under
certain circumstances.
I guess I'm convinced. :-)
--
Nathanael Nerode neroden at gcc.gnu.org
US citizens: if you're considering voting for Bush, look at these first:
http://www.misleader.org/ http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/
http://www.house.gov/reform/min/politicsandscience
I've been contacted by people at Creative Commons who'd like to have a
telephone conference to go over the draft. I think they're open to our
suggestions, if we can stay focused on particulars. Right now, I think this
is going to have to happen in late Jan. I'm running behind on a lot of
I wrote:
In contrast, pre-1986 (I think) US law specified that works published (==
deliberately distributed to the public by their authors) without a
copyright
statement went into the public domain.
Michael Edwards wrote:
1976; but otherwise basically correct (IANAL)
Checked this one
Michael Edwards wrote:
If one wants to remove ambiguity about the copyright status of small
contributions to a joint work, one could require either assignment of
copyright to the primary holder or formal placement into the public
domain,
One of the very unfortunate side effects of the Berne
Nick Phillips wrote:
So. The proposition to discuss would appear to be along the lines of:
Debian accepts that it may in certain circumstances be desirable
(or at least acceptable) for software licenses to limit certain
freedoms in order better to protect Free Software as a
Glenn Maynard wrote:
The GPL very deliberately does not specify
the preferred form for modification, and authors shouldn't do so (at
least not in a legally-binding way or an attempt to interpret the GPL).
Right. I think there is no harm in saying My preferred form for modification
is the
Derek Haines ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
I've been having a hard time finding answers to the following GPL
questions (can anyone here help?) :
I write a piece of software from scratch and release it under the GPL.
At the top of my source files, I have a standard copyright notice:
Copyright
Matthew Garrett wrote:
I'm not convinced by the trademark argument - I think it's pretty clear
from the HTML that it's not intended to be part of the license. Yes, it
would be better if that was made clearer, but:
a) CC appear to have said that it's not part of the license, and:
This one falls,
however I can't find any good resources on how to relinquish copyright.
That's because under current US law there is no clear way to do so. *Please*
complain to your congressman. :-/
I believe under European law it is usually impossible as well. Check it out
and then complain to your
Jacobo Tarrio wrote:
This should be useful for people who ask about the GFDL, documentation
licensing guidelines, etc.
Comments, additions, removals, rewordings are allowed and requested. There
are no invariant parts ;-)
When/if it becomes more or less stable, it would be useful for
Further discussion with upstream created this short license:
Netbiff may be redistributed in any form without restriction.
Netbiff comes with NO WARRANTY.
Since this is a new license I'm asking debian-legal for completeness if
there could be any problems with this licensing? It
MJ Ray wrote:
BSD: http://www.debian.org/misc/bsd.license
MIT/X11: http://www.x.org/Downloads_terms.html
Unfortunately, that is a subtly different X11 license from the one at
opensource.org. :-( (X11 stuff is actually under a mix of very similar but
not quite identical licenses.) I prefer
Michael K. Edwards wrote:
As I see it, the individuals who assigned their copyright in GNU
documentation to the FSF probably didn't expect to see the relicensing
of their work under a GPL-incompatible license, creating yet another
gated community carved out of the ostensible commons.
You're
Glenn Maynard wrote:
Huh? I've never heard of this. I've only heard of problems with the
public domain in other jurisdictions (Germany?), not in the US.
In pre-BCIA (1989) US law, copyright was surrendered by deliberately
publishing without a copyright notice. This was pretty much the
Evan Prodromou wrote (nice essay, by the way):
We haven't yet seen the package that was so absolutely indispensable
that we had to give up our principles to include it in Debian.
Well, to nitpick, the GPL license text might qualify as that absolutely
indispensible case. License texts are a
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
With respect to authorization to accept contract terms, a court
shouldn't honor a check that was blank when you signed it unless you
endorsed it after it was filled in.
IIRC, they do honor them in the case of checks!
Writing a blank check is a bad idea, of course.
Not
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On the other hand, any trademark license would permit us to use their
trademark, which we could not do otherwise.
This is a misunderstanding of trademark.
It is always legal to describe the driver as being a driver by author
intended for use with trademark, because that
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The company in question is willing to negotiate terms for a trademark
license that is agreeable to all parties.
Obviously any advertising or
guarantee restrictions are unacceptable to us.
Well, no; some such restrictions are acceptable. We accept the required NO
, since the
information exists, but just has to be integrated. However, I would need
website access of some sort in order to do that, which I don't have.
