...making Linux just a little more fun!
Martin [martin at marcher.name]
Hello,
according to your author FAQ[0] under "Copyright Issues" you state that you will publish the works sent to you under the Open Publication License. The Wikipedia article states that the author of the OPL recommends using a Createive Commons License as a replacement. I understand that there are issues with the existing articles which may prevent relicencing them but for new articles would it be OK if I'd like to articles to be published under a Creative Commons License - personally I prefer "by-nc-sa" for written works and "by-sa" for code works.
Given that efforts to keep the OPL updated seem to have stopped (actually never made it beyond a version 1.0) at 1999-07-08 I think switching to a CC license should be considered, maybe even let authors choose between
* default (stay with OPL) * the CC options
any thoughts on that?
regards martin
PS: no I don't think you can't google but I guess it's a lot easier to just click the link of my sources, we all got enough work to do.
[0] http://linuxgazette.net/faq/author.html#policy
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Open_Publication_License&oldid=230659639
[2] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
-- http://www.xing.com/profile/Martin_Marcher You are not free to read this message, by doing so, you have violated my licence and are required to urinate publicly. Thank you.
Jimmy O'Regan [joregan at gmail.com]
2008/9/21 Martin <martin@marcher.name>:
> Hello, > > according to your author FAQ[0] under "Copyright Issues" you state > that you will publish the works sent to you under the Open Publication > License.
By default; the author may choose a different licence if he/she so pleases (and the editor in chief may reject the article if that licence is horrible enough).
> The Wikipedia article states that the author of the OPL > recommends using a Createive Commons License as a replacement. I > understand that there are issues with the existing articles which may > prevent relicencing them but for new articles would it be OK if I'd > like to articles to be published under a Creative Commons License -
Any articles you submit may be published under the licence of your choice, subject to the editor's approval, of course.
> personally I prefer "by-nc-sa" for written works
I think anything with 'Non-commercial' terms is horrible, and IMO contrary to LG's goals.
> and "by-sa" for code > works. >
Well that's a complete and utter failure of an idea. It's Linux Gazette - if you want to share code in the Linux community, the best way to do so is using the GPL.
> Given that efforts to keep the OPL updated seem to have stopped > (actually never made it beyond a version 1.0) at 1999-07-08 I think > switching to a CC license should be considered, maybe even let authors > choose between > > * default (stay with OPL) > * the CC options >
We've already had that discussion, a few years ago, and the consensus was to stay with the OPL.
> any thoughts on that? > http://www.xing.com/profile/Martin_Marcher > > You are not free to read this message, > by doing so, you have violated my licence > and are required to urinate publicly. Thank you.
^ I'd prefer this to cc-n[cd]-*
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 01:47:10AM +0100, Jimmy O'Regan wrote:
> 2008/9/21 Martin <martin@marcher.name>: > > Hello, > > > > according to your author FAQ[0] under "Copyright Issues" you state > > that you will publish the works sent to you under the Open Publication > > License.
That is the default license under which we publish submitted articles, yes.
> By default; the author may choose a different licence if he/she so > pleases (and the editor in chief may reject the article if that > licence is horrible enough).
In practice, most authors never ask about the license - it's not an issue. Frankly, having to figure out the merits of one license vs. another would make me (at least a little) less willing to accept an article, and would push a marginal article over the wall; I have a limited amount of time, and spending, say, an hour on the process is not an attractive option.
> > personally I prefer "by-nc-sa" for written works > > I think anything with 'Non-commercial' terms is horrible, and IMO > contrary to LG's goals.
I agree, completely. Even though the OPL allows specifying a "no commercial distribution" clause (license option B), please note that the front page of LG says
All content released under the Open Publication License v1.0 (options A and B not applied)Given the variety of readers that we have, it makes little sense to do anything else.
> > You are not free to read this message, > > by doing so, you have violated my licence > > and are required to urinate publicly. Thank you. > > ^ I'd prefer this to cc-n[cd]-*
Our Implied-But-Never-Stated License (that's the real one - the OPL is
just a cover) says that anyone who even suggests urinating in public is
to be fined one (1) good quality beer per LG reader, to be sent to the
editor and (theoretically) distributed as he finds appropriate. 
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Rick Moen [rick at linuxmafia.com]
Quoting Ben Okopnik (ben@linuxgazette.net):
> In practice, most authors never ask about the license - it's not an > issue. Frankly, having to figure out the merits of one license vs. > another would make me (at least a little) less willing to accept an > article, and would push a marginal article over the wall; I have a > limited amount of time, and spending, say, an hour on the process is not > an attractive option.
For whatever it's worth, speaking just as another staffer -- as well as someone who is (I think) qualified to judge licences but is aware of what a time-sink that can be -- you're making an eminently reasonable call.
