Re: [License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development
Richard Fontana wrote at 08:20 (EDT): Not with an exception in the GPLv2 exception sense, and not without the result being (A)GPLv3-incompatible, since under TGPPL each downstream distributor appears to be required to give the grace period. ISTR that Zooko was willing to drop that requirement for the sake of simplicity. But maybe I'm misremembering. Zooko? -- -- bkuhn ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open source license chooser choosealicense.com launched.
On Sun, Aug 18, 2013 at 11:10:52AM -0400, Pamela Chestek wrote: On 8/17/2013 9:38 PM, Richard Fontana wrote: Speaking just for myself, it is difficult for me to imagine any license chooser or license explanation site that I wouldn't think was more problematic than useful. Linking to a *wide* variety of license choosers or summary sites with a very strong caveat emptor statement might be okay. Because you are so intimately familiar with the licenses and know every feature and blemish, so you seek the perfect when maybe we should only aspire to the better-than-nothing. Maybe not; I read your slides and take your point that nothing isn't really all that scary. I really believe it is best for anyone to try to read the actual license in question. A summary can be a reasonable starting point, but it especially bothers me if it is distorted (as I think it may almost always be) by political or cultural bias. Also, if a license is really too difficult to understand, that is itself useful (for the would-be licensor and for the license steward) to find out. - RF ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
[License-discuss] Unlicense CC0 and patents
Hi, http://unlicense.org/ http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode What is the difference between CC0 and unlicense ? CCO clearly specifies that patents are not licensed but I am not sure how patents are treated in unlicense since nothing is specified. CC0 : *4. Limitations and Disclaimers.* 1. No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this document. ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open source license chooser choosealicense.com launched.
The problem/issue is that it is difficult to address licenses without, imo at least, the politics of said license leaking in. It is difficult to write things without personal biases filtering out, something which happens with me fwiw. On Aug 17, 2013, at 8:59 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn bk...@ebb.org wrote: Bradley M. Kuhn scripsit: Richard Fontana pointed out in his OSCON talk that license choosers generally make political statements about views of licenses. He used the GitHub chooser as an example, which subtly pushes people toward permissive licenses. John Cowan wrote at 09:49 (EDT): Surely he jests. Choosealicense.com *blatantly* pushes people toward the MIT license. :) Fontana has been known to jest. Still, my view is that it's tough to compliance about this; the choosealicense.com site says patches welcome, so we should offer them. I don't believe, however, that my chooser http://ccil.org/~cowan/floss has any such biases. John, have you considered offering text from your license chooser as a patch to chosealicense.com? I think it'd be good to test their claim that they want contribution, and you seem the right person to do it, since you've worked on this problem before. -- -- bkuhn ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open source license chooser choosealicense.com launched.
On 8/18/2013 10:21 PM, Richard Fontana wrote: I really believe it is best for anyone to try to read the actual license in question. A summary can be a reasonable starting point, but it especially bothers me if it is distorted (as I think it may almost always be) by political or cultural bias. This can be fixed. Github has asked for patches and no one has reported having a patch rejected. Also, if a license is really too difficult to understand, that is itself useful (for the would-be licensor and for the license steward) to find out. I'm still having a hard time reconciling this with the also-held belief that license proliferation is bad. So you would like people to read and comprehend, we'll say conservatively the 11 Popular Licenses, and find one that has the major substantive aspects they want but that also does not have any aspect that could use some tweaking for their own business model -- say, for example, a delayed release date of source code, which will mean they will write another license, or find another obscure license that does what they want but is obscure for a reason. I think instead you want licenses to be readily adopted based on decision about the major substantive aspects and the rest of it just falls where it falls. And the major substantive aspects are what is captured in the summary. Pam Pamela S. Chestek, Esq. Chestek Legal PO Box 2492 Raleigh, NC 27602 919-800-8033 pam...@chesteklegal.com www.chesteklegal.com ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open source license chooser choosealicense.com launched.
