Re: [License-discuss] Shortest copyleft licence
How to use CC in software licensing then? Or do we need a specific CC variant or addendum for code? On Apr 1, 2015, at 22:37, Tzeng, Nigel H. nigel.tz...@jhuapl.edu wrote: On 3/31/15, 3:24 PM, Rick Moen r...@linuxmafia.com wrote: Quoting Tzeng, Nigel H. (nigel.tz...@jhuapl.edu): Or perhaps they simply wish software licenses were as easy to understand and use as the creative commons ones. Yes, it's common to wish that highly technical fields (such as law) were simple. Very small benefit, large downside as shown by those who've gotten this wrong. Creative Commons seems successful and it does not appear that they have ³gotten this wrong². It should be as easy as SC-BY-SA 1.0 with a clear english (or whatever) description without some debatable political/social agenda behind it all like with the FSF/GPL. A copyleft licence without a political/social agenda? I'll await this with interest. CC-BY-SA Sufficiently apolitical for me without manifestos, widely accepted and used. ___ 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] Shortest copyleft licence
And how about the software patent issue (which is a highlight of GPLv3 and Apache 2.0) Is this rough equivalents: CC-by ~ 2BSDL, CC=by-sa ~ GPLv2? On Apr 1, 2015, at 22:37, Tzeng, Nigel H. nigel.tz...@jhuapl.edu wrote: On 3/31/15, 3:24 PM, Rick Moen r...@linuxmafia.com wrote: Quoting Tzeng, Nigel H. (nigel.tz...@jhuapl.edu): Or perhaps they simply wish software licenses were as easy to understand and use as the creative commons ones. Yes, it's common to wish that highly technical fields (such as law) were simple. Very small benefit, large downside as shown by those who've gotten this wrong. Creative Commons seems successful and it does not appear that they have ³gotten this wrong². It should be as easy as SC-BY-SA 1.0 with a clear english (or whatever) description without some debatable political/social agenda behind it all like with the FSF/GPL. A copyleft licence without a political/social agenda? I'll await this with interest. CC-BY-SA Sufficiently apolitical for me without manifestos, widely accepted and used. ___ 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] Shortest copyleft licence
Then we would need to create a CC-style set of software licenses to solve this issue, without the manifestos, politics and technicalities. On Apr 1, 2015, at 23:17, Ben Cotton bcot...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 11:01 AM, Maxthon Chan xcvi...@me.com wrote: How to use CC in software licensing then? Or do we need a specific CC variant or addendum for code? For what it's worth Creative Commons says not to: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can_I_apply_a_Creative_Commons_license_to_software.3F -- Ben Cotton ___ 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] Shortest copyleft licence
How about this copyleft clause for 2BSDL or 3BSDL (that is, add this clause into the existing clauses of 2BSDL or 3BSDL to make it copyleft) with a rewritten clause 2 and a new clause 3 (3BSDL’s clause 3 get bumped to clause 4 in this case) 2. Redistributions in binary form of this work or any derivative work of this work must be accompanied with the corresponding, human-preferred source code. 3. Redistribution of any derivative work must be also licensed under the same license as this work. On Mar 31, 2015, at 06:24, Tim Makarios tjm1...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, 2015-03-30 at 10:24 -0400, co...@ccil.org wrote: That's pretty much what the Sleepycat license does. Here's a very lightly edited version of its additional clause: Redistributions in any form must be accompanied by information on how to obtain complete source code for the licensed software and any accompanying software that uses the licensed software. The source code must either be included in the distribution or be available for no more than the cost of distribution plus a nominal fee, and must be freely redistributable under reasonable conditions. For an executable file, complete source code means the source code for all modules it contains. It does not include source code for modules or files that typically accompany the major components of the operating system on which the executable file runs. I might have misunderstood it, but this seems like very weak copyleft to me. The (presumably possibly modified) source code could be made freely redistributable under reasonable conditions that were themselves a permissive licence, allowing the next person to re-monopolize their own derivatives of the derivative work. Or have I missed something? How about this for a licence? The creators of this work affirm that anyone who obtains a copy of this work is licensed to: * make further copies and derivative works from their copy of the work, and * use and distribute their copies and derivative works, provided that all such derivative works are governed by this licence. 50 words. It doesn't require making the source code available, but recipients of binaries will always be free to make derivative works by reverse engineering the binaries. It does make itself incompatible with other copyleft licences, though, which seems difficult to avoid in a very short, non-weak copyleft licence. I'd be keen to be proven wrong on that point, though. Tim ___ 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] Shortest copyleft licence
Hmm… Would OSI itself be such an organisation? Since my personal preference of BSDL, I would like to see people writing BSDL-like clauses for different purposes (like my proposed BSDL-like copyleft clause) and a developer can just cherry-pick license features they want by choosing individual clauses and construct a license for themselves. OSI would supervise the creation of such clauses and determine whether any combination of such clauses would create a non-open license or not. Clauses can be created my taking features out of existing licenses, like a GPL-style copyleft clause, an Apache-like patent protection clause, or a CC-like version upgrade clause. Localisations should be also considered if this project is to be carried out, as not all US-centric license licenses would work around the world. On Apr 1, 2015, at 02:11, Tzeng, Nigel H. nigel.tz...@jhuapl.edu wrote: On 3/31/15, 1:59 PM, Maxthon Chan xcvi...@me.com wrote: I have a gut feeling that this thread have somewhat common point as my ³simple English BSD equivalent² thread as there are just too many politics and complexities involved in those licenses and engineers, being not-so-professional in law, gets confused easily. I still remembered my days reading through 17 USC and Chinese copyright law just to grasp an idea on how copyright works, and before I filed my patents I bought a book on how patent laws work. I have to educate myself in those legal concepts just to protect my own work. If only there were some (mostly) apolitical organization that could hire lawyers and create a universal set of attribution and share alike software licenses that would work across legal systems (with variants if required under the hood) with simple ways to mix and match features to achieve the desire of the developer in a commonly understood way. ___ 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] Shortest copyleft licence