I suspect that, if an author wanted to use an article-specific licence that's obviously compatible with our goals but different -- say, new-BSD or MIT/X, or maybe even Creative Commons BA-SA 3.0 -- we'd be fine with that, but not with one that obviously withholds major rights our readers normally expect LG to convey for each and every issue.
Commercial use is the obvious item that would most often become the subject of a "Oh, and surely you wouldn't mind if...." We don't mind, but then we also don't publish under those conditions. ;-> LG conveys a full set of rights for articles it publishes, including those of commercial use, as long as credit is appropriately preserved, as per OPL's provisions for same.
People who aren't comfortable with the notion of their work getting reused by others in a commercial setting, e.g., on LG mirrors that include advertising, will find LG an unsuitable place to publish. They also, by the way, probably won't like open source, for exactly the same reason.
Rick Moen [rick at linuxmafia.com]
Quoting Martin (martin@marcher.name):
> according to your author FAQ[0] under "Copyright Issues" you state > that you will publish the works sent to you under the Open Publication > License. The Wikipedia article states that the author of the OPL > recommends using a Creative Commons License as a replacement.
Some of the CC licences are, in my view, well suited for _Linux Gazette's_ use but have no compelling advantages. (As you may or may not know, CC's licences are highly diverse, including both highly proprietary and free licences, and unfortunately the organisation makes very little effort to disambiguate the two.) Some of CC's licences are, in contrast, entirely unsuitable. The two proprietary CC licences that you favour would be in the latter category.
David Wiley (creator of OPL 1.0 with help from Eric Raymond and Tim O'Reilly) now deprecates OPL because he's not an attorney and because he thinks the various CC licences will stand up better in court. He also mentions in passing Andrew M. St. Laurent's critique in an excerpt from St. Laurent's O'Reilly book _Open Source and Free Software Licensing_, at http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/10/07/OSlicenses_part2.html .
Let's look at all of that. I'm not an attorney, either, but I'm trained in business law (in preparation for an early career in the accounting and finance trade) and have about as much experience evaluating software and documentation licences as anyone in the Linux community, including many lawyers in that community. For whatever it's worth, I think Wiley, Raymand, and O'Reilly did pretty well in OPL 1.0, especially if one leaves off Options A and B and all other options -- as does LG.
Mr. St. Laurent's beefs with OPL 1.0 are as follows:
1. Any use of "License Options" can create problems. Maybe, but irrelevant to LG's usage model, which eschews them.
2. OPL's definition of "substantive modifications" in terms of whether a change is sematic or not is, in St. Laurent's view, "dangerously ambiguous". Well, that's a matter of opinion, and I soundly differ from Mr. St. Laurent on that point. I'm perfectly happy to leave application of that distinction up to a judge. Unlike many computerists, I'm aware of how many debatable distinctions are inherently part of law: We trust judges and juries to determine whether an action satisfies the "reasonable man standard" and whether people who commit the "actus reus" of a violent acts are accompanying that act with a culpatory "mens rea" (mental state), i.e., intent to do wrong -- and we're supposed to worry about their ability to determine whether a change has semantic effect?
I'm willing to worry about global warming and international fiscal policies; I don't have nearly enough worry left over for that.
(Anyway, all of that is part of one of the optional sections, and LG doesn't use that.)
3. Similarly, use of the option to control commercial republication results in what St. Laurent calls further "ambiguities" -- but the examples he then cites of such don't strike me as being ambiguities at all. What he discusses would be more properly termed the result of an author using OPL with the discussed option without bothering to read it, and thus failing to comprehend that it only controls some types of commercial re-use.
I see no actual problem, there, only St. Laurent calling lack of author attention a problem. And, again, LG does not use that option in the first place.
4. St. Laurent complains that OPL's inclusion of "Policy Appendix" and the "Good Practice Recommendations" might "confuse licensees". Awww. Poor babies. I'm really not impressed by that argument, either.
5. St. Laurent complains that OPL doesn't address how to comply with its requirement when publishing anthologies of OPL works, or when dealing with works existing in multiple generations. However, again, I simply don't see a problem. In particular, his claim that there's a problem concerning anthologies is, to be blunt, nonsense. He seems to be saying that the scope of OPL coverage in multiple-work situations is unclear. Bollocks. As anyone who's studied copyright law seriously will tell you, it extends to the edge of _derivative works_ of the original OPL-covered works -- that term being a legal term of art within copyright law, and a long discussion in itself.
I've grown impatient with St. Laurent's writings ever since I bought a copy in order to review it in comparison to Lawrence Rosen's book on the same subject for BayLISA. To my sharp disappointment, I was obliged to politely pan St. Laurent's book: It struck me as really shockingly shoddy work.
