Re: New DFSG Draft revision #3
I came across this section in the recent proposal:
On Thu, Jan 14, 1999 at 11:40:36AM -0800, Darren Benham wrote:
> 3.2. Notices of Authorship
> ---------------------------
>
> The license may require the copyright, license, and any associated
> disclaimers be prominently displayed in the original software or any
> derived software. The license may require such notices to be
> displayed:
>
> * during execution of the software
>
> * in the source code
>
> * in the documentation
>
> * in advertising materials (deprecated)
>
> <Not part of the old DFSG>
After further review, I saw that all three recent DFSG2 proposals
(i.e. Ian Jackson's r1.4, Anthony Town's first proposal and Darren
Benham's derived work) explicitely allow requirements for placing
notices [1].
Nobody ever objected to this specific clause, still it was not part of
the old DFSG, and in fact, on investigating the proposed Zope license,
several developers told me that an attribution clause in the ZPL is an
unacceptable restriction on the *use* of the software, comparable to
postcard-ware.
This leads me to the following question: The current DFSG doesn't
explicitely rule out postcard-ware nor things like the ZPL attribution
requirement [2]. The new proposals all disallow postcard-ware
requirements, but specifically allow notice requirements. This leads
me to the conclusion that notice requirements are accepted by the
common interpretation of the current DFSG (contrary to
postcard-ware-like requirements). Is that correct ?
Another question is how these terms of the proposals do apply to works
like Zope:
Zope is a web application platform, roughly comparable to PHP3. The
attribution clause says that every web site using Zope has to put a
"Powered by Zope" button on its entry page. Without doubt, this is
something that happens during the execution of the Zope software.
OTOH, one could argue that this is indeed a restriction on
the works that are produced using Zope.
Gregor
Appendix:
--------
[1] The specific part in Ian's DFSG2 proposal was this:
> 3. Exemptions
...
> (c) Requirements for placing notices
>
> The licence may require notices to be placed in the source code,
> documentation, and/or to cause the work to display notices at
> appropriate points during its execution (in the case of a work which
> can be executed) or content (in the case of a work which can be
> displayed and/or printed).
>
> It must be possible to write such notices so that they are truthful,
> not offensive, and not unreasonably long for the context in which they
> are required, without the implied requirement to do so imposing any
> restrictions which are not compatible with these guidelines.
[2] This is the attribution clause used in the Zope Public License draft
(ZPL 0.96, http://www.zope.org/License/ZPL):
"3. Any use, including use of the Zope software to operate a website,
must either comply with the terms described below under
"Attribution" or alternatively secure a separate license from
Digital Creations. Digital Creations will not unreasonably
deny such a separate license in the event that the request
explains in detail a valid reason for withholding attribution.
...
Attribution
Individuals or organizations using this software as a web
site ("the web site") must provide attribution by placing
the accompanying "button" on the website's main entry
point. By default, the button links to a "credits page"
on the Digital Creations' web site. The "credits page" may
be copied to "the web site" in order to add other credits,
or keep users "on site". In that case, the "button" link
may be updated to point to the "on site" "credits page".
In cases where this placement of attribution is not
feasible, a separate arrangment must be concluded with
Digital Creations. Those using the software for purposes
other than web sites must provide a corresponding
attribution in locations that include a copyright using a
manner best suited to the application environment. Where
attribution is not possible, or is considered to be
onerous for some other reason, a request should be made to
Digital Creations to waive this requirement in writing.
As stated above, for valid requests, Digital Creations
will not unreasonably deny such requests."
Reply to: