Re: [Sugar-devel] licensing question

2018-05-23 Thread Bastien 
Hi Walter,

yes, there are two questions, the one regarding TurtleBlocks JS and
the other about whether porting from one language to another is to be
considered as a "derivative work".

The issue of artworks having been copied verbatim is different from
the last one: for what I know, the upstream source of the artworks in
Sugarizer are released under one of the "permissive" license (Apache
2.0, MIT, CC-by, etc.), so the issue here is just about updating the
licensing information in Sugarizer.

Walter Bender  writes:

> TurtleBlocks JS is AGPL. One of the questions I have is in regard to
> the best way to include it in the Sugarizer bundle, which assigns
> Apache to everything it pulls in.

There is a confusion in github/llaske/sugarizer/README.md right now,
because the sentence

  "This project is licensed under Apache v2 License. See LICENSE for
  full license text."

is clearly too fuzzy.  Sugarizer README.md should say: "[This content]
is release under [this license]." and be more specific in general.

Note that activities/TurtleBlocksJS.activity/COPYING clearly indicates
the GNU Affero Public License -- so strickly speacking, Sugarizer does
not "assign Apache 2.0 to everything it pulls in".

As long as TurtleBlocks JS is released under the AGPL, it cannot be
released with Sugarizer, because one cannot combine AGPL work with a
larger Apache 2.0 codebase and distribute the whole thing.  You cannot
package an iOS application using AGPL work without releasing all your
application code under AGPL.

One simple path is to relicense TurtleBlocks JS under Apache 2.0.

Another possible solution is to use a "weak copyleft" license, such as
the Mozilla Public License or the Eclipse Public License.  E.g. the
EPL license would allow for TurtleBlocks JS to be bundled in Sugarizer
and in any other application, even closed-source ones, but would still
make sure that any modification of the TurtleBlocks JS code is shared
under the EPL license.

That's what the FSF calls an "intermediary license": not as strict as
the AGPL or GPL, because it allows the code to be included basically
anywhere, but not as permissive than the Apache 2.0, MIT, etc. because
every change of the EPL'ed code should be publicly shared.

I guess the core question is: what is the motivation behind releasing
TurtleBlocks JS under AGPL?

> The other question regards the Python (GPL) activities that were
> translated to JS and given an Apache license. (Artwork was copied
> verbatim in many cases.) Is this OK? Not sure. In many cases we know
> the author of the Python code, but again, it is not clear to me at
> least the best path forward.

IANAL but I seriously doubt that "porting" an idea from one language
to another language counts as a derivative work.  That would be very
bad for the whole free software world.  Every FLOSS clone out there
is porting ideas from a software (e.g. Microsoft Office) to another
one (LibreOffice).  I think "derivative" is about lines of code, not
about ideas.

There might be ann issue about design sometimes, when it has been
separately copyrighted -- but copyright on code does not cover design
ideas.

At least that's my understanding.

> What I think everyone agrees is that we want to sort this out so
> that both the code bases can move forward.

Indeed!  On the Sugarizer side, we are taking this very seriously.

Best,

-- 
 Bastien
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Re: [Sugar-devel] ASLO shut down target date? (was: licensing question)

2018-05-23 Thread James Cameron 
On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 11:29:53PM -0400, Walter Bender wrote:
> 
> On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 11:26 PM Dave Crossland <[1]d...@lab6.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, May 23, 2018, 8:54 PM James Cameron <[2]qu...@laptop.org> wrote:
> 
> Tony's insistence on ASLO continues to amuse me.  Most distribution of
> activities now happens through bundles, tarballs, and GitHub.  ASLO is
> rarely used by distributors or indeed useful for anything except
> personal searches for broken activities.  Tony's numbers make it
> plain.  My own plan is to remove the link to "activities" in Browse
> default page; plenty of disk space these days to include all working
> activities in a build.
> 
> Good to hear real world usage of aslo has entered terminal decline. When
> will it be turned off?
> 
> I am not a fan of the current activity server, but I am a fan of
> having lots of activities for our users to explore beyond the ones
> that were chosen for them.  So it seems we need some way for them to
> explore, even if deployments (and deployers) feel otherwise.

Yes, a good goal to have.  It's just that the reality has fallen far
from it as activity maintenance has dwindled.

-- 
James Cameron
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Re: [Sugar-devel] licensing question

2018-05-23 Thread Dave Crossland 
On Wed, May 23, 2018, 11:28 PM James Cameron  wrote:

> On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 11:23:24PM -0400, Dave Crossland wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, May 23, 2018, 8:54 PM James Cameron <[1]qu...@laptop.org> wrote:
> >
> > If the source license is GPLv3+, then anyone can relicense as Apache
> > 2.0.
> >
> > N :)
> >
> > This is ABSOLUTELY false.
> >
> > If the source license is GPLv3+, then anyone can add new code that
> > combines with the GPLv3(+) code under Apache 2.0, because the GPLv3
> > is _compatible_ with Apache 2.0.
> >
> > No one can relicense code other than the copyright holder(s).
>
> Yay, someone's listening.  ;-)  Thanks for the correction.
>

Haha :)

What you said about "relicensing" GPLv2 to v3 isn't strictly correct
either, but it's less dangerous.

I think really what's going on there is you have permission to redistribute
using a newer version of the license, but you are not "relicensing" per se.

>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] licensing question

2018-05-23 Thread James Cameron 
On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 11:23:24PM -0400, Dave Crossland wrote:
> 
> On Wed, May 23, 2018, 8:54 PM James Cameron <[1]qu...@laptop.org> wrote:
> 
> If the source license is GPLv3+, then anyone can relicense as Apache
> 2.0.
> 
> N :)
> 
> This is ABSOLUTELY false. 
> 
> If the source license is GPLv3+, then anyone can add new code that
> combines with the GPLv3(+) code under Apache 2.0, because the GPLv3
> is _compatible_ with Apache 2.0.
> 
> No one can relicense code other than the copyright holder(s).

Yay, someone's listening.  ;-)  Thanks for the correction.

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.netrek.org/
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[Sugar-devel] ASLO shut down target date? (was: licensing question)

2018-05-23 Thread Dave Crossland 
On Wed, May 23, 2018, 8:54 PM James Cameron  wrote:

>
>
>
> Tony's insistence on ASLO continues to amuse me.  Most distribution of
> activities now happens through bundles, tarballs, and GitHub.  ASLO is
> rarely used by distributors or indeed useful for anything except
> personal searches for broken activities.  Tony's numbers make it
> plain.  My own plan is to remove the link to "activities" in Browse
> default page; plenty of disk space these days to include all working
> activities in a build.
>

Good to hear real world usage of aslo has entered terminal decline. When
will it be turned off?

>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] licensing question

2018-05-23 Thread Dave Crossland 
On Wed, May 23, 2018, 8:54 PM James Cameron  wrote:

>
> If the source license is GPLv3+, then anyone can relicense as Apache
> 2.0.
>

N :)

>
This is ABSOLUTELY false.

If the source license is GPLv3+, then anyone can add new code that combines
with the GPLv3(+) code under Apache 2.0, because the GPLv3 is _compatible_
with Apache 2.0.

No one can relicense code other than the copyright holder(s).

What happens the "other way" when permissively licensed (Apache, MIT, BSD,
etc) code is combined with GPL code is the same: The original code remains
under it's original license, but with the additional of the new GPL code,
the whole & combined code becomes available under terms _compatible_ with
the GPL.

Affero is the same; if AGPL code becomes integrated into Sugarizer then the
whole thing must be distributed under terms compatible with the AGPL; the
majority of the work under Apache is still conveyed under Apache, but the
whole thing is also required to make source code available to every visitor.

This hinges on the definition of a derivative or combined work under
copyright, which is broad.

Similarly, while copyright doesn't cover ideas, and is limited to cover
expressions, it does cover expressions derived from earlier expressions.
Thusbit covers translation of code from one language to another.

(I found it helpful to think of it this way: it's the difference between
restrictions and requirements; restrictions are about what you can NOT do,
and requirements are about what you MUST do.

The A/GPL have additional requirements beyond those of permissive licenses,
but no additional restrictions; and the other way, the permissive licenses
have no additional restrictions beyond those in the A/GPL, which is why
they are compatible.)


Cheers
Dave

>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] licensing question

2018-05-23 Thread James Cameron 
Copyright on the source code of these activities is held by their
original authors, and not by Sugar Labs.

The ASLO process is a distribution of software by Sugar Labs, and the
licenses are in the source code bundles.  It makes no real difference
what was entered into ASLO as metadata, what matters is the copyright
and license declaration in the source code.

Up until last year, ASLO did not require a license.  A pending change
to ASLO had not been put into production.  Since that change, each new
upload to ASLO has had to have a license field added if there wasn't
one.  But again, this license field is only a summary, and has little
bearing.  What matters is the copyright and license in the source.

Whether Sugar Labs has received a letter or not is immaterial; but as
a distributor Sugar Labs need only check that the license is
acceptable before distributing.