Here's my review, which I'll gladly licence to the public under the reader's choice of OPL 1.0 with no options or Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0. ;->
Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 20:50:41 -0700 To: blw@baylisa.org Subject: Review X-Mas: Bah humbug. User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040907i
ISBN: 0-596-00581-4 O'Reilly and Associates List Price: US $24.95
Andrew St. Laurent's 2004 volume "Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing" is O'Reilly's attempt to fill a significant need for good resources on this subject. It joins OSI chief counsel Lawrence Rosen's similar volume from Prentice Hall, "Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law", published at nearly the same time, and Rutgers School of Law professor Rod Dixon's hardcover volume from Artech House/Horizon, "Open Source Software Law".
There's a vital need for such books because businesses have been dipping their toes into open source for the past decade and immediately stumbling over legal issues, both real and imaginary. As a longtime observer of the resulting fray, I've been longing for a good book on the subject.
St. Laurent's comes within spitting distance of being that book. As an attorney with an interest in intellectual property law, he is able to give a lucid run-through of about a dozen of the most common open source licences, explaining what each clause means in detail, and contrasting them with a typical proprietary-software licence, similarly scrutinised. That part of the book, which comprises the book's middle 70%, will be useful for people wondering how licences get their force, and how they operate in our legal framework.Where the book falls down is in a couple of places. First and foremost, it lacks a coherent conceptual overview, failing to clarify the default rights conveyed by unaided copyright law and its provisions. It takes for granted crucial concepts such as "derivative work": If work A is derivative of work B, then the second work's owner's rights (and licensing) determine what can be done with (encumber) the derivative. The advantages of registering copyrights (and consequences of not doing so), revocation of licences by the licensor, collective works versus joint works, and many other details important to licensing get no coverage at all. St. Laurent also doesn't mention at all a key aspect of licences, that the copyright holder attaches them to instances of a codebase, such that different instances may bear completely different terms of usage.
Some of the very common licensing controversies within the open source community aren't addressed, either: Is it necessary or desirable to require a licensee to indicate assent, e.g., through a clickwrap agreement mechanism? (St. Laurent states without reservation that clickwrap licences have been ruled enforceable, but the judicial record on the matter is actually mixed.) How extensive should the reach of licences' patent-defence clauses (if any) be? (Some licences revoke the rights of users who bring any sort of patent action, regardless of the dispute; others are limited in scope to just patent actions concerning the licensed work.) Is it possible to donate a work of original ownership directly to the public domain, despite the lack of any legal mechanism for doing so? Is it desirable to have a choice-of-law provision in one's licence? Can you as the primary maintainer and copyright holder of a collective-work project "upgrade" the project's licence to a better one? These are important questions, with which the book simply won't help you.
I was disappointed that St. Laurent takes for granted that the GNU General Public Licence and Lesser General Public Licence can be evaluated only as contracts: Their author, law professor Eben Moglen, has clarified many times that both contracts are intended as rights grants under copyright law only, and the licences themselves clearly so state. Thus, the question of their enforceability doesn't hinge on contract formation -- but, even there, St. Laurent's coverage is lacking: Given that GPL and LGPL would be unilateral contracts without any necessary obligation of payment by the licensee, how would the necessary contract element of "valuable consideration" be found? (Each side in a contract must give up something of value; otherwise, there can be no contract.) A more-thorough treatment would have discussed that issue and also the licences' intended status as "bare copyright licences".
These flaws notwithstanding, the book does include excellent, reasonably readable yet in-depth analysis of all primary open source licences in use today, and I do strongly recommend it, to all interested audiences.
-- end review --
I personally do think you have a reasonable point about some of CC's licences being good -- despite the two particular ones you cite being just about the worst possible CC licences for LG's purposes. In my view, CC BY-SA 3.0 would be a slight improvement over OPL 1.0 sans options -- but not enough of an improvement to justify switching.
Here's my rough taxonomy of current CC licences for OSI's benefit -- plus a follow-up for the sake of perspective:
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 20:47:28 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> To: license-discuss@opensource.org Subject: Re: Creative Commons
Quoting Raj Mathur (raju@linux-delhi.org):
> On Tuesday 05 Aug 2008, Somik Raha wrote: > > > However, some contributions will be in the form of powerpoint > > templates, and the Create Commons Attribution license seems to be > > simple enough to allow for commercial and non-commercial usage, > > while keeping it open. AFAIK, not all CC licenses are OSI-compliant, > > and I could not find any CC licenses on the OSI list that have been > > approved. Interestingly enough, OSI's homepage uses a CC license. > > The reason you don't find the CC licences on its web site is that OSI > does not approve any licences other than software licences. Being the > Open Source Initiative, their mandate is (at least currently) > restricted to the software domain. > > However, I don't see how you can go wrong using one of the CC > licences, which are the de-facto standard for open document publishing > and implicitly approved by the OSI by use. Any OSI board member (I > used to be one) would probably advise you to choose the CC licence > that meets your needs and go ahead with it.