I have a gut feeling that this thread have somewhat common point as my “simple English BSD equivalent” thread as there are just too many politics and complexities involved in those licenses and engineers, being not-so-professional in law, gets confused easily. I still remembered my days reading through 17 USC and Chinese copyright law just to grasp an idea on how copyright works, and before I filed my patents I bought a book on how patent laws work. I have to educate myself in those legal concepts just to protect my own work. On Apr 1, 2015, at 01:54, Tzeng, Nigel H. nigel.tz...@jhuapl.edu wrote: On 3/30/15, 10:00 PM, Rick Moen r...@linuxmafia.com wrote: It's an object lesson in why coders should not attempt to draft what are often on this mailing list termed 'crayon licences'. A broader point: The quest for the shortest possible licence (of whatever category) strikes me as solving the wrong problem. If your problem is that you're dealing with people having difficulty contending with the reality of a worldwide copyright regime and trying to wish it out of their lives, maybe overcoming that lack of reality orientation ought to be your task. (My opinion, yours for a small fee and waiver of reverse-engineering rights.) Or perhaps they simply wish software licenses were as easy to understand and use as the creative commons ones. It should be as easy as SC-BY-SA 1.0 with a clear english (or whatever) description without some debatable political/social agenda behind it all like with the FSF/GPL. ___ 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] Shortest copyleft licence
Is it favorable to add a copy left clause into 2BSDL to make it copyleft? You must provide the source code, in its human-preferred format, with this work or any derivatives of this work you created when redistributing. Sent from my iPad On Mar 30, 2015, at 18:22, Francois Marier franc...@fmarier.org wrote: On 2015-03-30 at 20:40:56, Tim Makarios wrote: What's the shortest copyleft licence people on this list know of? You may want to look at copyleft-next since it is an effort to create an effective but short copyleft license: https://gitorious.org/copyleft-next The latest release (0.3.0) is 1500 words long. Francois -- http://fmarier.org/ ___ 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] Does this look like an open source license?
That incident is only heard from friends. Also court documents is not made public in China. In this country lots of stuff is not made public. Don’t feel strange for the lack of transparency. On Jan 25, 2015, at 18:51, Jim Wright jim.wri...@oracle.com wrote: Do you have a link or case name? I am curious to read more about this holding. -- Jim On Jan 24, 2015, at 11:47 PM, Maxthon Chan xcvi...@me.com wrote: The incident is that one project owner found his code used in an commercial product without attribution but the Chinese-speaking court says that the license is not enforceable if it is written in a language that the judge cannot understand, and that particular judge have only beginner level English. This lead me to create two thing: a 3c-BSD equivalent in simple English, and a 3c-BSD equivalent in Chinese (under law of Mainland China). ___ 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] Does this look like an open source license?
The incident is that one project owner found his code used in an commercial product without attribution but the Chinese-speaking court says that the license is not enforceable if it is written in a language that the judge cannot understand, and that particular judge have only beginner level English. This lead me to create two thing: a 3c-BSD equivalent in simple English, and a 3c-BSD equivalent in Chinese (under law of Mainland China). On Jan 23, 2015, at 11:07, Ben Cotton bcot...@funnelfiasco.com wrote: I'd be really interested to learn more about the incident in question. Knowing what made the BSD 3-Clause insufficient might help improve the language. Constraining the license text to only include the words in the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary sounds like a fun challenge. I'll see what sort of concrete suggestions I can come up with (again with the disclaimer that I am merely a license enthusiast). Thanks, BC ___ 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
[License-discuss] Newbie post: Localisable open source software license
Hello everyone. I am Max from Donghua University. I am developing an open-source project that is intended to be distributed across boundaries. However laws is different from one country to another, hence licenses may need to be localised appropriately. For example, few existing open source license work 100% issue-free in China simply because it is not in Chinese language. There is a project, Creative Commons, that focuses on providing free license for art, music and works alike. They tackled the localisation issue well, by providing localised licenses that is interchangeable with each other, even in the copyleft variants.However Creative Commons does not work well with software. I can CC license my documentations but not the software itself. I am considering expanding some existing license to allow the same localisation capability, and provide some localised versions of it. To me, I decided to expand 3-clause BSD license. I have started a GitHub repository https://github/xcvista/muskiPL to host the development of the expanded license. I will commit this license to review after it is finalised. I would like to know your opinions on a localisable open source license. signature.asc Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