--Nathanael Nerode
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MJ Ray wrote:
The English licence seems more established than the Scottish one
and contains the problems from the US one, as far as I can tell.
I've not seen an RFC from the English drafters, though.
The English one also contains the unacceptable clause 7 trademark terms,
which is a translation
driver to non-free in
this case, just the firmware. Remember that this one works for many cards
without the firmware, so people will certainly appreciate that.
--Nathanael Nerode
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Sven Luther wrote:
2) distribution as part of a binary module, without necessarily any
copyright notice attached, which would be a pain
Actually, if it's a separate runtime-loaded file (as it is in my current
implementation) I can ship a copyright notice in the same directory.
Although we
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
A video game with even the skimpiest of original story lines (see Duke
Nukem 3-D, as described in Micro Star v. FormGen) is a literary or
artistic work at run-time, over and above the expressive content of
its source code. Hence an additional form of copyright
Warning: way too long and full of digressions. Skip if you aren't really
interested.
Michael K. Edwards wrote:
What is so free speech about ripping off a video game publisher?
Well, obviously the question is whether it's ripping off, or a work
inspired by another one. YMMV. The facts seem to
Michael K. Edwards wrote:
The Game Genie case (Galoob) was a generic cheat code widget that
substituted the odd byte in order to add lives and power-ups and all
that, and was in no sense a substitutable good for the console, the
game cartridge, or a sequel to any particular game. The game
Performing thread necromancy
Josh Triplett wrote:
There is a strong case for Fair Use of the imagery based on the latter
two factors. The actual use of the imagery in the game is also
more-or-less a parody, which is a protected right.
Nevertheless, as you said in your previous
Sorry to revive this, but it seemed unsettled.
Josh Triplett wrote:
*sigh*. First of all, this was an analogy, from restrictions placed on
commercial distributors to other restrictions placed on other fields of
endeavor. The intent was not to state that the proposed logo license
restricts
posted mailed
Dave Hornford wrote:
A work authored by the American Government, and therefore in the public
domain in the United States is in effect in the public domain in Italy,
or equivalent of copyright expired. The work does not qualify for an
Italian copyright, it was not created in
Andres Salomon wrote:
As I remember, upstream (jgarzik/davem) was not overly interested in such
a patch to tg3. Is this still the case, or are they amenable to such
changes?
Upstream was not interested in legal niceties like including copyright
statements, either. I suppose both are still the
Cesar Martinez Izquierdo wrote:
El Viernes 22 Abril 2005 14:37, Maciej Dems escribi:
I have a simple question concerning the GFDL discussion.
Does the GFDL documentation which currently does not contain any
invariant section have to go to non-free as well?
Yes, until the GFDL is revised,
Raul Miller wrote:
While looking up laws this morning, to answer a question someone asked
about the GFDL, I noticed something: 17 USC 1201 grants the copyright
holder the right to authorize that technological measures be bypassed.
The current GFDL trys to prevent any distribution of GFDLed
Michael K. Edwards wrote:
[snipped lots of stuff where we agree]
snipped even more
I agreed with everything you said. So I won't make this message long -- it
started out as a whole lot of your paragraphs with I agree with you after
each one. :-)
--
This space intentionally left blank.
--
Nathanael Nerode wrote:
Michael K. Edwards wrote:
[snipped lots of stuff where we agree]
snipped even more
I agreed with everything you said. So I won't make this message long --
it started out as a whole lot of your paragraphs with I agree with you
after each one. :-)
Oh, right. I
M K Edwards wrote:
Why do you think self-publishers and indie record labels struggle?
Lack of advertising. That's where the evidence points, anyway.
Do you think Tom Lehrer would ever have
played Carnegie Hall if his cult following could have passed ripped
bits around instead of sending
OK.
VMS Moria was originally published prior to 1989 (copyright notices were
required), and contained copyright notices only from Robert Koeneke.
He has relicensed it under the GPL.
UMORIA was based on that and released in 1988 by James E. Wilson, with
copyright notices only by him and Robert
Actually, I had a funny variant reading of the htp Distribution statement:
It's public domain. No charge can be incurred for the redistribution
of... and All distributions of htp must... refer not to copyright,
but to the use of the name htp, a common law trademark. :-)
Clearly a very
Branden said:
So, might not the DFCL say something like:
BECAUSE THE CONTENT OF THE WORK IS FREELY MODIFIABLE BY ALL THIRD
PARTIES, THERE IS NO WARRANTY THAT ANY REPRESENTATIONS MADE WITH IN ARE
MADE BY, ON BEHALF OF, OR WITH THE CONSENT OF THE AUTHOR(S) OR COPYRIGHT
HOLDER(S). ANY
Thomas Bushnell writes:
Giacomo Catenazzi [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
So the function is very simple, enought simple to be free?
Anyone kwnow a similar function but GPLized or PD (to replace this
function)?
Being simple really doesn't matter. However, glibc contains the
function, so I'd just
So how about that non-EU section?
Having looked into copyright law, I find that there are two primary
theories of copyright:
1. It is a 'natural right', a property right lasting forever, and
national laws merely shorten copyright and remove it from certain
things. This is the view taken
And now I wonder if License: public domain in debian/copyright is
enough
for a DFSG free package.
Public domain is not a license; it is not copyrighted. The issue
is that the author needs to guarantee that he deliberately abandoned
his copyright, because otherwise he has copyright by
; it's rude to remove it, rather than making non-removability a legal
condition and opening the can of worms.
--Nathanael Nerode
that it's GPL-incompatible. (*Both ways* in fact. GPLed
code cannot be put into a GFDLed document, except through the 'fair use'
provisions of copyright law, which get narrower every day. Which would be a
serious flaw even if the GFDL was a free licence, which it's not.)
--Nathanael Nerode
will get the point.
--Nathanael Nerode
that the
text of the page constituted the source code?
If so, we have a bigger problem; the GPL is legally unsafe!
If not, then why do you need these clauses in the GFDL which aren't the GPL
or BSD licences?
I'm really trying to see your point here.
--Nathanael Nerode
the normal international treaties.)
I seem to have to repeat this every time someone talks about copyrights. :-)
--Nathanael Nerode
Georg said:
Software and documentation are quite different according to the way
they are treated by the legal system. Moral rights (on which this is
based) are seen much more strongly for documentation.
Under *some* countries using the *minority* Droit d'Auteur system, perhaps.
This is
Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
[This is starting to shift away from the GFDL so I modified the
subject. Georg, I can suppress you from the Cc: if you wish so.]
On Sun, Apr 27, 2003 at 11:25:43PM -0400,
Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote
a message of 29 lines which said:
Naturally, I'm
Arnoud Galatus Engelfriet said:
Why do you think the concept is bogus? In principle I think it's
a good idea to have something that prevents others from mutilating
my work. The implementation sucks greatly though.
It's bogus because it impinges on free speech and gives heirs of the
dead rights
Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
If I transfer my copyright, I can not stop you from harming
my reputation. That's why the law has the extra provision that
helps me protect my moral rights.
No. Under US law, you can stop me from harming your reputation under
libel, slander,
Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
I suppose maybe Theo de Raadt could use his moral rights
against people adding buffer overflows to his code, but
otherwise it might be difficult to come up with this type
of claim. You have to argue something that shows how your
reputation is
Branden mentioned:
In the U.K., truth is not a defense to libel. It's my understanding
that it *is* a defense in the U.S.
In fact, I believe the burden of proof in the US is on the plaintiff to
*prove* that the alleged 'libel' is false.
So, when an American sues for libel in the U.K., it's a
Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
I'm not sure it's entirely the right time, but the basic
principle behind European copyright law is that you have
by definition certain rights. Not just to promote progress,
but simply because you made the work. It's your intellectual
property.
Josselin Mouette said:
When some popular enough software becomes non-free, there is very often
a free fork which gets maintained. If that happens to some non-free
documentation as well, that's fine, but I don't think you will find
many volunteers to do that.
I'd do it for GCC. Unfortunately,
Jerome Marant:
Writing docs is something people don't like. Let's be realistic.
Speak for yourself. I love writing documentation. I'd be doing massive
amounts of work on the GCC manual right now if it weren't for its
obnoxious licence. And anyone can quote me on that. :-)
--Nathanael
Please note, that this could also played backward. Why should libel
or slander be extended to the work of the authors?
Huh? It's not being extended at all. There's no right of the *work*.
It's simply the right of the *author* not to be defamed. You can do
whatever you want with the work if
Jerome said:
It's time for you to start a new manual, isn't it? :-)
Yeah. :-) But I've been contenting myself with commenting the code and
documenting it within the files themselves, in --help, etc. :-)
Of which there's plenty that needs to be done.
--Nathanael
John Holroyd [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
FWIW I think RMS is right to insist that others cannot modify his
political comments, but I think you are right to say that unmodifiable
comments and texts (UTs) have no place being mandatorily included in
the functional world of Free Software.
Personally,
On Tue, 2003-05-20 at 05:15, Branden Robinson wrote:
I am uncomfortable with some of the ramifications but I am also
uncomfortable with totally declawing the GNU GPL by adopting and
interpretation of it that would let people wrapper and language-bind
their way out of the copyleft commons.
Barak Pearlmutter said:
lots of important and correct stuff snipped
Simply make the GFDL be GPL compatible, the same way the LGPL was.
Add a clause saying that the covered materials can be construed as
source code and used under the GPL; and that the invariant sections
should, under such
J?r?me Marant said:
En r?ponse ? Branden Robinson [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
On Fri, May 16, 2003 at 09:37:31AM +0200, J?r?me Marant wrote:
What is the best way to convince GNU people to change their
licenses?
(without being pissed of, that is).
I'm not sure GNU people need to be convinced. The
me that the GNU FDL, properly applied, is always a free
license. It looks to me now as if it isn't. (Even if it is, it has the
infuriating practical problem of GPL-incompatibility in both directions,
but that's a secondary issue.)
Thanks for coming to the discussion.
--Nathanael Nerode
Anthony DeRobertis said:
I'm not sure if you're thinking of this when mentioning public
domain, but many header files (for example, ones giving simple structs
and numeric defines) probably have no copyrightable work in them, and
thus would be essentially in the public domain. So, using those
Branden Robinson said to you:
Aside from yourself, is there anyone entitled to interpret the GNU
Project's standards?
I realize that you may have interpreted this as insulting. But it's a
genuine, serious question, and deserves an answer. The impression I've
gotten is that the answer is
(generally speaking, modifications to fit in
tightly limited spaces, either physical or programmatic) aren't
necessary for freedom. Is this correct?
Debian disagrees, and so do many developers doing work for the FSF.
--Nathanael Nerode
Steve Langasek wrote:
This assumes that the FSF's interpretation depends on the claim that
dynamic linking creates a derived work. While varies parties have
claimed this at one point or another, I have argued that the
dynamically linked work is under the purview of the GPL by virtue of
the
Kai Henningsen said:
Which parts of Europe are we talking about here?
Those with French-style moral rights, I guess.
[Discussion of German copyright/moral rights basis snipped]
So German law seems very good on this point. :-)
[Incidentally, I believe these points are substantially unchanged
Steve Langasek wrote:
It is not mere aggregation, for the same reason that a bug in a
library that makes it unusable by applications is a grave, not a
critical, bug: one piece of software is not unrelated to another if
the former depends on the latter.
Ah, I get what I was missing earlier... so
Whether to change the GFDL is not a Debian decision, so I've decided
not to discuss that here.
Is there a public forum where you are willing to discuss that?
Not now, and not in the way that some people want to discuss it
(they throw stones at me while I stand there and get hit).
RMS said:
I've looked at the problems people have reported. Many of them are
misunderstandings (what they believe is not allowed actually is
allowed), many of these cases have adequate workarounds, and the rest
are real inconveniences that shouldn't be exaggerated.
OK... but...
I've explained
Branden said:
snip
Comments?
Well, I love it. :-)
--Nathanael
4) The freedom to change the Work for any purpose[1], to distribute
one's changes, and to distribute the Work in modified form. Access
to the form of the work which is preferred for making modifications,
if applicable, is a precondition for this.
OK, so there's lots of argument about
RMS said:
GPL 3 is not at the stage to ask for public comments.
Rumor has it that it will contain loads of stuff which Debian considers
non-free. This is a *problem*.
The FDL public comment period resulted in *no* significant changes due
to the public comments.
RMS has declared that he has
, but nothing beyond that.
*Heaves big sigh of relief*
OK, I'm happy. :-) Thanks for the reassurances.
--
Nathanael Nerode neroden at gcc.gnu.org
Don't use the GNU FDL for free documentation. See
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
seems to be redundant.
We should probably go ahead with another draft of that document, yes.
Right, so is anyone doing that?
--
Nathanael Nerode neroden at gcc.gnu.org
Why not to use the GNU FDL:
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
about anyone, and Dhingis Kahn (The mogolian leader, don't know how he
is spelled in English).
Ganges Kahn, I believe. Don't have Google in front of me to check.
OK, let's clear this up right now. The standard spelling in English is
Ghengis Khan.
Occasionally you will see the supposedly more
it in the program, so
this might help convince them to do it.)
--
Nathanael Nerode neroden at gcc.gnu.org
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
exploited by anyone for any purpose, commercial
or non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods that have not
yet been invented or conceived.
--
Nathanael Nerode neroden at gcc.gnu.org
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
Thomas Hood claimed:
A Secondary Section is a named appendix or a front-matter
section of the Document that deals exclusively with the
relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document
to the Document's overall subject (or to related matters)
and contains nothing
Thomas Hood [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
RMS is the philosopher king of the Free Software Foundation. Whether
he is also autocratic, that is, a dictatorial ruler, I don't know
because I am not a member of the FSF.
As a GCC developer, I can tell you: He is autocratic. Sadly.
--Nathanael
Brian Calson said:
I realize (and this is a gross
generalization; please pardon me) that people that have stronger ties
to the FSF and GNU are more likely to feel that the GFDL is free than
those that have stronger ties to Debian.
This may be true overall, but my sense is that among GCC
Mathieu Roy wrote:
Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED] a tapoté :
Thomas Hood [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
RMS is the philosopher king of the Free Software Foundation. Whether
he is also autocratic, that is, a dictatorial ruler, I don't know
because I am not a member of the FSF.
As a GCC
Jeremy Hankins said:
On debian-legal, yes. But we've had very little actual discussion
with anyone who admitted to representing the FSF position. In fact,
that was one of the issues that came up in our brief discussions with
RMS: is there anyone else who can authoritatively, or at least
. It is unfortunate that he is the FSF
autocrat and does not allow anyone else to influence the FSF policy on
this.
--
Nathanael Nerode neroden at gcc.gnu.org
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
Don Armstrong [EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb/wrote:
I'd gather that most of -legal isn't worried about the copyright
statement, license, or author's statement (which is the same thing as
the copyright statement) being immutable. Most of those can't be
modified under the applicable copyright law
John Goerzen wrote:
1. Would removing the manual for Emacs, libc, or other important GNU
software benefit our users?
Yep. I'm very unhappy with having non-free software (and software means
0s and 1s -- so nearly everything Debian distributes except the
physical CDs) in Debian; as a user,
that there is a distinction between computer programs and
documentation, while still insisting that documentation on a disk or
in memory is software.
--
Nathanael Nerode neroden at gcc.gnu.org
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
they can help each other on
this. :-)
--
Nathanael Nerode neroden at gcc.gnu.org
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
is freely modifiable and redistributable by law, regardless
of what the authors may claim.
This only applies to legal texts as they apply to a particular piece
of software; not to legal texts distributed for their own value as
reference works, which must be fully free.
--
Nathanael Nerode
to amend the Debian Social Contract to
explicitly allow the GPL? ;-) I bet it would pass. Then anyone who
wants to allow a GFDL'ed document in knows the process; propose an
amendment to the Social Contract, and see if you can get it passed. (-;
--
Nathanael Nerode neroden at gcc.gnu.org
http
benefits
--
Nathanael Nerode neroden at gcc.gnu.org
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
Software.
--
Nathanael Nerode neroden at gcc.gnu.org
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
, then a
GPLed manual could be created.)
This at least demonstrates that the situation is unworkable without
being in the privileged position of owning all copyrights.
Yep.
--
Nathanael Nerode neroden at gcc.gnu.org
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
faster, I volunteer to provide lots of help; sometimes I'm better at
supporting than at leading.)
--
Nathanael Nerode neroden at gcc.gnu.org
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
. :-)
--
Nathanael Nerode neroden at gcc.gnu.org
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
, let alone why
I don't need the right to modify or remove it.
Please give one reason for allowing this other than I want to allow
Manual(s) X, Y, and Z in Debian. Any one reason.
--
Nathanael Nerode neroden at gcc.gnu.org
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html
Anthony Towns wrote:
In short, some members of the FSF have asked for us to give them some
more time to come up with a GFDL that's DFSG-free before we go all
gung-ho about putting it in non-free and having bigger controversies.
Martin (wearing his DPL hat) talked to me about this at debcamp.
Rock
Joerg wrote:
The point is, I think that there are circumstances where having
invariant sections are _necessary_. When I am writing a report with a
conclusion that contains my very personal opinion, I as the author do
not want anybody to change that section, write anything into it that I
do not
John Goerzen wrote:
One of the main sticking points with the GFDL is the use of invariant
sections, which may not be removed or altered (save for some very
inconsequential exceptions.) One thing about the invariant sections is that
the GFDL specifically states that they contain nothing that
John Goerzen wrote:
There are some properties of documentation that make it a fundamentally
different beast from the software we deal with. Some are:
1. Lack of a clear differentiation between source code and compiled form.
Nope; this problem exists even with things generally agreed to be
Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet quoth:
It's not very popular, but since the US became a party to the
Berne Convention they have to recognize moral rights. And it's
in 17 US Code 106A.
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106a
Arnoud
Note first that these only apply to a work of visual
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