It should be bourne in mind that most of the CC licences are (by design) proprietary. That is, some of them intentionally do not grant the right to create or distribute derivative works, and some of them intentionally grant that right only for non-commercial re-use.
Applying the OSD as criterion, the current 3.0 licence revisions divide like this, in my opinion:
Proprietary ----------- Attribution-NoDerivs Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Attribution-NonCommercial Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Open source ----------- Attribution Attribution-ShareAlike
--
Cheers, Chip Salzenberg: "Usenet is not a right."
Rick Moen Edward Vielmetti: "Usenet is a right, a left, a jab,
rick@linuxmafia.com and a sharp uppercut to the jaw.
The postman hits! You have new mail."
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 23:07:00 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> To: license-discuss@opensource.org Subject: Re: Creative Commons
Quoting Raj Mathur (raju@linux-delhi.org):
> OK, I stand corrected -- thanks for the insight, Rick. On the other > hand, I don't know how far we can go applying criteria for software to > documents -- what you propose appears reasonable and intuitive, but > I'd still advise caution when applying the OSD directly to > document licences.
Very good point (and the original answer still pertains, that OSI simply doesn't have non-software licensing within its bailiwick in the first place).
Opinions on documentation licensing tend to be surprisingly contentious (and I wasn't even particularly thinking of the Debian vs. GFDL affair); many commentators seem to forget about ways in which documentation tends to differ fundamentally from software:
o Getting access to the preferred form really isn't very difficult for a motivated re-user. (We're not talking about contrived DRM/Kindle scenarios, but rather ordinary documentation -- but even those succumb to screen snapshots and OCR.) At minimum, the full semantics of the work are available to inspection, i.e., there's nothing like software's trait of obscuring through compilation. o In part because of the above fact, there's very little barrier to creation of a new, equivalent work if an existing one's terms of usage become a problem. o The desire to create a new document as a derivative work borrowing part of an existing document is relatively rarely felt. (The desire to update an existing poorly maintained document occasionally does arise.) o For various reasons of real-world perception, authors are often concerned that modified variants of their work will make them appear to have said something they didn't. Software people tend to assume that this is no more of a problem than it is in software, and yet they are not correct.
It's often claimed that documentation's licensing must be compatible with (if not the same as) that of the software it concerns, e.g., for example code included in the docs -- but that's a pretty contrived scenario, in my view.
But, to stress again, all of this is outside OSI's ambit.
Jimmy O'Regan [joregan at gmail.com]
2008/9/22 Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>:
> Quoting Martin (martin@marcher.name): > >> according to your author FAQ[0] under "Copyright Issues" you state >> that you will publish the works sent to you under the Open Publication >> License. The Wikipedia article states that the author of the OPL >> recommends using a Creative Commons License as a replacement. > > Some of the CC licences are, in my view, well suited for _Linux Gazette's_ > use but have no compelling advantages. (As you may or may not know, > CC's licences are highly diverse, including both highly proprietary > and free licences, and unfortunately the organisation makes very little > effort to disambiguate the two.) Some of CC's licences are, in > contrast, entirely unsuitable. The two proprietary CC licences that you > favour would be in the latter category. >
Erm... not quite; I think I may have sown the seeds of confusion here; I have no objections against nc-by-sa in general, but as a licence for 'code', it's simply wrong-headed; creating division where none should exist - I mentioned the 'nd' variant after, but simply as a caveat of the unacceptable.
To Martin; my articles (and other contributions, in whatever form) may be considered to be under cc-by-sa 3.0, which I find unobjectional; or under the GFDL minus invariants, which I find mostly unobjectional (minus also the anti-DRM clause would be perfect for me)). I'm sure most other LG authors are of a similar mind; however, if such is your goal, the onus is on you to determine whom of these are willing to dual licence.
> David Wiley (creator of OPL 1.0 with help from Eric Raymond and Tim > O'Reilly) now deprecates OPL because he's not an attorney and because he > thinks the various CC licences will stand up better in court. He also > mentions in passing Andrew M. St. Laurent's critique in an excerpt from > St. Laurent's O'Reilly book _Open Source and Free Software Licensing_, > at http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/10/07/OSlicenses_part2.html . >
O'Reilly have a new book: 'Intellectual Property and Open Source' by Van Lindberg. I've only read a few excerpts, but those seem ok.
> Let's look at all of that. I'm not an attorney, either, but I'm trained > in business law (in preparation for an early career in the accounting > and finance trade) and have about as much experience evaluating software > and documentation licences as anyone in the Linux community, including > many lawyers in that community. For whatever it's worth, I think Wiley, > Raymand, and O'Reilly did pretty well in OPL 1.0, especially if one > leaves off Options A and B and all other options -- as does LG. > > Mr. St. Laurent's beefs with OPL 1.0 are as follows: > > 1. Any use of "License Options" can create problems. Maybe, but irrelevant > to LG's usage model, which eschews them. > > 2. OPL's definition of "substantive modifications" in terms of whether > a change is sematic or not is, in St. Laurent's view, "dangerously > ambiguous". Well, that's a matter of opinion, and I soundly differ from > Mr. St. Laurent on that point. I'm perfectly happy to leave application > of that distinction up to a judge. Unlike many computerists, I'm aware > of how many debatable distinctions are inherently part of law: We trust > judges and juries to determine whether an action satisfies the > "reasonable man standard" and whether people who commit the "actus reus" > of a violent acts are accompanying that act with a culpatory "mens rea" > (mental state), i.e., intent to do wrong -- and we're supposed to worry > about their ability to determine whether a change has semantic effect? > > I'm willing to worry about global warming and international fiscal > policies; I don't have nearly enough worry left over for that. > > (Anyway, all of that is part of one of the optional sections, and LG > doesn't use that.) > > 3. Similarly, use of the option to control commercial republication > results in what St. Laurent calls further "ambiguities" -- but the > examples he then cites of such don't strike me as being ambiguities at > all. What he discusses would be more properly termed the result of an > author using OPL with the discussed option without bothering to read it, > and thus failing to comprehend that it only controls some types of > commercial re-use. > > I see no actual problem, there, only St. Laurent calling lack of author > attention a problem. And, again, LG does not use that option in the > first place. > > 4. St. Laurent complains that OPL's inclusion of "Policy Appendix" and > the "Good Practice Recommendations" might "confuse licensees". Awww. > Poor babies. I'm really not impressed by that argument, either. > > 5. St. Laurent complains that OPL doesn't address how to comply with > its requirement when publishing anthologies of OPL works, or when > dealing with works existing in multiple generations. However, again, I > simply don't see a problem. In particular, his claim that there's a > problem concerning anthologies is, to be blunt, nonsense. He seems to > be saying that the scope of OPL coverage in multiple-work situations is > unclear. Bollocks. As anyone who's studied copyright law seriously > will tell you, it extends to the edge of _derivative works_ of the > original OPL-covered works -- that term being a legal term of art within > copyright law, and a long discussion in itself. > > I've grown impatient with St. Laurent's writings ever since I bought a > copy in order to review it in comparison to Lawrence Rosen's book on the > same subject for BayLISA. To my sharp disappointment, I was obliged to > politely pan St. Laurent's book: It struck me as really shockingly > shoddy work. > > Here's my review, which I'll gladly licence to the public under the > reader's choice of OPL 1.0 with no options or Creative Commons BY-SA > 3.0. ;-> > > > > Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 20:50:41 -0700 > To: blw@baylisa.org > Subject: Review > X-Mas: Bah humbug. > User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040907i > > ISBN: 0-596-00581-4 > O'Reilly and Associates > List Price: US $24.95 > > > Andrew St. Laurent's 2004 volume "Understanding Open Source and Free > Software Licensing" is O'Reilly's attempt to fill a significant need for > good resources on this subject. It joins OSI chief counsel Lawrence > Rosen's similar volume from Prentice Hall, "Open Source Licensing: > Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law", published at nearly the > same time, and Rutgers School of Law professor Rod Dixon's hardcover > volume from Artech House/Horizon, "Open Source Software Law". > > There's a vital need for such books because businesses have been dipping > their toes into open source for the past decade and immediately > stumbling over legal issues, both real and imaginary. As a longtime > observer of the resulting fray, I've been longing for a good book on the > subject. > > St. Laurent's comes within spitting distance of being that book. As an > attorney with an interest in intellectual property law, he is able to > give a lucid run-through of about a dozen of the most common open source > licences, explaining what each clause means in detail, and contrasting > them with a typical proprietary-software licence, similarly scrutinised. > That part of the book, which comprises the book's middle 70%, will be > useful for people wondering how licences get their force, and how they > operate in our legal framework.Where the book falls down is in a couple > of places. First and foremost, it lacks a coherent conceptual overview, > failing to clarify the default rights conveyed by unaided copyright law > and its provisions. It takes for granted crucial concepts such as > "derivative work": If work A is derivative of work B, then the second > work's owner's rights (and licensing) determine what can be done with > (encumber) the derivative. The advantages of registering copyrights > (and consequences of not doing so), revocation of licences by the > licensor, collective works versus joint works, and many other details > important to licensing get no coverage at all. St. Laurent also doesn't > mention at all a key aspect of licences, that the copyright holder > attaches them to instances of a codebase, such that different instances > may bear completely different terms of usage. > > Some of the very common licensing controversies within the open source > community aren't addressed, either: Is it necessary or desirable to > require a licensee to indicate assent, e.g., through a clickwrap > agreement mechanism? (St. Laurent states without reservation that > clickwrap licences have been ruled enforceable, but the judicial record > on the matter is actually mixed.) How extensive should the reach of > licences' patent-defence clauses (if any) be? (Some licences revoke the > rights of users who bring any sort of patent action, regardless of the > dispute; others are limited in scope to just patent actions concerning > the licensed work.) Is it possible to donate a work of original > ownership directly to the public domain, despite the lack of any legal > mechanism for doing so? Is it desirable to have a choice-of-law > provision in one's licence? Can you as the primary maintainer and > copyright holder of a collective-work project "upgrade" the project's > licence to a better one? These are important questions, with which the > book simply won't help you. > > I was disappointed that St. Laurent takes for granted that the GNU > General Public Licence and Lesser General Public Licence can be > evaluated only as contracts: Their author, law professor Eben Moglen, > has clarified many times that both contracts are intended as rights > grants under copyright law only, and the licences themselves clearly so > state. Thus, the question of their enforceability doesn't hinge on
The ruling on the Artistic License, as reported in the current issue's Newsbytes, validates that.
> contract formation -- but, even there, St. Laurent's coverage is > lacking: Given that GPL and LGPL would be unilateral contracts without > any necessary obligation of payment by the licensee, how would the > necessary contract element of "valuable consideration" be found? (Each > side in a contract must give up something of value; otherwise, there can > be no contract.) A more-thorough treatment would have discussed that > issue and also the licences' intended status as "bare copyright > licences". > > These flaws notwithstanding, the book does include excellent, reasonably > readable yet in-depth analysis of all primary open source licences in > use today, and I do strongly recommend it, to all interested audiences. > > > > -- end review -- > > I personally do think you have a reasonable point about some of CC's > licences being good -- despite the two particular ones you cite being > just about the worst possible CC licences for LG's purposes. In my > view, CC BY-SA 3.0 would be a slight improvement over OPL 1.0 sans > options -- but not enough of an improvement to justify switching. > > Here's my rough taxonomy of current CC licences for OSI's benefit -- > plus a follow-up for the sake of perspective: > > Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 20:47:28 -0700 > From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> > To: license-discuss@opensource.org > Subject: Re: Creative Commons > > Quoting Raj Mathur (raju@linux-delhi.org): >> On Tuesday 05 Aug 2008, Somik Raha wrote: >> >> > However, some contributions will be in the form of powerpoint >> > templates, and the Create Commons Attribution license seems to be >> > simple enough to allow for commercial and non-commercial usage, >> > while keeping it open. AFAIK, not all CC licenses are OSI-compliant, >> > and I could not find any CC licenses on the OSI list that have been >> > approved. Interestingly enough, OSI's homepage uses a CC license. >> >> The reason you don't find the CC licences on its web site is that OSI >> does not approve any licences other than software licences. Being the >> Open Source Initiative, their mandate is (at least currently) >> restricted to the software domain. >> >> However, I don't see how you can go wrong using one of the CC >> licences, which are the de-facto standard for open document publishing >> and implicitly approved by the OSI by use. Any OSI board member (I >> used to be one) would probably advise you to choose the CC licence >> that meets your needs and go ahead with it. > > It should be bourne in mind that most of the CC licences are (by design) > proprietary. That is, some of them intentionally do not grant the right > to create or distribute derivative works, and some of them intentionally > grant that right only for non-commercial re-use. > > Applying the OSD as criterion, the current 3.0 licence revisions divide > like this, in my opinion: > > Proprietary > ----------- > Attribution-NoDerivs > Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs > Attribution-NonCommercial > Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike > > Open source > ----------- > Attribution > Attribution-ShareAlike > > -- > Cheers, Chip Salzenberg: "Usenet is not a right." > Rick Moen Edward Vielmetti: "Usenet is a right, a left, a jab, > rick@linuxmafia.com and a sharp uppercut to the jaw. > The postman hits! You have new mail." > > > > Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 23:07:00 -0700 > From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> > To: license-discuss@opensource.org > Subject: Re: Creative Commons > > Quoting Raj Mathur (raju@linux-delhi.org): > >> OK, I stand corrected -- thanks for the insight, Rick. On the other >> hand, I don't know how far we can go applying criteria for software to >> documents -- what you propose appears reasonable and intuitive, but >> I'd still advise caution when applying the OSD directly to >> document licences. > > Very good point (and the original answer still pertains, that OSI simply > doesn't have non-software licensing within its bailiwick in the first > place). > > Opinions on documentation licensing tend to be surprisingly contentious > (and I wasn't even particularly thinking of the Debian vs. GFDL affair); > many commentators seem to forget about ways in which documentation tends > to differ fundamentally from software: > > o Getting access to the preferred form really isn't very difficult for > a motivated re-user. (We're not talking about contrived DRM/Kindle > scenarios, but rather ordinary documentation -- but even those succumb > to screen snapshots and OCR.) At minimum, the full semantics of the > work are available to inspection, i.e., there's nothing like > software's trait of obscuring through compilation. > o In part because of the above fact, there's very little barrier to > creation of a new, equivalent work if an existing one's terms of usage > become a problem. > o The desire to create a new document as a derivative work borrowing part > of an existing document is relatively rarely felt. (The desire to > update an existing poorly maintained document occasionally does arise.)
