Re: "Licences Wars"

On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 1:33 AM, Shlomi Fish <shlomif-ik1l9ssToec+JF/[email protected]> wrote:

>
> Now. The first thing I'll mention is that it is not entirely agreed upon
> which
> licences are free/open-source and which are not:
>
> The original Artistic Licence (authored by Larry Wall for dual-licensing
> perl)
> is:
>
> * considered non-free (and non-GPL-compatible) by the FSF
>
> * considered free by Debian.
>
> * considered non-free by RedHat.
>
> * considered free by Mandriva.
>
> * considered open-source by the OSI -
> http://www.opensource.org/licenses/artistic-license-1.0.php
>
> * was considered a contract in a certain judgement:
>
> http://lwn.net/Articles/246695/
>
> (Who are you going to believe?)
>

Possibly all. The reason is that "freeness" is not a boolean parameter. Not
even a single parameter real-valued scale. There are multiple criteria,
possibly contradicting each other. Much like human rights...
It is much more practical to talk about specific definitions, such as
OSI-free/DFSG-free/FSF-free etc.
As your examples clearly demonstrate, these do not comply to a total
ordering (in the mathematical sense:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order ).

You should decide how you *want* your work to be distributed and choose the
license accordingly (effectively decide which criteria should take
priority). CC has a nice mechanism for it.


> The Creative Commons Attribution (CC-by) and Attribution-ShareAlike
> Licences
> (CC-by-sa) are considered free (but not GPL-compatible) by the FSF (see
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#OtherLicenses ), while the
> Debian legal team concluded that they were not free.[1]
>

Notes:
(1) Version 3.0 CC licenses *are* considered DFSG-free.
(2) As for 2.0 and 2.5, seems that the issue is undecided, and under
negotiations (between CC and Debian-legal)
http://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses#head-67131dbee718a24e1d227819dd818784aceb9cc9
 Personally, I think this is a case of unreasonably paranoidic
interpretation of the license and they *should* be considered DFSG-free.


>
> {{{{{{
> [1] - I should note that I have issues with the entire Debian policy of
> including only free-as-in-speech material in their distribution, regardless
> of its type. I don't feel that non-software-content should abide by the
> same
> rules as software,


In principle, I tend to agree. However you should specify which of the 9
guidelines ( http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines ) if any,
could be lifted for non-software contents.
This might not be as easy as it seems. For example, the most common (and
annoying) cause for removed documentation in Debian is rejection of the
GFDL. However, this can not be avoided. Because of the GFDL's reuirements on
availability of opaque sources (which is a "restriction on redistribution"),
one would not be able to (automatically) remove deprecated documentation
packages from Debian repositories without legally violating the GFDL.
{{{ The part that I find most annoying is not the rejection of the GFDL by
itself, but the tendency of some package maintainers to *delete* the GFDL
docs instead of splitting the package into "free" and "non-free" parts }}

and even RMS said that computer games are morally allowed
> to have non-free graphics, sound, and plots as long as their engines are
> free:
>
> http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/09/191257
>
> So Debian are trying to be holier than the pope here and try to coerce
> everybody into abiding by irrational rules.
>

As I said, you can't compare Debian and the FSF with a "greater than"
relation. And DFSG freeness is not strictly a question of morality. For
example, mandatory clickwrap might not be immoral, but allowing it would
place an unreasonable burden on Debian users.


> 5. Bad Idea No. 5: Use the GPL or the LGPL:
> -------------------------------------------
>
> The GPL/LGPL contain many additional restrictions to the concept of
> copyleft,
> and are very mis-understood, over-hyped, and don't maintain compatibility
> with newer versions. Even the LGPL is reportedly problematic:
>
> http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.642822.36
>
> The GPL and LGPL are of more political nature than other similar FOSS
> licences, and as such should be avoided. I recommend using the SleepyCat
> licence ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepycat_License ), which is a
> strong-copyleft licence, that is compatible with GPLv2 and above, instead
> of
> the GPL and the Artistic 2.0 (or above) licence instead of the LGPL.
>
> I read the GPLv2 originally once and couldn't understand it. The LGPLv2 or
> the
> GPLv3 would likely prove to be more problematic.
>
>
True - simplicity is a valid consideration for choosing the license. If it
is more important to you that your *users* understand your license than the
lawyers of some software corps - don't choose GPL.
The FSF seems to take the position that it is more important to protect the
users and authors from IP lawyers finding loopholes to limit usage or
redistribution of the software.

--------
>
> Finally, not a statement of a bad idea in itself, but a call to use the X11


(just dont confuse with XFree86 1.1 license ;-) )


> Licence (or similar FOSS licences). That's because
>
> - It's simple.
> - It's easy to understand.
> - It's practically PD which is what people innocently expect.
> - Much fewer worries on who can violate your licence.
> - Still gives you protection against litigation.
> - It's GPL-compatible.
> - You can boast that your program is Public domain / BSD-style.
>

Good choice in many cases.
However, note that some people who spent a lot of time developing free
software, want to ensure it is used on fair terms ( as Linus said: "I give
out code, I want you to do the same."
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2006/03/09/torvalds-linux-licensing-cz_dl_0309torvalds1.html)
and consider this more important than the "hacker ethics rule" of problems
not having to be solved twice, or the desire to increase the user base.
Copyleft is completely legitimate and there is nothing morally wrong with
it.

   AA