Re: [board-discuss] Re: License information for extensions on LO's extension site

[Michael Meeks]

Hi Andreas,

(and thanks for raising this Stephan)

I appreciate the work that you do maintaining the extensions repository
- and it is always difficult to handle feedback.

As you know - if people have a legal concern - they are encouraged to
raise it directly with legal@ - and not engage in lengthy public
discussions.

Andreas - I'd love to talk this through ? can I call you at some stage ?

ATB,

Michael.

On 31/08/18 10:18, Stephan Bergmann wrote:
> On 30/08/18 20:08, Andreas Mantke wrote:
>> Am 30.08.2018 um 19:02 schrieb Stephan Bergmann:
>>> On 30/08/18 18:43, Andreas Mantke wrote:
 In my view it is necessary, that a LibreOffice extension that is
 published on a TDF resource, has a clear license statement and presents
 this license statement to the user during the installation process.
>>>
>>> Why should presenting the license during installation be necessary?
>>> Installing LO itself, for example, doesn't do that, either.
>>
>> if you want to make an agreement with the user about the license, you
>> have to present the license during the installing process and ask for
>> accepting it.
>>
>> Otherwise there is no agreement on the license.
> 
> With all due respect to your work on the TDF extensions site, and with
> whatever IANAL caveat, but I don't see this change (requiring extensions
> hosted on the TDF extensions site to ask for license acceptance during
> installation) as neither necessary nor helpful.
> 
> Maybe the board (as the entity responsible for running that extensions
> site, IIUC; now on CC) has an opinion here?

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Re: License information for extensions on LO's extension site

[toki]

On 2018-08-31 11:52 a.m., Drew Jensen wrote:

> Just curious if the Templates will also require a license to be eligible for 
> the TDF site.

I'd suggest that providing accurate information about the license for
templates is even more critical than for extensions.

I've come across a couple of templates whose intended usage is
implicitly prohibited by the crayon license that it is distributed under.

> Particularly in the case of templates with embedded scripts is not the 
> license not valid if the user is not forced to agree to it?

That depends upon:
* the specific license: For example, GNU GPL 3.0 has no requirements for
a user to accept, or reject a license;
* the legal jurisdiction of the user: Both extension and template
licenses can be construed as "shrink wrap", and as such, not be legally
binding in some legal jurisdictions;

###

Licenses for template is extremely tricky, because they can
inadvertently govern the license that the created content can be
distributed under.

jonathon

jonathon




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Re: License information for extensions on LO's extension site

[Drew Jensen]

Hola,

Just curious if the Templates will also require a license to be eligible
for the TDF site.

Today:
- some don't declare a license on the website page.
- some state a license on the website page
-- some include a license declaration inside the template file.
 some of these do so in the file properties
 some do so with comments in embedded script libraries
 some which state a license on the web site do neither

Particularly in the case of templates with embedded scripts is not the
license not valid if the user is not forced to agree to it?

If the extension must ask the user(s) to accept the developers license on
install to be eligible for the TDF extensions site then why not the
templates?
-- granted there is no standard way to that during first use, but the
website could require they check a box as agreement with the license before
allowing them to download the file.

Seems like the two parts of the site would be consistent if possible.

Thanks much for you efforts and time.

Best wishes

Drew
-


This morning I downloaded a few.



On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 2:09 PM Andreas Mantke  wrote:

> Am 30.08.2018 um 19:02 schrieb Stephan Bergmann:
> > On 30/08/18 18:43, Andreas Mantke wrote:
> >> In my view it is necessary, that a LibreOffice extension that is
> >> published on a TDF resource, has a clear license statement and presents
> >> this license statement to the user during the installation process.
> >
> > Why should presenting the license during installation be necessary?
> > Installing LO itself, for example, doesn't do that, either.
>
> if you want to make an agreement with the user about the license, you
> have to present the license during the installing process and ask for
> accepting it.
>
> Otherwise there is no agreement on the license.
>
> Kind regards,
> Andreas
>
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Re: License information for extensions on LO's extension site

[Stephan Bergmann]

On 30/08/18 20:08, Andreas Mantke wrote:

Am 30.08.2018 um 19:02 schrieb Stephan Bergmann:

On 30/08/18 18:43, Andreas Mantke wrote:

In my view it is necessary, that a LibreOffice extension that is
published on a TDF resource, has a clear license statement and presents
this license statement to the user during the installation process.


Why should presenting the license during installation be necessary?
Installing LO itself, for example, doesn't do that, either.


if you want to make an agreement with the user about the license, you
have to present the license during the installing process and ask for
accepting it.

Otherwise there is no agreement on the license.


With all due respect to your work on the TDF extensions site, and with 
whatever IANAL caveat, but I don't see this change (requiring extensions 
hosted on the TDF extensions site to ask for license acceptance during 
installation) as neither necessary nor helpful.


Maybe the board (as the entity responsible for running that extensions 
site, IIUC; now on CC) has an opinion here?

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Re: License information for extensions on LO's extension site

[Andreas Mantke]

Am 30.08.2018 um 19:02 schrieb Stephan Bergmann:
> On 30/08/18 18:43, Andreas Mantke wrote:
>> In my view it is necessary, that a LibreOffice extension that is
>> published on a TDF resource, has a clear license statement and presents
>> this license statement to the user during the installation process.
>
> Why should presenting the license during installation be necessary?
> Installing LO itself, for example, doesn't do that, either.

if you want to make an agreement with the user about the license, you
have to present the license during the installing process and ask for
accepting it.

Otherwise there is no agreement on the license.

Kind regards,
Andreas

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Re: License information for extensions on LO's extension site

[Kaganski Mike]

On 8/30/2018 8:02 PM, Stephan Bergmann wrote:
> On 30/08/18 18:43, Andreas Mantke wrote:
>> In my view it is necessary, that a LibreOffice extension that is
>> published on a TDF resource, has a clear license statement and presents
>> this license statement to the user during the installation process.
> 
> Why should presenting the license during installation be necessary? 
> Installing LO itself, for example, doesn't do that, either.

By the way, GPLv3 (for example) explicitly says what is required to do 
with license when redistributing (4. "... give all recipients a copy of 
this License along with the Program"; 9. "Acceptance Not Required for 
Having Copies - You are not required to accept this License in order to 
receive or run a copy of the Program").

-- 
Best regards,
Mike Kaganski
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Re: License information for extensions on LO's extension site

[Stephan Bergmann]

On 30/08/18 18:43, Andreas Mantke wrote:

In my view it is necessary, that a LibreOffice extension that is
published on a TDF resource, has a clear license statement and presents
this license statement to the user during the installation process.


Why should presenting the license during installation be necessary? 
Installing LO itself, for example, doesn't do that, either.

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Re: License information for extensions on LO's extension site

[Andreas Mantke]

Hello Stephan,

there is no way to comment directly on my blog.

Am 30.08.2018 um 12:19 schrieb Stephan Bergmann:
> I don't find a way to comment directly at
> ,
> so moving that here.  Quoting that blog post:
>
> [...]
>> But without a proper license the Extension it is not appropriate to
>> publish the Extension on the LibreOffice Extensions website.
>>
>> But it is not a very difficult task to add such a license information
>> to the Extension. Just add a text file with the license to the
>> Extension (zipped) container (preferably in a subfolder) and update
>> the description.xml with the following xml-tag:
>>
>> 
>> 
>> ”
>> lang=”en” />
>> 
>> 
>
> The description.xml simple-license element is about asking the user to
> actively accept a license before installing/using the extension.  This
> is awkward UX and I guess that many extensions do not want to bother
> users with click-through license bla bla.
>
It's not the question if they (the extension developer) want it. They
have to ask for an agreement on the license during the install process.
If they don't do that there will be no license agreement.
My take is,  that in this case there is no clear rule, if and for what
purpose the user is allowed to use the extension software. But it's
clear that there is no agreement to use the extension software on the
ground of a free software license. And thus it could not published on
the LibreOffice extensions website.

> I don't think that it is a good idea to tie the question of whether an
> extension is suitably licensed for publishing on LO's extension site
> to the presence of such a simple-license element.

In my view it is necessary, that a LibreOffice extension that is
published on a TDF resource, has a clear license statement and presents
this license statement to the user during the installation process.
Because the installation routine gives only the way with the xml-tag
above, this is the way to do it. If the implementation is ugly from your
point of view, you could improve it. But at least there has to be a
workflow to accept the license during the installation process.

That's my view and I'm following it as long as I'm responsible for the
website and the review of the extensions on it.

Cheers,
Andreas

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Re: License information for extensions on LO's extension site

[Stephan Bergmann]

On 30/08/18 12:41, Heiko Tietze wrote:

But doesn't it depend on whether you let the admin or the user agree?


"admin" means that only the one installing the extension has to accept 
the license, while "user" means that every user has to (in case the 
extension is installed shared), see 
.


And I don't see how "admin" vs. "user" would make much of a difference 
wrt. my "guess that many extensions do not want to bother users [any 
kind of user, incl. those installing extensions and falling under the 
"admin" label for the accept-by attribute] with click-through license 
bla bla."

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Re: License information for extensions on LO's extension site

[Heiko Tietze]

But doesn't it depend on whether you let the admin or the user agree? Anyway, 
the platform itself has a license selection and there confusion started for me 
(forgot the license file in one of my extensions). So we definitely have room 
for improvements nevertheless Andreas awesome work around the platform.

On 30 August 2018 12:19:13 CEST, Stephan Bergmann  wrote:
>I don't find a way to comment directly at 
>,
>so 
>moving that here.  Quoting that blog post:
>
>[...]
>> But without a proper license the Extension it is not appropriate to
>publish the Extension on the LibreOffice Extensions website.
>> 
>> But it is not a very difficult task to add such a license information
>to the Extension. Just add a text file with the license to the
>Extension (zipped) container (preferably in a subfolder) and update the
>description.xml with the following xml-tag:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ”
>> lang=”en” />
>> 
>> 
>
>The description.xml simple-license element is about asking the user to 
>actively accept a license before installing/using the extension.  This 
>is awkward UX and I guess that many extensions do not want to bother 
>users with click-through license bla bla.
>
>I don't think that it is a good idea to tie the question of whether an 
>extension is suitably licensed for publishing on LO's extension site to
>
>the presence of such a simple-license element.
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License information for extensions on LO's extension site

[Stephan Bergmann]

I don't find a way to comment directly at 
, so 
moving that here.  Quoting that blog post:


[...]

But without a proper license the Extension it is not appropriate to publish the 
Extension on the LibreOffice Extensions website.

But it is not a very difficult task to add such a license information to the 
Extension. Just add a text file with the license to the Extension (zipped) 
container (preferably in a subfolder) and update the description.xml with the 
following xml-tag:



”
lang=”en” />




The description.xml simple-license element is about asking the user to 
actively accept a license before installing/using the extension.  This 
is awkward UX and I guess that many extensions do not want to bother 
users with click-through license bla bla.


I don't think that it is a good idea to tie the question of whether an 
extension is suitably licensed for publishing on LO's extension site to 
the presence of such a simple-license element.

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