One of the issues at hand is bundling of TurtleBlocksJS inside
Sugarizer.  Sugarizer does not use ASLO, so what ASLO did or does is
immaterial.

TurtleBlocksJS is AGPLv3+ in js/activity.js, has bundled source of
various other licenses, and has no license metadata in activity.info.

I agree that one solution is for the authors of TurtleBlocksJS to
relicense their work to one more compatible with Sugarizer's Apache
2.0 license.  Another is for Sugarizer to relicense.  Best would be a
path from AGPLv3+ to Apache 2.0; I've not found one yet.

Perhaps the new availability of Scratch on Sugarizer reduces the demand
for TurtleBlocksJS.

I certainly don't agree with Tony's suggestion there has been
arbitrary choice of license in GitHub repositories, and have acted and
will act to change any incorrect choice.

The other issue of porting from Python to JavaScript is creating a
derivative work, so the original license does apply.

If the source license is GPLv2 then ask the original copyright owner
to relicense as GPLv2+ or GPLv3+.  If they cannot be contacted, stop.

If the source license is GPLv2+, then anyone can relicense as GPLv3+,
though it is convenient to ask the original copyright owners to
agree.

If the source license is GPLv3+, then anyone can relicense as Apache
2.0.

For the keeping of good records, these relicensing actions should be
commits with the intent clearly stated in commit messages.

Tony's insistence on ASLO continues to amuse me.  Most distribution of
activities now happens through bundles, tarballs, and GitHub.  ASLO is
rarely used by distributors or indeed useful for anything except
personal searches for broken activities.  Tony's numbers make it
plain.  My own plan is to remove the link to "activities" in Browse
default page; plenty of disk space these days to include all working
activities in a build.

On Thu, May 24, 2018 at 08:02:30AM +0800, Tony Anderson wrote:
> The bulk of the Sugar Activities were contributed through the ASLO process.
> This process assumes that the contributor is the copyright-holder. The
> contributor was asked to specify a license. Unfortunately that selection is 
> not
> displayed on ASLO. Therefore, it is likely that the license clause in the
> activities in Github were arbitrarily chosen.
> 
> If SugarLabs has not received a letter from a lawyer in 10 years probably 
> means
> that there is no objection or that the copyright holder sees our use as fair
> use.
> 
> If gplv3 is ok, it would seem that turtleblocks.js needs to change license to
> gpl3 - something that Walter is fully authorized to do.
> 
> Tony
> 
> On Thursday, 24 May, 2018 07:46 AM, Walter Bender wrote:
> 
> Thank you! 
> 
> On Wed, May 23, 2018, 7:03 PM Adam Holt <[1]h...@laptop.org> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 6:41 PM, Walter Bender <[2]
> walter.ben...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> We are struggling with a licensing question [1] and were hoping
> that the SFC might be able to advise us. Can you please reach out
> to them in your role as liaison?
> 
> I've emailed Karen Sandler (SFConservancy) asking how/who we should
> approach -
> 
> Adam
> 
> thx
> 
> -walter
> 
> [1] [3]https://github.com/llaske/sugarizer/issues/48
> 
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> [4]http://www.sugarlabs.org
> 
> --
> [5]Unsung Heroes of OLPC, interviewed live @ [6]http://
> unleashkids.org !
>
> 
>
> ___
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> 
> References:
> 
> [1] mailto:h...@laptop.org
> [2] mailto:walter.ben...@gmail.com
> [3] https://github.com/llaske/sugarizer/issues/48
> [4] http://www.sugarlabs.org/
> [5] http://www.sugarlabs.org/
> [6] http://unleashkids.org/
> [7] mailto:Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org
> [8] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel

>

Re: [Sugar-devel] licensing question

2018-05-23 Thread Walter Bender 
On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 8:03 PM Tony Anderson  wrote:

> The bulk of the Sugar Activities were contributed through the ASLO
> process. This process assumes that the contributor is the copyright-holder.
> The contributor was asked to specify a license. Unfortunately that
> selection is not displayed on ASLO. Therefore, it is likely that the
> license clause in the activities in Github were arbitrarily chosen.
>

We've been trying to take great care to find evidence of the aiuthor's
intent before adding any missing license information on the github repos.
If it is not obvious, we try to contact the author. We are not choosing
licenses arbitrarily.

>
> If SugarLabs has not received a letter from a lawyer in 10 years probably
> means that there is no objection or that the copyright holder sees our use
> as fair use.
>
> If gplv3 is ok, it would seem that turtleblocks.js needs to change license
> to gpl3 - something that Walter is fully authorized to do.
>

TurtleBlocks JS is AGPL. One of the questions I have is in regard to the
best way to include it in the Sugarizer bundle, which assigns Apache to
everything it pulls in.
The other question regards the Python (GPL) activities that were translated
to JS and given an Apache license. (Artwork was copied verbatim in many
cases.) Is this OK? Not sure. In many cases we know the author of the
Python code, but again, it is not clear to me at least the best path
forward. What I think everyone agrees is that we want to sort this out so
that both the code bases can move forward.

>
> Tony
>
>
> On Thursday, 24 May, 2018 07:46 AM, Walter Bender wrote:
>
> Thank you!
>
> On Wed, May 23, 2018, 7:03 PM Adam Holt  wrote:
>
>> On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 6:41 PM, Walter Bender 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> We are struggling with a licensing question [1] and were hoping that the
>>> SFC might be able to advise us. Can you please reach out to them in your
>>> role as liaison?
>>>
>>
>> I've emailed Karen Sandler (SFConservancy) asking how/who we should
>> approach -
>>
>> Adam
>>
>> thx
>>>
>>> -walter
>>>
>>> [1] https://github.com/llaske/sugarizer/issues/48
>>>
>>> --
>>> Walter Bender
>>> Sugar Labs
>>> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>>>
>>> --
>>> 
>>> Unsung Heroes of OLPC, interviewed live @ 
>>> http://unleashkids.org !
>>>
>>
>
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regards.

-walter
-- 
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Sugar Labs
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Re: [Sugar-devel] licensing question

2018-05-23 Thread Tony Anderson 
The bulk of the Sugar Activities were contributed through the ASLO 
process. This process assumes that the contributor is the 
copyright-holder. The contributor was asked to specify a license. 
Unfortunately that selection is not displayed on ASLO. Therefore, it is 
likely that the license clause in the activities in Github were 
arbitrarily chosen.


If SugarLabs has not received a letter from a lawyer in 10 years 
probably means that there is no objection or that the copyright holder 
sees our use as fair use.


If gplv3 is ok, it would seem that turtleblocks.js needs to change 
license to gpl3 - something that Walter is fully authorized to do.


Tony


On Thursday, 24 May, 2018 07:46 AM, Walter Bender wrote:

Thank you!

On Wed, May 23, 2018, 7:03 PM Adam Holt > wrote:


On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 6:41 PM, Walter Bender
> wrote:

We are struggling with a licensing question [1] and were
hoping that the SFC might be able to advise us. Can you please
reach out to them in your role as liaison?


I've emailed Karen Sandler (SFConservancy) asking how/who we
should approach -

Adam

thx

-walter

[1] https://github.com/llaske/sugarizer/issues/48

-- 
Walter Bender

Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org

-- 
Unsung Heroes of OLPC, interviewed live @

http://unleashkids.org !



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Re: [Sugar-devel] licensing question

2018-05-23 Thread Walter Bender 
Thank you!

On Wed, May 23, 2018, 7:03 PM Adam Holt  wrote:

> On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 6:41 PM, Walter Bender 
> wrote:
>
>> We are struggling with a licensing question [1] and were hoping that the
>> SFC might be able to advise us. Can you please reach out to them in your
>> role as liaison?
>>
>
> I've emailed Karen Sandler (SFConservancy) asking how/who we should
> approach -
>
> Adam
>
> thx
>>
>> -walter
>>
>> [1] https://github.com/llaske/sugarizer/issues/48
>>
>> --
>> Walter Bender
>> Sugar Labs
>> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>>
>> --
>> 
>> 
>> Unsung Heroes of OLPC, interviewed live @ 
>> http://unleashkids.org !
>>
>
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Re: [Sugar-devel] licensing question

2018-05-23 Thread Adam Holt 
On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 6:41 PM, Walter Bender 
wrote:

> We are struggling with a licensing question [1] and were hoping that the
> SFC might be able to advise us. Can you please reach out to them in your
> role as liaison?
>

I've emailed Karen Sandler (SFConservancy) asking how/who we should
approach -

Adam

thx
>
> -walter
>
> [1] https://github.com/llaske/sugarizer/issues/48
>
> --
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>
> --
> 
> 
> Unsung Heroes of OLPC, interviewed live @ 
> http://unleashkids.org !
>
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[Sugar-devel] licensing question

2018-05-23 Thread Walter Bender 
We are struggling with a licensing question [1] and were hoping that the
SFC might be able to advise us. Can you please reach out to them in your
role as liaison?

thx

-walter

[1] https://github.com/llaske/sugarizer/issues/48

-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org

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