On Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 8:24 AM McCoy Smith <[email protected]> wrote:
> Don’t think the mailing list is the right place for this debate. > > I’m certainly familiar with the BSD=copyleft argument. You’re welcome to > hold that position yourself. If you’re involved with FreeBSD as their > licensing manager, might I suggest that FreeBSD make explicit that they > believe the BSD license to be copyleft? > You are right, this isn't the right place for this debate. I can't even parse what you are saying here. copyleft has no legal basis as a term, so I'm not at all sure what you are saying. You are also somewhat misrepresenting what I'm saying and being a bit of a bully about it. But since nobody else thought it was a good idea, I think the notion in SPDX is effectively dead unless another use case surfaces that makes sense. Warner > > > *From:* [email protected] <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Warner > Losh > *Sent:* Monday, July 11, 2022 7:20 AM > *To:* [email protected] > *Subject:* Re: [spdx] Specific SPDX identifier question I didn't see > addressed in the specification > > > > > > > > On Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 8:13 AM McCoy Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > > “The concept you are talking about doesn't exist in law. You can only > change the 'outbound' license if the 'inbound' license expressly allows it.” > > > > You have a case citation for that? > > > > Do you have one that does or that refutes the theory that the copyright > holder granted you the ability to do certain things, but not to change the > license? Without that, you are redistributing copyrighted material without > the permission of the copyright holder. > > > > Again, I'm not a lawyer, but I've never encountered this in the last 30 > years of doing open source. Downstream additions with a new license always > an 'AND' unless the original license granted otherwise. It's certainly not > the 'mainstream' of how open source operates and also goes against the > oft-expressed desire to keep SPDX relatively simple. > > > > Warner > > > > > > *From:* [email protected] <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Warner > Losh > *Sent:* Monday, July 11, 2022 7:07 AM > *To:* [email protected] > *Cc:* SPDX-legal <[email protected]> > *Subject:* Re: [spdx] Specific SPDX identifier question I didn't see > addressed in the specification > > > > > > > > On Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 7:38 AM McCoy Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > > These questions are really off-topic. > > If you have questions about interpretation of BSD licenses, you probably > ought to ask them of your counsel (or if you’re associated with FreeBSD, > their counsel). > > There are also a lot of resources, many on-line and free, concerning the > interpretation of most of the major open source licenses, including the BSD > variants. This one might be instructive for you: > > “The so-called new BSD license applied to FreeBSD within the last few > years is effectively a statement that you can do anything with the program > or its source, but you do not have any warranty and none of the authors has > any liability (basically, you cannot sue anybody). **This new BSD license > is intended to encourage product commercialization. Any BSD code can be > sold or included in proprietary products without any restrictions on the > availability of your code or your future behavior.**” > > > > https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/bsdl-gpl/ > > > > What does that have to do with anything? This is marketing material, not a > license nor a grant to "file off" the old license and add your own new one. > You are only allowed to add your new one and the old one is quite > permissive otherwise. > > > > The concept you are talking about doesn't exist in law. You can only > change the 'outbound' license if the 'inbound' license expressly allows it. > The BSD license is quite permissive, but it isn't that permissive. So, your > desire to express this concept in SPDX doesn't make sense. You are asking > the SPDX license expression to cover something that's not a thing. That's > my basic point, and so far you've done nothing to refute that. > > > > Warner > > > > *From:* [email protected] <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *Warner > Losh > *Sent:* Friday, July 1, 2022 2:11 PM > *To:* [email protected] > *Cc:* SPDX-legal <[email protected]> > *Subject:* Re: [spdx] Specific SPDX identifier question I didn't see > addressed in the specification > > > > > > On Fri, Jul 1, 2022, 2:17 PM McCoy Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > > Well the example is the reverse: inbound BSD-2-Clause, outbound MIT. > > I’m more thinking license identifiers that go with the code (since I think > for most folks that’s where they do license attribution/license copy > requirements). > > But obviously the issue/problem is more generic given that some permissive > licenses allow the notice to be in either (or in some cases require in > both) the source or documentation. > > Are you allowed to do that without it becoming an AND? You can't just > change the terms w/o permission like that I'd imagine... And I'm not sure > how it would generalize... > > > > Warner > > > > > > *From:* [email protected] <[email protected]> *On Behalf Of *J Lovejoy > *Sent:* Friday, July 1, 2022 1:11 PM > *To:* SPDX-legal <[email protected]> > *Subject:* Re: [spdx] Specific SPDX identifier question I didn't see > addressed in the specification > > > > Hi McCoy! > > > > I’m moving the SPDX-general list to BCC and replying to SPDX-legal as that > is the right place for this discussion. > > > > Where is this question coming up in terms of context? That is, are you > thinking in the context of an SPDX document and capturing the licensing > info for a file that is under MIT originally but then redistributed under > BSD-2-Clause? Or are you thinking in the context of using an SPDX license > identifiers in the source files? > > > > Thanks, > > Jilayne > > > > On Jul 1, 2022, at 12:01 PM, McCoy Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > I didn’t see this particular topic addressed in the specification > (although I’m happy to be correcedt if I missed it), so I thought I’d post > and see whether there is a solution that’s commonly used, or if there’s > room for a new identifier. > > > > Virtually all so-called “permissive” licenses permit the recipient of code > to license out under different terms, as long as all the requirements of > the in-bound license are met. In almost all of these permissive licenses > those requirement boil down to: > > 1. Preserve all existing IP notices (or in some cases, just copyright > notices) > 2. Provide a copy of the license (or something to that effect: > retaining “this permission notice” (ICU/Unicode/MIT) or “this list of > conditions” (BSD) or providing “a copy of this License” (Apache 2.0)) > > > > The rules around element 1 and SPDX are well-described. > > With regard to element 2, a fully-compliant but informative notice when > there is a change from the in-bound to the out-bound license would look > something like this (with the square bracketed part being an example of a > way to say this): > > > > SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT > > [This file/package/project contains code originally licensed under:] > > SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-Clause > > > > The point being to express that the outbound license is MIT, but in order > to fully comply with the requirements of BSD-2-Clause, one must retain “ this > list of conditions and the following disclaimer” which including a copy > of BSD-2-Clause accomplishes. Without the square bracketed statement above, > it seems confusing as to what the license is (or whether, for example, the > code is dual-licensed MIT AND BSD-2-Clause. > > > One way to do this I suppose is to use the LicenseComment: field to > include this information, but it seems to me that this is enough of a > common situation that there ought to be something more specific to address > this situation. > > > > Thoughts? Am I missing something? > > > > > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#1559): https://lists.spdx.org/g/spdx/message/1559 Mute This Topic: https://lists.spdx.org/mt/92118120/21656 Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.spdx.org/g/spdx/leave/2655439/21656/1698928721/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
