Re: "Licences Wars"

On Friday 07 November 2008, Amit Aronovitch wrote:
> 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.

Well, generally speaking one should strive for endorsement as free (and 
preferably GPL-compatibility) by everybody. Otherwise, you may be facing 
problems. As for CC, the standard CC licences 
(CC-by/CC-by-sa/CC-by-nc-sa/CC-by-nd/etc.) are not suitable for software due 
to their attribution clause:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html

In fact, the Creative Commons does not let you choose "software" as the type 
of artwork, when filling their form.

>
> > 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.

I see. That's god.

> (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-67131dbee718a24e1d227819dd818784ac
>eb9cc9 Personally, I think this is a case of unreasonably paranoidic
> interpretation of the license and they *should* be considered DFSG-free.
>

OK.

> > {{{{{{
> > [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 }}
>

Interesting. Wouldn't one be able to remove the packages from the Deian's 
repository and let it rot on a public (and accessible) web-site of deprecated 
packages? IANAL, so I don't know.

> 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.
>

OK.

> > 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.

Yes.

>
> --------
>
> > 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 ;-) )

Yes.

>
> > 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.

Didn't say there was. What I did say was that GPLv2-only or GPLv3-and-above 
(or even LGPLv3-and-above due to its incompatibility with GPLv2) do often 
stand against the Hacker's Ethics because they pose unnecessary limits on 
which code can be linked to other code. This is while a strong copyleft 
licence such as the SleepyCat Licence, or simpler weak copyleft licences such 
as Artistic 2.0 - which are less political and loaded than the FSF licences - 
are much better in this regard. As a result, I find licensing under them 
preferable and in better accordance to the Hacker's Ethics.

The reason I like to use the X11L, is not because of that reason, but rather 
because not only I don't mind people "abusing" my software by building upon 
it to make a proprietary/non-free/non-GPL-compatible product,  but I 
encourage it in some specific contexts.

But it's ultimately up to the originator to decide which licence to use. If 
you want to publish your software under the Microsoft Vista EULA, then all 
the power to you. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, but I don't 
consider it an immoral act per-ce.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
Parody on "The Fountainhead" - http://xrl.us/bjria

Shlomi, so what are you working on? Working on a new wiki about unit testing 
fortunes in freecell? -- Ran Eilam

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