Re: [License-discuss] [License-review] CC withdrawl of CC0 from OSI process
[Moved to license-discuss, as this thread has become highly offtopic for license-review.] Quoting Chad Perrin (per...@apotheon.com): It doesn't help much that it seems like everyone working with lawyers wants to produce horribly complex systems of license restrictions, so that almost the only people who *can* read them are lawyers. (Cry me a river.) It's called 'realism'. The reason well written licences have an irreducible complexity about them is that they are obliged to deal with real legal issues, e.g., the way warranty disclaimers are required to be specific and 'prominent' (which ends up meaning all capital letters) as a result of Uniform Commercial Code caselaw. Defective efforts like 'Unlicense' are what happens when naive coders attempt to create permissive licences, with results about as sad and unfortunate as would be the case if typical coders were to attempt to practice law. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] [License-review] CC withdrawl of CC0 from OSI process
On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 12:28:03AM -0800, Rick Moen wrote: [Moved to license-discuss, as this thread has become highly offtopic for license-review.] Quoting Chad Perrin (per...@apotheon.com): It doesn't help much that it seems like everyone working with lawyers wants to produce horribly complex systems of license restrictions, so that almost the only people who *can* read them are lawyers. (Cry me a river.) It's called 'realism'. The reason well written licences have an irreducible complexity about them is that they are obliged to deal with real legal issues, e.g., the way warranty disclaimers are required to be specific and 'prominent' (which ends up meaning all capital letters) as a result of Uniform Commercial Code caselaw. Explain to me how wanting to enforce a crapton of additional terms is realism instead of a more-restrictive license. I'm not talking about needing three lines to say what takes one in plain English: I'm talking about adding stuff like restrictions on deployment or distribution technologies, special-case license combination exceptions, and other stuff that would really be entirely unnecessary if people would just stop trying to micromanage each others' lives. Defective efforts like 'Unlicense' are what happens when naive coders attempt to create permissive licences, with results about as sad and unfortunate as would be the case if typical coders were to attempt to practice law. . . . and yet, the Unlicense is lengthier than (for instance) the ISC and MIT/X11 licenses, which are better written from a legal standpoint. That's because the Unlicense is trying to *do* more, and not just because it wasn't written by lawyers or with lawyers on tap to help tighten up the language for legal purposes. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] [License-review] CC withdrawl of CC0 from OSI process
On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 12:28:03AM -0800, Rick Moen wrote: (Cry me a river.) By the way, your asshole-ish attitude is hilarious when you're addressing something I didn't even say. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] [License-review] CC withdrawl of CC0 from OSI process
Rick Moen wrote: It's called 'realism'. The reason well written licences have an irreducible complexity about them is that they are obliged to deal with real legal issues, e.g., the way warranty disclaimers are required to be The reality is that the people who have to comply with licences are not professional lawyers. If they are presented with lots of legalese, they are likely to ignore it, as most people do with shrink wrap licence agreements, or the legal stuff hidden in low contrast, small font links at the bottom of web pages, which the designers would rather not have there at all. I suspect that licences with lots of legalese discriminate against medium size enterprises. Very small ones, and individuals, are not worth suing, and very big one have bigger lawyers than yours. The medium sized enterprise is not going to want to bring in a lawyer every time a design specification is reviewed, so, if their management cannot understand the licence, they may just play safe by looking for different solutions. -- David Woolley Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want. RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam, that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
[License-discuss] What would be necessary to consider the unlicense?
