Re: Multi super dual licensing

[Ben Wiederhake]

I am an advocate for clearly distinguishing the license *conditions*
from the license *grant*.


Sounds reasonable.


I do this by placing the explicit text from the copyright holder that
*grants* license to perform specific actions, in a “License-Grant” field
in the appropriate paragraph for the set of files. That field is not
part of, but is permitted by, the current “copyright format 1.0”
specification.


Hmm, non-standard but the most reasonable way to do it. Thanks! That's 
what I'll do.



So:
 Files: path/to/portable-endian.h
 Copyright:
 © 2013–2014 Mathias Panzenböck 
 © 2015 PkmX 
 License: BSD-2-clause or BSD-3-clause or BSD-4-clause or Expat or Apache-2
 License-Grant:
 I, Mathias Panzenböck, place this file hereby into [SNIP]


Oh! Indeed, it's called Apache-2. Since the author said "licenses" 
(plural!) I'll list both Apache-1 and Apache-2.



[...] One stand-alone paragraph for *each* distinct license text you
have named.


I was aware of that. Good to hear it again :)


- Is my "Expat" interpretation acceptable?


It is commonly held that “under the conditions of the Expat license” is
equivalent to “MIT license”, so long as it's clear the copyright holder
intends to grant those specific conditions.


Is that a yes?

The worst part about this is that the author said "the MIT licenses" 
(plural!), so I'm going to hope that I don't have to enumerate each of them.



The text above is not, IMO, an effective transfer to the public domain
in many jurisditions that Debian recipients will receive the work. So I
don't think you can list “public-domain” as one of the names.


Hmm. Sounds reasonable. Will do that.


- Shouldn't there be a system that allows the text of "known licenses"
to be left out?


If the full text of a license's terms and conditions is already in
‘/usr/share/common-licenses/’, [... s]omething like this will work:

 License: Apache-2
 On Debian systems, the complete text of version 2.0 of the Apache 
License
 can be found in ‘/usr/share/common-licenses/Apache-2.0’.


Ah! That's the way to do it. Thanks :)

Cheers,
Ben Wiederhake

Re: Multi super dual licensing

[Ben Finney]

Ben Wiederhake  writes:

> This is the license header, in case you're too lazy to click the link:
>
> > "License": Public Domain
> > I, Mathias Panzenböck, place this file hereby into the public domain. Use 
> > it at your own risk for whatever you like.
> > In case there are jurisdictions that don't support putting things in the 
> > public domain you can also consider it to
> > be "dual licensed" under the BSD, MIT and Apache licenses, if you want to. 
> > This code is trivial anyway. Consider it
> > an example on how to get the endian conversion functions on different 
> > platforms.
>
> Now my question is: How should the entry in debian/copyright look
> like?

I am an advocate for clearly distinguishing the license *conditions*
from the license *grant*.

I do this by placing the explicit text from the copyright holder that
*grants* license to perform specific actions, in a “License-Grant” field
in the appropriate paragraph for the set of files. That field is not
part of, but is permitted by, the current “copyright format 1.0”
specification.

Then, use the one-line “License” field, with the short names of the
license *conditions* under which Debian recipients have permission to
redistribute.

So:

Files: path/to/portable-endian.h
Copyright:
© 2013–2014 Mathias Panzenböck 
© 2015 PkmX 
License: BSD-2-clause or BSD-3-clause or BSD-4-clause or Expat or Apache-2
License-Grant:
I, Mathias Panzenböck, place this file hereby into the public domain.
Use it at your own risk for whatever you like. In case there are
jurisdictions that don't support putting things in the public domain
you can also consider it to be "dual licensed" under the BSD, MIT and
Apache licenses, if you want to. This code is trivial anyway. Consider
it an example on how to get the endian conversion functions on
different platforms.

> Specifically, I would like to know:
> - Is this approach "A or B or C or D" acceptable, or did I
> misunderstand something?

Yes, though if you use it there needs to be a stand-alone paragraph for
*each* named set of license conditions. That paragraph needs to contain
the license text (the text with permissions and conditions and terms)
verbatim. One stand-alone paragraph for *each* distinct license text you
have named.

> - Is my "Expat" interpretation acceptable?

It is commonly held that “under the conditions of the Expat license” is
equivalent to “MIT license”, so long as it's clear the copyright holder
intends to grant those specific conditions.

> - Is the naming "public-domain-pe" acceptable? The documentation [1]
> says that I absolutely MUST explain what kind of "public-domain" this
> is, and I believe this makes sure this is fulfilled.

The text above is not, IMO, an effective transfer to the public domain
in many jurisditions that Debian recipients will receive the work. So I
don't think you can list “public-domain” as one of the names.

It's clear the copyright holder *intends* to do that, but under the
current copyright regime it's maddeningly difficult to do effectively.
Some jurisdictions just don't deal well with the idea of copyright
holders voluntarily choosing not to have their rights in a work.

> - Shouldn't there be a system that allows the text of "known licenses"
> to be left out?

If the full text of a license's terms and conditions is already in
‘/usr/share/common-licenses/’, and you know that is exactly the set of
conditions to which the license grant refers, you can use the fact that
a Debian recipient already has that file. Something like this will work:

License: Apache-2
On Debian systems, the complete text of version 2.0 of the Apache 
License
can be found in ‘/usr/share/common-licenses/Apache-2.0’.

For other license texts which are not installed to that location on
Debian systems, you'll need to put the full text of whatever set of
conditions and terms the copyright holder is referring to.

-- 
 \   “Oh, I love your magazine. My favorite section is ‘How To |
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Ben Finney