Re: [License-discuss] Does this look like an open source license?
Tom Callaway wrote: I would suggest that it would be better to have a proper legal translation done of the 3c-BSD into Chinese, than to have a weak simple English version for the rest of the world to struggle with. +1 It would be an interesting exercise to have qualified legal professionals prepare a translation of BSD or MIT into Asian language(s). It seems a reasonable hypothesis that not understanding the license you are granting is a potential barrier to open source contribution from developers in Asia-Pacific. cheers atw Intel open source technology center ___ 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?
In that case ask your lawyers. I don't know the legal system in China. However, I do believe if the license is not valid because it is written in English and not Chinese, then the default license applies. And I do believe the default license will be no copying permitted just like in other countries. If so, it will be the defendant that suffers instead of the plaintiff. If the judge cannot handle the case because his English is not good enough then the standard response is to send it to another who can, or get it translated by an independent legal translation service. As such, I won't put too much weight on the hearsay. Best Regards, Cinly * I do not read footer and will not be bounded by them. If they are legally enforceable then this one always triumph yours. On 26 January 2015 at 13:42, Maxthon Chan xcvi...@me.com wrote: 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 ___ 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?
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
Re: [License-discuss] Does this look like an open source license?
On 01/26/2015 08:42 AM, Maxthon Chan 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). While I completely understand your motivation here, the key point is that licenses are not written in English (much less simple English), but rather, in Legalese, which uses a Law Dictionary instead of a standard English dictionary. It is tricky (though, not impossible) to write a simple license that parses reasonably the same in English and Legalese, though, I'm not at all convinced that it is possible to do so with the limited simple English subset. Rather than even trying that, I would suggest that it would be better to have a proper legal translation done of the 3c-BSD into Chinese, than to have a weak simple English version for the rest of the world to struggle with. ~tom == Red Hat attachment: tcallawa.vcf___ 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?
On 25/01/15 07:47, Maxthon Chan wrote: 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). This sounds like a recipe for licence proliferation. Note you can only do this if you own all the copyrights. Also, any more complex licence, like the GPL, will only be valid in one language. There may be official translations, but they will normally say that the primary language version is definitive, if there is any conflict. 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. I assume part of China's accession to the WTO was that they implement the basic principle that everything is copyright by default. In which case, if the licence is considered unenforceable, there is no licence, and therefore no permission to make copies of the copyright work, so the distributor of the commercial product is in breach of the copyright. That might cause other problems, of course. I would also have assume part of WTO was the choice of law principle. ___ 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?
On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 5:43 AM, David Woolley for...@david-woolley.me.uk wrote: This sounds like a recipe for licence proliferation. It definitely is, but new licenses aren't always a problem, particularly in cases where a judge's inability to understand the language renders the license effectively invalid. Just for fun, I started from the BSD 3-Clause and re-worked it to only use the words in the Oxford 3000 word list (plus the word copyright, since that seemed unavoidable). This is almost certainly not a usable license from a legal perspective, due to the amount of synonyms and circumlocution I had to employ (on the other hand, just because a word has a specific legal meaning in the U.S., that doesn't mean it will in other countries). The text of the license is on GitHub: https://github.com/funnelfiasco/permissive3000 The commit history contains most of the reasoning for the various changes I made, but I've also discussed some of it on a blog post: http://blog.funnelfiasco.com/?p=1638 I have no intention of submitting this for OSI approval (unless it turns out that this is really awesome), but it seems like a good focal point for discussion about making licenses as readable and portable (from a language standpoint if not a jursidiction standpoint). I welcome constructive feedback as a public learning experience, but if this is too far off-topic for this list, I'd be happy to move the discussion to another venue. Thanks, BC -- Ben Cotton ___ 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
Re: [License-discuss] Does this look like an open source license?