On Sun, Feb 26, 2012, at 03:03 PM, Chad Perrin wrote: On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 12:28:03AM -0800, Rick Moen wrote: Defective efforts like 'Unlicense' are what happens when naive coders attempt to create permissive licences, with results about as sad and unfortunate as would be the case if typical coders were to attempt to practice law. . . . and yet, the Unlicense is lengthier than (for instance) the ISC and MIT/X11 licenses, which are better written from a legal standpoint. That's because the Unlicense is trying to *do* more, and not just because it wasn't written by lawyers or with lawyers on tap to help tighten up the language for legal purposes. I suggest that the Unlicense should be considered for OSI approval. If it is a broken license, perhaps those with legal expertise might provide suggestions to fix it? Best, Clark ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] [License-review] CC withdrawl of CC0 from OSI process
On 02/26/2012 02:03 PM, Chad Perrin wrote: Explain to me how wanting to enforce a crapton of additional terms is realism instead of a more-restrictive license. When the terms are grants, or specifications of what must be granted in derivative works. attachment: bruce.vcf smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] [License-review] CC withdrawl of CC0 from OSI process
On 02/26/2012 02:31 PM, David Woolley wrote: The reality is that the people who have to comply with licences are not professional lawyers. This is always in my thoughts when considering any Open Source license. We can fail these people in two ways: 1. Provide them with a license that they might not understand. 2. Provide them with a license that won't hold up in court. The second damages them more. The first can be solved with explanation separate from the license. Thanks Bruce attachment: bruce.vcf smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] What would be necessary to consider the unlicense?
On 02/26/2012 04:05 PM, Clark C. Evans wrote: If it is a broken license, perhaps those with legal expertise might provide suggestions to fix it? I am having trouble finding a benefit that would come from fixing it, that we don't already have from short-and-sweet licenses like BSD. What you would to be as good as BSD would be a public domain declaration coupled with a covenant not-to-sue that extends to the patent claims of the dedicator that are necessary to utilize the work as it was dedicated. And a warranty disclaimer to protect the donor. It ends up not being shorter nor simpler. Thanks Bruce attachment: bruce.vcf smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] What would be necessary to consider the unlicense?
I am having trouble finding a benefit that would come from fixing it, that we don't already have from short-and-sweet licenses like BSD. So, what makes unlicense and these public domain statements alluring is that they serve as vehicles for their authors make a statement about public policy. The MIT/BSD simply don't make a public statement this way, and hence, they don't have that sort of irresistable attraction. I think what CC0 has taught us is that this same public policy vigor should be directed towards intellectual property broadly, including an abandonment of patent and database rights as well as copyright. What you would to be as good as BSD would be a public domain declaration coupled with a covebroanant not-to-sue that extends to the patent claims of the dedicator that are necessary to utilize the work as it was dedicated. And a warranty disclaimer to protect the donor. *nods* It ends up not being shorter nor simpler. How short could it be though? I suggest we get a github or other repository, put in some draft language, and hack at it. Perhaps we could help the original authors of Unlicense produce a 2.0 version that adds we hate patents too! feature that would be worth upgrading? Best, Clark ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] What would be necessary to consider the unlicense?
On 02/26/2012 05:50 PM, Clark C. Evans wrote: So, what makes unlicense and these public domain statements alluring is that they serve as vehicles for their authors make a statement about public policy. Yes, but the sentiment is so poorly directed that it's the one from /Henry VI. /For all of the talk, there is no credible political organization working against software patenting today. In the past I've tried to get support for one, to no avail. Thanks Bruce attachment: bruce.vcf smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] [License-review] CC withdrawl of CC0 from OSI process
On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 04:50:16PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote: On 02/26/2012 02:31 PM, David Woolley wrote: The reality is that the people who have to comply with licences are not professional lawyers. This is always in my thoughts when considering any Open Source license. We can fail these people in two ways: 1. Provide them with a license that they might not understand. 2. Provide them with a license that won't hold up in court. The second damages them more. The first can be solved with explanation separate from the license. . . . which, judging by some Creative Commons examples (as the most obvious case of a license author/organization taking exactly that approach), is prone to being misleading and/or incomplete. Legal rigor is good, but pages of dense legalese coupled with plain English explanations that give people mistaken impressions because it's just not reasonable to expect a nuanced understanding of the sheer complexity of the license suggests to me that there's something wrong. What's wrong is usually the metric crapton of terms heaped on such licenses. I suspect a better approach to understandable, legally well-formed license production might be to get someone who wants a very simple license to write it, and only *then* get the lawyers involved. While you're at it, be prepared to make the lawyers explain everything they want to change, and to tell them no a lot. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] [License-review] CC withdrawl of CC0 from OSI process
