URGENT: Free World Licence "final" attempt.
Dear Patient Licence Hackers,
After some considerable thought, I have decided to stick with contract
form, but to change the trigger again. The new trigger is based on a
new "once warned, twice contracted" execution concept.
Unfortunately, for various complex reasons (including, but not
limited to (:-) the Debian deadline about 4 days away, I have to
ship the Free World Licence within about 24 hours or abandon it
maybe for a few months. So I really need some very fast feedback,
if you can manage it. Please, please, please! If you say OK, I
can probably ship FreeVeracity within 24 hours.
The new trigger is:
2.1 CONTRACT: This Licence is a legal contract between you
and the Original Licensor (and possibly between you and
other contributing Licensors too). As you are not obliged to
accept this Contract without becoming aware of its existence
and then indicating your agreement to it, you are free to
receive and store a copy of the Module on your computer for
an undefined grace period. However, in the absence of some
other licensing agreement with Original Licensor, this
Licence forms the only basis for your continued use of the
Module, and by performing any of the following actions, you
indicate your formal acceptance of this Licence and you
enter into a contract with Original Licensor (and possibly
with other contributing Licensors too):
(a) Executing the Module, or any Program incorporating the
Module, more than once (see clause 4.9);
(b) Modifying the Module or creating a derived work of the
Module;
(c) Passively or actively copying or distributing the Module;
(d) Failing to delete the Module from your computer within
three days of becoming specifically aware of the Module's
presence on your computer and its coverage by this Licence.
This clause ties in with:
4.9 STARTUP NOTICES: If a work based on the Module, is
distributed as part of a whole that has an interactive
interface, then that interface must display (in a startup
notice, "about" box, or similar) a notice that includes:
(a) an appropriate copyright notice;
(b) a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying
that you provide a warranty);
(c) a notice that the software is covered by this Licence;
(d) a notice telling the user how to view a copy of this
licence; and
(e) a notice that by running the software twice, the user
is explicitly agreeing to this Licence (see clause 2.1).
If the work does not have an interactive interface (e.g.
traditionally "silent" Unix utilities) then you must
configure the distribution so as to ensure that the user is
made aware of these notices before the user runs the program
for the second time.
Note that this arrangement means that you can ship pre-installed
executables in an operating system (the user agrees when they
run the software twice). However, 2.1(b) means that those (possibly
such as Debian) who ship only sources and create compilation-installation
scripts will have to add a "proceed only if you agree with the
licence" question to their script. I had to do this, or people could
copy the code to a Windows box and compile it without first falling under
the agreement (which would prevent them from doing so!). If you can see
a way to fix this problem, let me know.
The revised complete licence appears in the right hand column of
http://www.ross.net/diff/ The left hand column contains the version
that appears in the FWL website. The parts in purple have changed.
I would really really appreciate a sign off from Debian on this or
how I can fix it to please Debian. If anyone else can see any fatal
flaws, I'd like to hear about those as soon as possible.
Thanks,
Ross.
Dr Ross N. Williams (ross@rocksoft.com), +61 8 8232-6262 (fax-6264).
Director, Rocksoft Pty Ltd, Adelaide, Australia: http://www.rocksoft.com/
Protect your files with Veracity data integrity: http://www.veracity.com/
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