And in the former situation, the strong desire is usually to write a new explanation in one's own words, which is a new copyrightable entity - and the 'academic' principle of acknowledging prior work is immaterial as that is not enshrined in current international copyright law.
> o For various reasons of real-world perception, authors are often > concerned that modified variants of their work will make them appear to > have said something they didn't. Software people tend to assume that > this is no more of a problem than it is in software, and yet they are > not correct. > > It's often claimed that documentation's licensing must be compatible > with (if not the same as) that of the software it concerns, e.g., for > example code included in the docs -- but that's a pretty contrived > scenario, in my view.
Well, that was one of the primary objections against the GFDL's
incompatibilities with the GPL; in certain situations it's quite
justifiable (Emacs lisp function documentation, etc.) In the case of
example code, the freedom to 'run' the software is the freedom to
duplicate it verbatim, so it should come without additional terms (but
that's an idealistic notion); as far as I'm concerned, that's the kind
of licence I granted every time I contributed a less than substantial
piece of code to LG (which would be every time, in my case); the OPL
was the licence attached to the entire explanation - words and all
> > But, to stress again, all of this is outside OSI's ambit.
Rick Moen [rick at linuxmafia.com]
Quoting Jimmy O'Regan (joregan@gmail.com):
> Erm... not quite; I think I may have sown the seeds of confusion here; > I have no objections against nc-by-sa in general, but as a licence for > 'code', it's simply wrong-headed; creating division where none should > exist - I mentioned the 'nd' variant after, but simply as a caveat of > the unacceptable.
OK, that was yours rather than Martin's, it seems. In any event, my point was that he seemed to feel that he needed to use licences that reserve commercial rights, which is of course absolutely his prerogative, but is incompatible with LG.
Indeed, nothing at all wrong with CC BY-SA 3.0. It's a really good, non-proprietary[1] copyleft licence for non-software works, e.g., for documentation and other writings.
And, right -- either the NC or ND (NoDerivs) element in a CC licence indicates a proprietary licence. As I said, of their six current licences, only two, "BY" and "BY-SA", are non-proprietary.
> > o For various reasons of real-world perception, authors are often > > concerned that modified variants of their work will make them appear to > > have said something they didn't. Software people tend to assume that > > this is no more of a problem than it is in software, and yet they are > > not correct. > > > > It's often claimed that documentation's licensing must be compatible > > with (if not the same as) that of the software it concerns, e.g., for > > example code included in the docs -- but that's a pretty contrived > > scenario, in my view. > > Well, that was one of the primary objections against the GFDL's > incompatibilities with the GPL; in certain situations it's quite > justifiable (Emacs lisp function documentation, etc.)
It's obviously a practical necessity to license example code compatibly with the software needed to run it. But it's pretty rare for that problem to arise concerning non-trivial example code. (If trivial example code has a licensing conflict, no big deal, really. It doesn't really matter.)
[1] The term "non-proprietary" is so hideous that I often say "open source" in the CC context, but then often causes someone to mistakenly think I'm talking about [mis]applying CC's licensing to software. You might have done this, above.
Martin [martin at marcher.name]
Hi,
wow, that is quite a discussion I started here. Actually I was just expecting something like:
We are fine with licenses: A, B, C, D still we prefer OPL as our default license (because........)
As I don't have any insight about how you work apart from the FAQs and this discussion I can't make a qualified statement, but as a "user" of these licenses I'd be happy to get this list in the FAQ or somewhere on the homepage. Maybe even the reasoning why (most of you) consider NC not acceptable. From the reading I get the point that, with NC, it would be impossible for companies to use the articles as a base or reference work in their projects. Good point actually - I didn't think of that at all by now (and I hope I didn't get it wrong).
I think I'm a pretty typical user of the open source/copyleft licenses. I don't intend to spend hours searching the web and hoping to find someone using my work in a way that is not allowed by the license, but in case I find someone would be using an article and it get's really popular I wanna get my share (be that by reputation or monetary strongly depends on that situation), but I just consider it a safety belt.
