[License-discuss] Looking for a license agreement.
Hello, I'm working on a project and have been struggling with finding a license for it. I currently have a very restrictive one (courtesy of my lawyer) but am aware that it very much would limit the interest in further development from the community. The bulk of the project is in place, and the license is all that is holding back an initial release. There will also be a community aspect where individuals will develop and contribute components, just like every other open source project However, some of the contributed components may not be eligible for copyright protections. A component might be a simple configuration file, a pure data set, or even a full description of a server farm with data processing and management software. So what I would like to do is tie the license of the software to the user of the software respecting the licenses of the community-distributed components they use, whether or not the individual component is eligible for copyright protection. I would also like to have a framework where components could require automatic redistribution of modifications---a contributor could select a mandatory/automatic redistribution license. While I understand the desire for someone to remove/disable/firewall off the automatic redistribution functionality for security or other reasons, it would be nice to say If you disable this part of the system, you are restricted from using contributed components that require this functionality as a condition of your use. At the same time, I am a somewhat concerned about this being viewed as an attempt at DRM or opening the door to DRM-enabled open source software. Does anyone know of an existing license that achieves this? If not what would be a good license to start with? -r ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Looking for a license agreement.
Rudy Lippan wrote: So what I would like to do is tie the license of the software to the user of the software respecting the licenses of the community-distributed components they use, whether or not the individual component is eligible for copyright protection. You can't have a licence unless some rights are restricted without it. If there really is no intellectual property in the components you mention, they don't need, and can't have a licence. There may not be intellectual property in the components; however, there is work involved in their creation. As such, I think it would be fair to be able to attribute the creator some level of control over the use use of the product. License may be the wrong term here, but the idea is the same. I really get the idea of the License not being binding, but if someone were to Tag or identify tag the work as non-commercial, then it could not be used within the program for commercial purposes without violating the license of the program itself. I give you free use of a copy machine, but state that as a condition of use, you can't copy any of the books on shelf #3, even though a) I don't own the books and b) they are in the public domain. -r ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Looking for a license agreement.
On 10/06/2011 12:50 PM, Rudy Lippan wrote: There will also be a community aspect where individuals will develop and contribute components, just like every other open source project However, some of the contributed components may not be eligible for copyright protections. A component might be a simple configuration file, a pure data set, or even a full description of a server farm with data processing and management software. So what I would like to do is tie the license of the software to the user of the software respecting the licenses of the community-distributed components they use, whether or not the individual component is eligible for copyright protection. Just my two cents here, but I believe that it will be simpler (and safer) if you assume that all contributions to your project are copyrightable, and thus, needing to be under a compatible license. That might be assuming a lot :-) I am looking at a CPAN-like system for contributions but where individual builds would be able to be published within the network, but someone might be publishing equivalent of the ./configure options that were used to get some new CMS to work with a particular web server. (I used webserver 4.8 and I needed to add this set of modules along with making these configuration changes). Maybe think about of more of as a network for sharing .spec files? But where the.spec files can also indicate the base OS along with the specific versions of each application to along with the connections between other hosts. I think it would be a fair trade for the author to say, 'go figure it out how to do this for yourself if you don't agree to re-release your changes'. I also think that you should handle contribution licensing requirements separately from the copyright license of your work. I have seen too many poorly worded software copyright licenses where the intent was noble, but the implementation ended up in something that was non-Free or non-Open Source. This, of course, is what I am trying to avoid... In Fedora, we require contributors to agree to the Fedora Project Contributor Agreement (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:FPCA), to ensure that contributions (of both code and content) accepted to Fedora are guaranteed to come with acceptable licensing terms, either via explicit licensing statement from the copyright holder or explicit agreement to the default license terms as stated in the FPCA. A similar model may work for your project, and the FPCA is available under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported (with section 4d waived), although if you do decide to generate a derived work, I strongly encourage you to have a lawyer sign off on it first, because Legalese != English. Something like that would probably work nicely for the core. I will have to spend some more time reading it, but it is much better than what I have now, which is that you assign all IP for any modifications that you make. -r ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Looking for a license agreement.
Rudy Lippan scripsit: I give you free use of a copy machine, but state that as a condition of use, you can't copy any of the books on shelf #3, even though a) I don't own the books and b) they are in the public domain. You can do that because you own the copy machine. But if a book is But if I own the the software (copy machine), could I state that as a condition of my allowing you to use the software that you will read the requirements(title page) of the components (books) and agree to abide by what it says before using it with the software (making a photocopy)? -r ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Looking for a license agreement.
On Thursday, October 06, 2011 at 05:59:45 PM, John Cowan wrote: Rudy Lippan scripsit: But if I own the the software (copy machine), could I state that as a condition of my allowing you to use the software that you will read the requirements(title page) of the components (books) and agree to abide by what it says before using it with the software (making a photocopy)? Sure, but it seems to me better to make that self-enforcing as a result of using the right kinds of licenses on the content. The default assumption is that if someone gives you content, they have the right to do so. I think I may have confused the issue with the unfortunate choice of the Title page. Instead, lets say I build a library and allow people to place their rare books in the library, most of which are old and in the public domain. The owners of the physical copy of the books put on the inside cover a sticky- note (archival quality, of course) detailing restrictions on the use. As a condition of using the library, you have to respect the notes the book owners place on their books. Maybe what I am trying to do is overkill and idealistic, but I thought it would be nice to attempt to leverage the loss of being able to use an application (along with a possible copyright infringement lawsuit) to protect the people who's contributions might be significant but not up to the level of copyrightable IP. Take, for example, an intern who takes a week to do something that an experience sysadmin can do in a day. The intern is allowed to retain rights to the work and decides to release it tagged for non-commercial use. It would be pretty crappy for an organization to use it as the basis of project because they know would prevail in court (or more likely, when they find out after the fact that an employee used it and decide to brush off the author when the conditions of use are brought to their attention). -r ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
Re: [License-discuss] Looking for a license agreement.
On Thursday, October 06, 2011 at 05:06:58 PM, David Woolley wrote: Rudy Lippan wrote: There may not be intellectual property in the components; however, there is work involved in their creation. As such, I think it would be fair to be able to attribute the creator some level of control over the use use of the product. License may be the wrong term here, but the idea is the same. That's why the UK recognizes database copyrights. However, if no such That is a tough one for me. I don't think that a list factual data itself is deserving of copyright protections esp. when the data cannot be recreated by someone else. statute applies, you must create a contract with every transfer or copy of the components, and as part of that contract, require the receiving party to treat them as confidential. I'm not sure that is compatible with open source. Do you think that it would be compatible with open source for super- data-munger(TM) 1.3 to say, if you download* databases form the munger network(TM)+ and use super-data-munger to process the data, you must re-release the product of your munging along with your munger ruleset(TM) to the munger$ network? I ask because this is related to another project with which I am involved. * know or have reason to believe that the data set originated or was derived from a munger network data source. + or any similar network that puts restrictions on the use of such databases. $ or network from which the original databases originated -r ___ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