In this case it is probably better to get a lawyer to look at the final text if you can. Attempting to write a legalistic sounding license will probably be counterproductive compared to a layman license. Best Regards, Cinly * I do not read footer and will not be bounded by them. If they are legally enforceable then this one always triumph yours. On 23 January 2015 at 01:09, ChanMaxthon xcvi...@me.com wrote: I was once using straight 3c-BSDL but one incident (I am not from an Anglophone country) proved to me that it's language is too complex in local courts. Now I am sort of forced into creating a functional equivalent using only simple English (definition: restrict word usage to the 3000 basic English word defined by Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary) so this is my first attempt. Sent from my iPhone On Jan 23, 2015, at 02:00, Ben Cotton bcot...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 10:32 AM, Maxthon Chan xcvi...@me.com wrote: I have used a license like this for my open projects for a very long time. Does this look like a real open source license? snip Is this a rephrase of the 3-clause BSD license? It looks like a rephrase of the BSD 3-Clause, but there are some concerns I have about it (I am not a lawyer, so my concerns may be incomplete and/or irrelevant)... * You distribute this software in its executable form with the copyright notice above, this license and the disclaimer below intact and display them in appropriate ways; * You distribute this software in its source code form with the copyright notice above, this license and the disclaimer below intact and the end result of such source code displays them in appropriate ways; These two clauses, pedantically interpreted, would require anyone who uses the software to distribute it. Basically you'd want If you distribute...then you must include... The BSD 3-Clause begins both clauses with the word Redistributions in order to make it clear. In addition, I'm not sure what is meant in the second clause by the end result of such source code. Does that mean any compiled/interpreted code must display the license? What if it's a program that generally produces no output (think `cp`, `mv`, etc.)? The BSD 3-Clause requires the notice in the documentation, etc., but not in the end result of the source code. I would argue that it violates item 10 of the Open Source Definition, but that's a debatable point. In any case, it seems impractical. * The name of the author and contributors are not used without previous explicit written permission by the author and contributors. This also seems impractical, as it would disallow attribution. This license doesn't require attribution, so it's not a direct conflict, but it would prevent a common courtesy (at least without administrative overhead for both the original and downstream developers). The BSD 3-Clause forbids the use of the author's name to endorse or promote products derived from [the] software, but not attribution. This wouldn't technically violate any part of the OSD as far as I can tell, but it's unwieldy. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED TO YOU ON AN AS-IS BASIS. NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER COMES WITH THIS SOFTWARE, IMPLICIT OR NOT, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY THE LAWS. THE AUTHORS, CONTRIBUTORS AND COPYRIGHT HOLDERS SHALL NOT BE HELD RELIABLE TO ANY DAMAGE OR LOSS OCCURRED FROM USING OF THIS SOFTWARE. THE LAWS? What laws? It's not clear from your post if you've written this license or if you got it from somewhere else, but if it's yours I wonder what the motivation for this is as opposed to just using the BSD 3-Clause, which seems to have the same intention but with more practical wording. Thanks, BC -- 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 ___ 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?
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
Re: [License-discuss] Does this look like an open source license?
On 23/01/15 01:09, ChanMaxthon wrote: I was once using straight 3c-BSDL but one incident (I am not from an Anglophone country) proved to me that it's language is too complex in local courts. Now I am sort of forced into creating a functional equivalent using only simple English (definition: restrict word usage to the 3000 basic English word defined by Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary) so this is my first attempt. You can't expect to do that without creating a significantly longer document, as you must make explicit all the nuances of the original language. Legal documents are written in natural languages but have very carefully crafted meanings, which often depend on the precise meanings of the words chosen. Whilst the BSD licence is probably relatively easy in this respect, longer licences could easily be completely misrepresented. You can see this in the way the Creative Commons licences are done. There is a plain language version to try and give the general public an idea of the meaning, but there is also a legal code version, which is the one intended to be used by the courts. ___ 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?
I was once using straight 3c-BSDL but one incident (I am not from an Anglophone country) proved to me that it's language is too complex in local courts. Now I am sort of forced into creating a functional equivalent using only simple English (definition: restrict word usage to the 3000 basic English word defined by Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary) so this is my first attempt. Sent from my iPhone On Jan 23, 2015, at 02:00, Ben Cotton bcot...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 10:32 AM, Maxthon Chan xcvi...@me.com wrote: I have used a license like this for my open projects for a very long time. Does this look like a real open source license? snip Is this a rephrase of the 3-clause BSD license? It looks like a rephrase of the BSD 3-Clause, but there are some concerns I have about it (I am not a lawyer, so my concerns may be incomplete and/or irrelevant)... * You distribute this software in its executable form with the copyright notice above, this license and the disclaimer below intact and display them in appropriate ways; * You distribute this software in its source code form with the copyright notice above, this license and the disclaimer below intact and the end result of such source code displays them in appropriate ways; These two clauses, pedantically interpreted, would require anyone who uses the software to distribute it. Basically you'd want If you distribute...then you must include... The BSD 3-Clause begins both clauses with the word Redistributions in order to make it clear. In addition, I'm not sure what is meant in the second clause by the end result of such source code. Does that mean any compiled/interpreted code must display the license? What if it's a program that generally produces no output (think `cp`, `mv`, etc.)? The BSD 3-Clause requires the notice in the documentation, etc., but not in the end result of the source code. I would argue that it violates item 10 of the Open Source Definition, but that's a debatable point. In any case, it seems impractical. * The name of the author and contributors are not used without previous explicit written permission by the author and contributors. This also seems impractical, as it would disallow attribution. This license doesn't require attribution, so it's not a direct conflict, but it would prevent a common courtesy (at least without administrative overhead for both the original and downstream developers). The BSD 3-Clause forbids the use of the author's name to endorse or promote products derived from [the] software, but not attribution. This wouldn't technically violate any part of the OSD as far as I can tell, but it's unwieldy. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED TO YOU ON AN AS-IS BASIS. NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER COMES WITH THIS SOFTWARE, IMPLICIT OR NOT, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY THE LAWS. THE AUTHORS, CONTRIBUTORS AND COPYRIGHT HOLDERS SHALL NOT BE HELD RELIABLE TO ANY DAMAGE OR LOSS OCCURRED FROM USING OF THIS SOFTWARE. THE LAWS? What laws? It's not clear from your post if you've written this license or if you got it from somewhere else, but if it's yours I wonder what the motivation for this is as opposed to just using the BSD 3-Clause, which seems to have the same intention but with more practical wording. Thanks, BC -- 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