Speaking for myself I find the CC mechanism and license chooser quite nice and not problematic at all for the vast majority of use cases. On 8/17/13 9:38 PM, Richard Fontana font...@sharpeleven.org wrote: Speaking just for myself, it is difficult for me to imagine any license chooser or license explanation site that I wouldn't think was more problematic than useful. Linking to a *wide* variety of license choosers or summary sites with a very strong caveat emptor statement might be okay. - RF ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development
On Sun, Aug 18, 2013, at 02:25 PM, Eben Moglen wrote: You seem determined to take offense, Mr Cowan. Dr. Moglen, I'd like to highlight Cowan's advice since I've found it very helpful (and completely un-obvious) in my own life: Civil apologies require confession, contrition, and promise of amendment. Just a few years past, my younger brother called me out with a similar message and I very much lost it.However, after a few *years* (20?) reflection I came to understand I was very wrong, and that my distraction, distortion, and false apology were morally corrupt baggage. John isn't trying to hurt you, he's trying to help you grow as a person ... if he didn't care about the community and Free Software he would remain silent. Kindly, Clark ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Unlicense CC0 and patents
Prashant Shah scripsit: CCO clearly specifies that patents are not licensed but I am not sure how patents are treated in unlicense since nothing is specified. The presence of the patent verbs use and sell and the use of uncumbered suggest that there is a patent license, but no more than suggest. I suspect nobody who actually has patents (which unlike copyrights, take time and money to get) will use it anyway. -- BALIN FUNDINUL UZBAD KHAZADDUMUco...@ccil.org BALIN SON OF FUNDIN LORD OF KHAZAD-DUM http://www.ccil.org/~cowan ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open source license chooser choosealicense.com launched.
Hello license-discuss, On 08/18/2013 04:38 AM, Richard Fontana wrote: Independent of this point, I'm concerned about inaccurate statements made on the choosealicense.com site (one that we talked about was the assertion that GPLv3 restricts use in hardware that forbids software alterations). Please allow me to ask the impossible question: how would you write the summary of GPLv3 vs GPLv2 in 8-16 words? ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development
John Cowan wrote at 13:27 (EDT) on Sunday: == licensing content ends here, the rest is about civil behavior == I've already written to Larry privately to this point, but given that this subset of the conversation has raged on, I'd like to echo John's point: I think many comments on this thread were inappropriate. Artfully crafted insults wrapped in some sophistry of plausible deniability are still insults. Indeed, the meta-text here reminds me for the first time in years of the 1996 French film, Ridicule. Larry Rosen and I disagree about a great deal regarding Free Software licensing, and from time to time, I've even found myself on the opposite side of the table as Larry in GPL enforcement matters. To say that I Larry and I are political rivals is thus probably an understatement. :) However, there is no reason here on this list for anything but respectful discussion. I haven't seen much of it on this thread the last few days. In some backchannel discussions with others, I get the impression that John and I aren't alone in that view. -- -- bkuhn ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development
On Sat, Aug 17, 2013 at 08:44:02PM -0400, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: Zooko, It might be worth mentioning here that you and I have had discussions for years about the idea of drafting TGPPL as a set of exceptions to Affero GPLv3 and/or GPLv3. I believe this is indeed possible, but requires a good amount of tuits. IIRC, Zooko, first draft was on you, right? :) That's right, writing a draft Transitive Grace Period Public Licence v2.0 is on my TODO list. I was thinking of modeling it on the GCC Runtime Library Exception: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception.html I would of course appreciate any constructive, polite advice from the assembled experts here. Regards, Zooko ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Unlicense CC0 and patents
Quoting Prashant Shah (pshah.mum...@gmail.com): Hi, 'Lo. http://unlicense.org/ http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode What is the difference between CC0 and unlicense ? CCO contains a well-drafted fallback to permissive terms in the event that its primary intent runs afoul of local law (as is a serious problem with such efforts), while Unlicense is a badly drafted crayon licence, apparently thrown together by software engineers imagining they can handwave away the worldwide copyright regime by grabbing a bit of wording from here, a bit from there, throwing the result out in public, and hoping for the best. My initial comments on Unlicense: http://projects.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2012-January/26.html I never bothered getting to patent complications. -- Cheers, My daughter is invited to a samba party. I was Rick Moenexcited, thought it was a sysadmin party. r...@linuxmafia.com Turns out it's something to do with dancing :-/ McQ! (4x80) -- Martin Bateman ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