Hope that makes my question a bit clearer, I'm not after some legal
discussion just a set of choice (choice is good . And given the
amount of press CC/GNU licenses get it might be the "safer safety
belt" as they may have been challenged already and the situation is
easier to handle just in case. (Do I still make sense?)
regards, martin
-- http://www.xing.com/profile/Martin_Marcher
Rick Moen [rick at linuxmafia.com]
Quoting Martin (martin@marcher.name):
> wow, that is quite a discussion I started here. Actually I was just > expecting something like: > > """ > We are fine with licenses: > A, B, C, D > > still we prefer OPL as our default license (because........) > """
Basic coverage of that is in the Author FAQ, linked from the front page:
Copyright Issues We're happy to accept articles previously published elsewhere, as long as the original copyright does not prevent that article from being re-released under the Open Publication License (OPL), LG's default publication license. Our official copyright statement (in short, the OPL without the optional clauses) is at http://linuxgazette.net/copying.html.
The term "default" alludes, here, to the fact that, if you're a real licensing militant and desparately want to use something else, you can ask. Ben can say "Sure", or he can say "Sorry, not worth the hassle."
And, oddly enough, that's pretty much exactly what Ben's said in this thread.
> As I don't have any insight about how you work apart from the FAQs and > this discussion I can't make a qualified statement, but as a "user" of > these licenses I'd be happy to get this list in the FAQ or somewhere > on the homepage.
Licensing is already covered on the front page and the Author FAQ.
> Maybe even the reasoning why (most of you) consider NC not acceptable.
To be blunt, I really doubt we're going to alter the magazine's front page or FAQ to explain why an ordinary right every other contributor was fine with granting except for one guy over the course of 13 years is part of the magazine's standard licence.
I'm willing, nonetheless, to spend a few minutes giving my personal view on the licensing situation. (To be really clear, I don't speak LG's institutional view. Ben does, when he chooses to, being in charge of the joint.)
Back in dinosaur days, universities and other institutions tended to make software source code available under proprietary terms or not at all. Some of them decided, after a while, that "Hey, this is a way to make money!" So, they changed to issuing non-commercial-use-only licensing for most source code. If you wanted to make usage of that code, you had to purchase a commercial-deployment licence from a university trust set up for that purpose. Quite a number of universities still do that, which is why many important codebases such as Tripwire (from Perdue U.) entered the modern era as "free for non-commercial use" code.
UC Berkekey and then MIT were nearly unique mavericks during this period, issuing all rights to many codebases under the BSD and MIT/X11 licence, respectively. At first, their licensing was quaint and regarded as impractical and ill-advised. Gradually, the advantages became so compelling that truly free-licensed code clobbered pretty much all of the noncommercial-use-only alternatives in the market for users and mindshare: Tripwire ASR, proprietary SSH, PGP, COPS, and the like all lagged behind freely-licensed competitors.
I was at VA Linux Systems when the Tripwire people visited in something of a panic over their mindshare loss to such competitors. VA helped them to open-source their IDS engine and terminate the free-for-noncommercial-use-only variant, both of which had become rather old and moldy, and were being swept aside. (It may have been too late for them. Also, their source codebase proved to be a hopelessly antique C++ thing.)
I'm running low on time, but basically we all learned over the last couple of decades that free-for-noncommercial-use-only licensing was rubbish, was a hassle (e.g., does LG need to ask all prior authors before it could put, hypothetically, Google AdSense ads on its Web site?) and was a loser of an idea with no real advantages -- and also that the magazine, like open source software, does perfectly fine without it.
If you think commercial rights to your 4kB HTML magazine articles are precious and must be guarded zealously lest anyone dared to republish your pieces without paying you, then LG is simply not the right magazine for you. There are plenty of others that might qualify. We never think the worse of anyone for that -- indeed, that would be really hypocritical since I and others also sell different articles elsewhere.
I hope none of the above has been harsh (I'm a bit rushed for time), and please do remember that I'm voicing my own view, only. Thanks.
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxmafia.com]
On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 09:00:37AM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> > I'm willing, nonetheless, to spend a few minutes giving my personal view > on the licensing situation. (To be really clear, I don't speak LG's > institutional view. Ben does, when he chooses to, being in charge of > the joint.)
As has invariably been the case in the past, Rick's current opinion on the licensing issues is in exact accord with mine. His knowledge on the topic is encyclopedic, and I've asked for his help on thorny questions in this area repeatedly.
My official position on this is that, barring an alien takeover of his brain, Rick is welcome and invited to speak authoritatively on LG licensing issues.
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxmafia.com]
On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 04:47:23PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> > Here's my review, which I'll gladly licence to the public under the > reader's choice of OPL 1.0 with no options or Creative Commons BY-SA > 3.0. ;->
Since we're running a bit short on articles this month, I'll take you up
on that.
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *