think it needs to be possible to use text from manuals in a program. A manual is free if you can publish modified versions as manuals. And is a text editor free if you can only publish modified versions as text editors -- not as manuals or tetris games or news-readers or web browsers? You have to be free to publish modified versions of the program as tetris games and news-readers and web browsers, since those are different programs, but a manual is a different kind of thing entirely. It is to much to ask that it should be feasible to conveniently publish a modified version of the program as a manual. The GPL, for instance, does not permit this in a way that is good for publication of books on paper. The question is, importantly, *WHY* is this too much to ask?
Re: solution to GFDL and DSFG problem
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: To be fair, the joke in poor taste is that we demand people speak English on this list, but my thoughts on that are well-known -- http://ttt.esperanto.org/ Why, because more people speak Esperanto?
Re: solution to GFDL and DSFG problem (dadadodo at work?)
Anthony DeRobertis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: You don't even have to go through that much of a hassle. Old-Return-Path: [EMAIL PROTECTED] That could of been forged. Note to self: when forging Anthony DeRobertis, spell it could of. Check.
Re: coupling software documentation and political speech in the GFDL
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Brian T. Sniffen) writes: Bear in mind that Debian does distribute freely modifiable political text, for which the original author is *dead*, and yet his original words are still copied about substantially unchanged: the book of Amos, for example, in package bible-kjv-text. I think RMS fear that we would somehow change his essays is severely unfounded. A nice example. Consider that the words of Amos have been passed around (since the current edition was prepared) for rather a long time, with a pretty good record of maintaining accuracy. BTW, Amos is one of my favorites. Thomas
Re: A possible GFDL comporomise: a proposal
Fedor Zuev [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So, according to your defintion software is synonym to digital information. Right? Wrong. Software is synonymous with information. Song written on CDDA is a software, whereas the song written on a analog magnetic tape (exactly the same object from the copyright|licensing perspective) is not a software. Right? Wrong. Speech, transmissed over digital telephone line is a software, whereas speech, transmissed over analog telephone line (you even do not know, which is the case) is not software. Right? Wrong. Picture, printed by good printer is a software, whereas picture printed by broken printer (too many ink) is not software. Right? Wrong. Thomas
Re: committee for FSF-Debian discussion
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bruce Perens) writes: A good candidate would also be familiar with debian-legal's analysis of the GFDL. This would only be the case if we had to prove that invariant sections are outside of the DFSG. I don't think we will have to argue about that, it's pretty obvious. But I can keep the people mentioned on call in case it comes up. Well, RMS several times said that he was urging us to consider a different interpretation of the DFSG under which the GFDL would pass, and insisted that a plain reading of the DFSG would not exclude it. While, it seems to me that a joint committee is not properly there to interpret the DFSG to anyone, it does seem to be important to have someone who is very familiar with our general standards so that they can be aware of the entire context within which we must operate. Thomas
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't agree that the latter is the important question. I think the former is the question that matters. I am not sure if the GFDL is a free software license, but I don't think the question matters. When people said the GFDL is incompatible with free software, and that this is not a mere practical inconvenience, nor is it an ordinary case of license incompatibility, this is exactly what they were saying. At least three times you tried to derail what they said by using misleading analogies.
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This has been explained to you enough times that your attempt to pretend it hasn't can no longer be attributed to ignorance. I am not pretending anything--I consider the issue a red herring. So I have addressed the issues I think are important. But you *did* address the issue. That's the problem.
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Everything in Debian is software; the official logo is not free, and therefore is not in Debian. Fortunately it is not necessary for me to understand this. Many things are on Debian servers which are not part of the Debian system. The Debian system contains only free software; any exceptions are bugs for which bug reports should be filed. The official Debian logo (the bottle) is not free, and is not part of Debian.
Re: Unidentified subject!
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 1) Because the borders between the cases are ambiguous and uncertain. I sent a message a day or two ago (perhaps after you sent this one) which addresses that issue. By saying everything has ambiguous and uncertain borders. But hey! We don't need a border at all here! We can ENTIRELY AVOID the problem. Why should we accept it then? 2) Because we want to be able to combine works from different sources, As I explained, this desire is usually impossible due to incompatibility of licenses. To reject the GFDL on these grounds and accept some other GPL-incompatible license is a double standard. We reject the GFDL because it is not merely incomptability of licenses. Here's the test. I want to write a brand new program. I insist it be free software, but I am otherwise entirely agnostic about which free software license I use. I will use any license. I want to incorporate parts of a GFDL'd manual into this new program. I am not going to incorporate any other previously written bits from any source. What license should I use for my program? This is not a case of incompatibility.
Re: GFDL
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I value freedom in documentation just as much as I do for programs. I value it so much that I designed the GFDL specifically to induce commercial publishers to publish free documentation. You don't value the freedom to modify the whole book. You value freedom in *documentation*, but you don't value freedom in *books*, it seems. That is entirely correct. I don't believe that political essays ought to be free in the same sense as documentation or software, for instance. I have stated these views in numerous speeches. But you don't actually value the freedom of the documentation either, because you insist that the documentation carry a political message. Here's the central question, I would really like answered. Would you reject a similar condition on a piece of software? Suppose a text editor came with a political essay, and the license said that any changes to the editor must preserve that it display that essay to every user, and cannot do anything to materially affect the ability of users to read the essay. All our current standards for free software would reject this. At the very least, because it restricts the thing to continue to be a program capable of text-display, but there are other reasons too. But what principled grounds are there for rejecting this, since the same thing is accepted for documentation? It's not enough to just say documentation is different; the question is what are the differences, and how do those differences imply a disparity in treatment. (After all, C code is different from Scheme, but the mere fact of that difference isn't enough to warrant different standards.) Thomas
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thomas Bushnell, BSG) writes: I am not saying that the DFSG is evil, just that it isn't free (and our logos aren't either), and therefore can't be in a free OS (and so also our logos can't). Of course I meant GFDL where I said DFSG. Sorry for the confusion.
Re: Attribution-ShareAlike License
Seth David Schoen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 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. It should be noted that while this is unpleasant, it doesn't impact the free-software nature of xpdf, as long as the license doesn't attempt to incorporate the patent restrictions into itself.
Re: GFDL and incompatibility
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I have never considered the question of whether the GFDL is a free software license. The question seems purely academic, since it is (1) not meant as a license for programs, and (2) clearly an annoying license to use for programs. So I don't know if I would agree this is true. You claim that it really doesn't matter, and yet, you have not payed much attention to the examples of cases where the boundary between documentation and software is blurry in the extreme. An excellent example is TeX or other such literate programming experiments. Is that software or documentation? What I can say is that the question has no practical significance. If I have a manual for FOO, I might want to merge it with FOO. Whether that is possible does have practical significance. As I've explained, this cannot be a criterion for whether the manual's license is free, since merging may be forbidden due to incompatibility even with licenses that Debian agrees are free; also, there are other ways to get the job done when merging is impossible. But at least the question is a real question. My point is that a manual for FOO, if that manual is DFSG-free, can be merged with at least some free software somewhere. If it's a GFDL-d manual, by contrast, it cannot be merged with any free software anywhere. And we have real-life examples where merging manual text into programs is useful, so this isn't a fake question. Thomas
Re: GFDL
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If the whole docu would be DFSG-free, than there would be no cause to remove polical statements. According to Don Armstrong, a non-modifiable text cannot under any circumstances be considered DFSG-free, so it would have to be removed from the manual. Others have (it appears) said the same thing. Right. This does not document the quoted statement: if the whole document were DFSG-free, Debian would not be removing political statements.
Re: GFDL
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: We are talking about two different kinds of packaging. When I speak of a packaging requirement I'm talking about a requirement that applies to the form of a program or other work, but not the substance. This a different kind of packaging from the making of Debian packages containing the programs and other works. Are mere packaging requirements allowed for free software? What about a requirement that demanded the inclusion of particular functions, perhaps one of which that was called main?
Re: Starting to talk
Stephen Ryan [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: No, you're not the only one with that impression. Personally, I'm ready to killfille [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a bunch of trolls. The only reason I haven't is that I think there are some people worth listening to who are part of gnu, but you'd never know it from listening to this bunch. Please don't. Heck, I'm still [EMAIL PROTECTED] RMS does not speak for GNU developers in general; he has conducted no poll about these issues among GNU developers and has no ability to speak for them.
Re: Why documentation and programs should not be treated alike
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I think that nontechnical invariant comments do not make a program non-free, but not for those reasons. The reason is that this is a packaging requirement that doesn't really restrict you from making the program substantively behave as you want it to. The role of a program is to behave. The role of a book is to communicate. The standard for freeness of a program is the ability to change at liberty how it behaves. The standard for freeness of a book is the ability to change at liberty what it communicates. Perhaps it isn't important for all books to be free. But that's an entirely different question from what it means for the book to be free. Thomas
Re: A possible GFDL compromise
Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The DFSG lists three specific licenses that are meant to satisfy its criteria. Nowadays some Debian developers tend to say that these three licenses are listed as exceptions to the rules of the DFSG, but I think that is a misinterpretation. I think they are meant as examples to help people understand what the DFSG criteria mean. An interpretation of the rules which would lead to rejecting any of thee licenses is the wrong interpretation. I think you are right. Note that the DFSG is not listed. You mean that the GFDL is not listed, of course. Right.
Re: GFDL and incompatibility
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The text in the manual is usually not suitable for a doc string, and vice versa. I don't copy text from the Emacs manual into a doc string, even though the FSF as copyright holder for both could do so. The problem is that you can't even re-edit it into a doc string. Anything that's a derivative work is out-of-bounds. The GFDL forces a particular implementation of program-with-documentation, and that's already a bug.
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The Debian project is dedicated to the Debian OS. Without this collection of software, the Debian project is purposeless. If the Debian project does not follow the rules that the Debian project wrote itself for the Debian OS, the Debian project is somehow inconsistent. Way more inconsistent than the GNU project that always follows its rules, for Software (Program) and Documentation. Right, and we distribute logos that cannot be part of the Debian OS, but which are part of the Debian Project. We do not think it's evil to distribute such logos. I am not saying that the DFSG is evil, just that it isn't free (and our logos aren't either), and therefore can't be in a free OS (and so also our logos can't).
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: My girlfriend photography sitting on my computer is not free software. That's not something I think important to be shared. And it can't be part of Debian as long as it's not free. I'm not saying there should never be non-free stuff--only that the DFSG manuals are not free.
Re: Software and its translations (was: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal)
Branden Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 01:51:14PM +0200, Roland Mas wrote: - un logiciel can even be used to mean a software program, whereas the phrase a software sounds awkward to me in English (but then again, I'm not a native English speaker, and maybe software is a countable noun -- can you say two softwares?). No. Software is a collective noun, like information or stuff. No, software is a mass noun, like information or stuff. A collective noun is a word like committee, which is singular in form but refers to a plurality of individuals. In some dialects (notably in England) collective nouns get plural verbs. Thomas
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: As far as the logo, the name Mathieu Roy isn't free in the DFSG-sense. Neither is the Debian name. I don't see why the Debian logo should be either. I don't believe the logo needs to be free; I think the way it is being handled is appropriate. However, others were arguing recently that everything in Debian is software and that the DFSG applies to it. Everything in Debian is software; the official logo is not free, and therefore is not in Debian.
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Braakman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Sat, Sep 20, 2003 at 08:32:55PM -0700, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But Debian contains essays, logos, and licenses that cannot be modified. These are not programs; are they software? The essays and logos in question are in fact not part of Debian. I think Richard Stallman was referring to essays such as /usr/share/emacs/21.3/etc/WHY-FREE (emacs21-common 21.3+1-3) Verbatim copying and redistribution is permitted without royalty as long as this notice is preserved; alteration is not permitted. Quite right; when I said in fact not part of Debian, I misspoke. I should have said that they should not be in Debian.
Re: GFDL
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I value freedom in documentation just as much as I do for programs. I value it so much that I designed the GFDL specifically to induce commercial publishers to publish free documentation. You don't value the freedom to modify the whole book. You value freedom in *documentation*, but you don't value freedom in *books*, it seems. Only certain books--only certain parts of books, in fact. And you don't value freedom in documentation enough, because you don't value the freedom to distribute documentation all by itself. This reminded me of another relevant difference between manuals and software. It is harder to find good technical writers as volunteers than good programmers as volunteers. So I decided it was worth while going quite close to the line, in the GFDL, to try to induce commercial publishers to use it. Has this been successful?
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't think that section titles are a problem--it would not be hard to put them in a program. But it is true that you cannot take text from a GFDL-covered manual and put it into most free programs. This is because the GFDL is incompatible with the normal free software license. This is incorrect, and you know it. You cannot take text from a GFDL manual and put it into ANY free program, and still have a free program. This is equally true of other free documentation licenses, including the Open Publication License version 1, and the simple license we used in the past for GNU manuals without invariant sections. You are muddling the issue, and what's particularly annoying is that this has already been pointed out. The problem is not that the GFDL is incompatible with this or that free software license. It's that it is incompatible with EVERY free software license, at least, if you want the combined work to still be free software. Thomas
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Thomas Bushnell proposed another interpretation, in which certain things that are included in the Debian package files are not part of Debian for this purpose. That way, you don't have to apply the DFSG to them. No, I did not, and you know it. I already corrected you on this misunderstanding. I said that such things cannot be part of Debian, and if they are, it's a bug. I never said it was okay to include them. You are to smart to have made such a distortion of my words accidentally. Thomas
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Many free documentation licenses won't permit use of the text in GPL-covered free programs, and practically speaking, this means I can't use them in any of the programs I might want to use them in. Whether the manual's text could be used in a free software package with a license that qualifies as free software, but is not one I'd want to use, is just academic. A GFDL'd document cannot be used in ANY free program. There is NO free software license which would allow you to combine a GFDL'd piece, and have a result which would still be free software. Other free documentation licenses do NOT generally have this problem. This has been explained to you enough times that your attempt to pretend it hasn't can no longer be attributed to ignorance.
Re: Unidentified subject!
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: You've asked me to explain why the criteria for free documentation licenses should be different from free software licenses (or, as you would perhaps put it, free computer program licenses). I would rather ask why they should be the same, since they deal with different situations. A fair question. Some answers: 1) Because the borders between the cases are ambiguous and uncertain. 2) Because we want to be able to combine works from different sources, and something covered by the GFDL cannot be combined with ANY program to produce a work of free software.
Re: There was never a chance of a GFDL compromise
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If you are aware of the existence of unmodifyable essays and logos in debian main, please file an RC bug against the package in question. You seem to be saying that if our political statements, which are included as invariant sections, could be removed from our manuals, you would make a point of removing them. A few weeks ago someone was trying to argue that nobody would do this, and that invariant sections were designed to solve a nonexistent problem. Now we know the problem is not just theoretical. You have misunderstood. A section which is removable but invariant would have to be removed for the manual to be in Debian, because the DFSG prohibits both unremovable and invariant sections. But if the sections were both removable and modifiable, then nobody would be removing them in Debian. Thomas
Re: There was never a chance of a GFDL compromise
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: A few weeks ago someone was trying to argue that nobody would do this, and that invariant sections were designed to solve a nonexistent problem. Now we know the problem is not just theoretical. No, it's still a theoretical problem.[1] The above has nothing to do with the content of the statements themselves, merely the fact that they are not free under the DFSG. The problem is that our non-modifiable political essays might be removed from our manuals, if the manuals' licenses permitted that. You have just said you would remove them. You misunderstood. We would remove them only if they were nonmodifiable. If they were both removable and modifiable, then we would keep them.
Re: There was never a chance of a GFDL compromise
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But if they were only removable without being modifiable, then yes, removing them would be the only way to include the accompanying documentation while still ensuring that all bits in Debian guarantee the freedoms that we require. Not long ago, people were trying to reassure me that if invariant sections were removable, nobody would remove them. I guess not. This reinforces my conclusion that it is essential for these sections to be unremovable as well as unmodifiable. You have misunderstood. I have already said this twice, so I hope you'll read those messages. It was already explained clearly not long ago, and you have either forgotten (unlikely), or were unable to understand the explanation (unlikely), or some third explanation, like you are not being honest or careful.
Re: There was never a chance of a GFDL compromise
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If the whole doc was DFSG free, I believe no Debian maintainer would remove the political statements one could find in it. Two people have just said they would remove any essay that cannot be modified. DFSG prohibits such unmodifiable content. If the whole doc was DFSG, there wouldn't *be* any essays that cannot be modified.
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Someone else criticized the idea (though no one had proposed it) of giving the FSF special consideration; now you seem to be saying just the opposite, that you believe in giving the FSF less cooperation that you would give to anyone else. The consequences of such an approach should be obvious: there will be no cooperation. No consideration was made to TeX or to Donald Knuth. Instead, we decided that a particular kind of restriction on modification was not a problem sufficient to impact freeness. Not *any* kind, but *that particular kind*. And the reason is important. We want to have freedom over what we distribute in binary packages. We are willing to tolerate noxious restrictions like the TeX ones only because they do not impact what we can distribute in the binary package: they only restrict the hoops that the source package must go through to do create the binary package. If you were to permit the same thing for manuals, it would be delightful. Thomas
Re: Starting to talk
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Many people, including the author of the DFSG, have stated that they believe that the DFSG was intended to apply to documentation as well. The number of people arguing that documentation should not fall under the standards of freedom set out by the DFSG has been quite small, and none of these people have yet produced a useful set of freedoms that should apply to documentation (with the exception of RMS, I guess) RMS has not either, at least, not in a level of detail with specificity like the DFSG. In my opinion, this is the most serious problem. If the DFSG as we interpret them are not the right set of standards for free documentation, then what are? Thomas
Re: Starting to talk
MJ Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 2003-09-22 16:05:31 +0100 Mathieu Roy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Because you are confronted with a situation where your arguments, that you repeat and repeat, do not convince your interlocutor (me in this case)? There are two ways to argue against someone: present data or claim that they are insane. We have presented data, yet you persist without presenting relevant data of your own, so... Um, hardly true. There are many other ways to argue against someone.
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Thanks for mentioning that message to me; nobody had mentioned to me before (at least since the start of 2003). It is a message from Bruce Perens, suggesting that the DFSG should be taken to mean something quite contrary to what it actually says. I'm sorry you don't understand what it says, but it is not for you to interpret.
Re: A possible GFDL compromise
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I've decided not to do that. The development of GNU licenses is not a Debian issue. Neither is the inclusion of GNU manuals in Debian a FSF issue. That's what I said--at least twice in the past week. But you want to be part of the discussion, right?
Re: [OT] Suing for hot coffee [Was: Re: UnrealIRCd License (Click-Through issue)]
Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: First off, hot coffee causes 2nd degree burns, not 3rd degree burns.[1] Ordinary temperature coffee does indeed cause 2nd degree burns. This is not true however for coffee served at 180 degrees Farenheit. Secondly, the punitive award by the jury of 2.7 million, or 10 times the compensatory damages (and 1000 times the actual medical costs) are a bit large, and were indeed, reduced by the judge to a slightly more reasonable 3 times the compensatory damages, or 640K.[2] Yes, indeed, as probably should have happened. Doesn't this suggest that the system is working well? Finally, while the McD's case, upon further inspection, wasn't necessarily frivolous, it is indicative of larger judgements that are often filed against plaintiffs, and then reduced later. This is an excellent argument for allowing judges to reduce jury awards. Oh, wait, we already have that rule. Looks like the system is working fine. Thomas
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: In that sense, there is nothing but software in Debian. But Debian contains essays, logos, and licenses that cannot be modified. These are not programs; are they software? The essays and logos in question are in fact not part of Debian.
Re: A possible GFDL compromise
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The DFSG lists three specific licenses that are meant to satisfy its criteria. Nowadays some Debian developers tend to say that these three licenses are listed as exceptions to the rules of the DFSG, but I think that is a misinterpretation. I think they are meant as examples to help people understand what the DFSG criteria mean. An interpretation of the rules which would lead to rejecting any of thee licenses is the wrong interpretation. I think you are right. Note that the DFSG is not listed.
Re: [OT] Suing for hot coffee
Walter Landry [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Joe Drew [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Don Armstrong wrote: 1: Of course, you do hear about rather rediculous [sic] judgements from time to time. That's because there are quite a few moronic lower court judges out there. Most of those settlements (the Mc-D's coffee one for instance) are often overturned or reduced in the appeals process. Contrary to popular belief, the McDonald's coffee case was not frivolous. http://www.centerjd.org/free/mythbusters-free/MB_mcdonalds.htm Give me a break. Coffee is hot. It is made with boiling water. This is not a case of a McDonalds employee spilling coffee on someone else. This is someone not being careful and spilling it on themselves. Coffee at 180 degrees is a distinct item from coffee. Coffee is not properly served at 180 degrees, and the standard of care is entirely different between 180 degrees and a more typical 130. A person should be entitled to use the standard of care for what was offered, and not have to guess that the item might be vastly more dangerous than all the other things sold under the same label. But, of course, the system did work here, because the woman in question *was* held partially responsible. Thomas
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This is not allowed for a GFDL manual, is it? The GFDL allows you to make any changes you like in the technical substance of the manual, just as the TeX license allows you to make any changes you like in the technical substance of TeX. Yes, but the GFDL doesn't let you change some non-technical things, and TeX does.
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The DFSG says that we must have the right to modify everything, at least by the use of patch files. I cannot find that in the DFSG. If you are talking about this part, PThe license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form _strongonly/strong_ if the license allows the distribution of ttpatch files/tt with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. then I don't think it says that. This text is specifically about source code for programs, and specifically about licenses that entirely forbid modified versions of the source code. It is extremely specific and narrow. You have misunderstood the DFSG.
Re: A possible GFDL compromise: a proposal
Richard Stallman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Manuals are not free software, because they are not software. The DFSG very clearly treats software and programs as synonymous. In that case, the DFSG prohibits their distribution outright.