On 02/26/2012 09:00 PM, Chad Perrin wrote: I suspect a better approach to understandable, legally well-formed license production might be to get someone who wants a very simple license to write it, and only *then* get the lawyers involved. While you're at it, be prepared to make the lawyers explain everything they want to change, and to tell them no a lot. The problem with your software, Chad, is that it's much too complicated for /no reason./ There's no reason for half of that crapton to be in there. We could cut it down to 10% of its present complexity if we had a /user /who wanted a really simple program write it first, and then we could have a programmer make it work correctly. While the programmer did that, we would make him explain /everything /that he was doing, and we would tell him no a lot to curb his natural tendency to add unnecessary complexity. :-) The pieces you don't like aren't there because anyone likes to put them there or because the people who wrote the license are idiots. There have been a lot of court cases in history. From those cases, we know a number of things that go wrong in courts. We want you not to get trapped by the same stuff. I had to help Bob Jacobsen, an Open Source developer who chose one of those over-simple licenses, the Artistic License 1.0, written by Larry Wall the Programmer. Bob had someone who both used his program in a product without even attributing it to him, and /also /asked Bob for lots of money for infringing his patent and tried to get Bob fired from his job by filing an FOIA with his employer. This was all over /model train software./ When Bob turned to Larry's Artistic License to help him get the guy off of his back, the Artistic License failed in court. We put a good team together and turned that around on appeal, but it was a close thing. By the time we were done, Bob had spent 5 years on the case, was out a good deal of money, and his relationship with his employer was damaged. We might not be able to help the next Bob who comes along and uses one of those licenses written in crayon. You can protect your friends by not encouraging them to do that. Thanks Bruce attachment: bruce.vcf smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] [License-review] CC withdrawl of CC0 from OSI process
Quoting Bruce Perens (br...@perens.com): The pieces you don't like aren't there because anyone likes to put them there or because the people who wrote the license are idiots. There have been a lot of court cases in history. From those cases, we know a number of things that go wrong in courts. We want you not to get trapped by the same stuff. Moreover, if we had our druthers, we'd prefer that hapless recipients and third-party reusers of works released under badly conceived crayon licences don't get hurt: Sadly for those of us who are friends of Papa Darwin, the people who make incompetent attempts to handwave away copyright and caselaw realities with such licences don't hurt _only_ or even primarily themselves. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
[License-discuss] Keep it civil, folks (and I'll try to make this mail civil).
A reminder, folks: please don't escalate the personal stuff -- even when you think the other person is doing so. The quoted bit of conversation below, for example, is not meant to target the specific people involved. I just picked it because it was recent and on my screen. There are other instances of needlessly personal escalation on these lists -- heck, even in this thread. Chad Perrin per...@apotheon.com writes: On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 12:28:03AM -0800, Rick Moen wrote: (Cry me a river.) By the way, your asshole-ish attitude is hilarious when you're addressing something I didn't even say. If you think someone else is flaming, you will help the whole list if you defuse it either by simply ignoring it (a surprisingly effective tactic), or by quoting it and merely raise a rhetorical eyebrow in response without actually striking back. I'm fully aware that some people here are hitting first, in terms of posting unprovoked or under-provoked flames. But there's no sheriff and no jail, so the right tactic for stopping it is to either not respond to the flame or to respond with something other than flamage. Everyone -- except the flamer -- who sees you respond in a controlled and civil fashion will notice you are doing so, and thank you for it. Sometimes even the original flamer will too, after having a few days to think about it; we've seen that happen on these lists sometimes. So please, don't escalate. It's never worth it. (I'm fibbing a bit about the no sherrif and no jail: in truly egregious cases, I'll boot someone from a list if necessary. After all, it's our server -- anyone's free to start their own mailing list. But it's so much better if we never reach that point in the first place.) Thanks, -Karl ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
