Re: "Licences Wars"

On Saturday 10 January 2009 21:27:50 Amit Aronovitch wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 7:24 AM, Shlomi Fish <shlomif-ik1l9ssToec+JF/[email protected]> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> In this case, your recommendations are also not free enough. Only license
> that would work is something like:
> "You can do with this work whatever you like, even claim that you did it
> all by yourself, no need to mention me. However, you still have the right
> to sue me if it does not work".

This seems a bit contradictory. And who would be happy with such a licence and 
not with, say, the X11L?

> The reason you don't find any license like that is because authors normally
> want to assure at least some of their own rights, and that comes at the
> expense of the "freedoms" of the end users. The question is how you
> prioritize these freedoms.

I see.

>
> You actually want "endorsement as free" not really by *everybody*, just by
> a specific list of organizations which you consider relevant for your
> beliefs and for the projects you work on.
>

Well, I have yet to hear of an organisation that doesn't consider the X11L as 
a usable licence. But who knows?

> 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.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean, but it seems that the discussion in your link
> is irrelevant. It speaks about the specific case of attribution in
> "advertising materials" (you can't make effective ads if they must include
> 100
> attributions).

I see.

> The CC attribution clause says only that you must attribute "in the manner
> specified by the author" - this in itself places no restriction, all
> depends on what the author explicitly requires.

Hmmm... interesting. In any case, the FSF does not consider CC-by and CC-by-sa 
as GPL-compatible. And I'm not sure the CC attribution clause (while taking 
into consideration its difference from the original BSDL advertising clause) 
is GPL-compatible. And the Creative Commons still recommends using one of the 
more standard (and older) software licences for licensing programs rather than 
one of the CC licences.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
"Humanity" - Parody of Modern Life - http://xrl.us/bkeut

<mauke>    I'm not interested in what you're doing; what are you trying to 
           achieve?
<PerlJam>  mauke: I'm trying to achieve world peace and this regex is
           the last thing standing in my way! ;)



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