Re: PHP-Nuke License Conclusion?
Scripsit Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org>
> > I say that when one constructs at cut-and-paste licence, then the
> > words "this license" obviously refers to the entire cut-and-paste
> > license, regardless of from where those words entered the
> > cut-and-paste license.=20
> What do you mean by "cut-and-paste"?
I mean a copyright statement at instructs the reader to do some
cut-and-paste actions to find out the conditions for copying the
work.
> > No they can't. For at given work they always refers to the license
> > covering that given work.
> ...whatever that is, which is ill-defined in many cases.
I'm not talking about "many cases".
> Good. Then perhaps you'll agree that saying "This is licensed under the
> GPL with the additional restriction that" is an invalid statement,
> because such a thing is not licensed under the GPL at all.
I don't agree at all. The sentence does *not* say that the thing is
licensed under the GPL. On the contrary, it says clearly, explicitly,
and unambigously that the licening terms *differ* from the GPL.
> What do you mean by "cut-and-paste"?
See above.
> Certainly if one hacks out the terms and conditions chunk from the
> GNU GPL and modifies it, one does not have something that it
> textually equivalent to the GNU GPL. It's quite obvious that one
> has something different.
Yes.
> I have to reject your assertion that "what happens when one constructs a
> cut-and-paste license is *textual* inclusion-by-reference".
> What happens when one constructs a cut-n-paste license is
> inclusion-by-value.
Says who? You have demonstrated that the meaning breaks down if one
tries to interpet it as inclusion of meaning. On the other hand,
everything's well when it its interpreted as inclusion of text.
What, then, makes you assert that it is the *unreasonable*
interpretation that is right?
> In inclusion-by-reference, it's vague, and clause 6 of
> the referenced GNU GPL renders the work undistributable.
When the *text* is included, clause 6 does not reference the GNU GPL
anymore; it references the product of the inclusion.
> What do you mean by "cut-and-paste license"?
See above.
> When I think of cut-and-paste, I think of visual operations that involve
> duplicating and reproducing text by means of a selection buffer. You
> seem to mean a pointer, "inclusion-by-reference".
The copyright statement we're discussing describes visual operations
that involve duplicating and reproducing text by means of a selection
buffer.
> I should note that, by far, most GPL-plus-added-restriction licenses
> that we've encountered on this mailing list have been "inclusion by
> reference" licenses. I.e., "This is licensed under the GPL with the
> additional restriction that".
I'm not sure what you mean by this notice.
> Sometimes copyright holders make utterances that cannot be rendered
> sensible, and/or have no meaning.
Yes. But that is not the case in the case. The copyright notice we are
discussing CAN be rendered sensible with a perfectly good meaning.
You just, for reasons that I still don't understand, refuse to accept
that rendering.
> > You can copy and distribute this work under certain conditions.
> > To find out what those conditions are, take the GNU GPL and add
> > to it the requirement that you can't do baz.
> Nothing is being cut-and-pasted here.
Not yet. But the text is an instruction that the reader should do some
cut-and-pasting of his own.
> This is inclusion by reference.
Yes. It includes a series of words by reference. It does not include
their menings, because, as you have demonstrated, that would be
inconsistent.
> "To see what I mean, look at the GPL", which says, "these terms and
> conditions", and quite obviously means the bit between "TERMS AND
> CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION" and "END OF TERMS
> AND CONDITIONS" -- *in the original license text of the GNU GPL itself*.
Yes. But it does not say that you should try to *interpret* the words
found between those two markers before you have done the changes that
are described in the copyright statement.
> "Add to it the requirement that you can't do baz"? This license
> statement immediately falls over dead, killed by GNU GPL clause 6.
No it doesn't. At this point in the process, clause 6 consists of
a sequence of octets that receive no meaning until AFTER the new
requirement has been added.
> > Yes, of course, because your'e quoting a horrible way of doing it.
> It's *precisely* what you're asking me to do in my head with this
> virtualized "cut-and-paste" business.
No.
> The result looks EXACTLY like:
No. You forgot to add the restriction.
> > You can copy and distribute this work under certain conditions.
> > To find out what those conditions are, take the GNU GPL and add
> > to it the requirement that you can't do baz.
> ,..is not it. It is at worst a logical contradiction, and at best
> undistributable even in non-free.
It is not at all a logical contradiction, and it may even be
distributable in main. Example:
You can copy and distribute this work under certain conditions.
To find out what those conditions are, take the GNU GPL and add to
clause 3(b) a requirement that the written notice must be in
French.
Those operations result in a DFSG-free but GPL-incompatible status.
> Now you seem to mean what *I* mean by cut-and-paste. No, a
> cut-and-paste license, by *MY* meaning, where one duplicates the text of
> the terms and conditions of the GNU GPL and then tweaks the result, is
> not necessarily self-contradictory.
I still don't think you have offered a convincing reason to think that
the VERY SAME THING would magically become self-contradictory if the
licensor asks the reader to do the duplication-and-tweaking himself
rather than having it done in advance.
> > You can copy and distribute this work under certain conditions.
> > To find out what those conditions are, take the GNU GPL and add
> > to it the requirement that you can't do baz.
> ...and which is generally the genus of "GPL fork" what we encounter on
> this mailing list, is emphatically *not* a cut-and-paste license.
Then call it something else. I don't care what we call it.
> It's inclusion-by-reference. It says, "go look over there for my
> terms. Now that you've read those, add this restriction".
No, that's not what it says. It says, "go look over there for some
therms. They are not mine, but add this restriction and then read the
result. Now you know my terms".
> The license immediately falls over dead.
Only because you refuse to understand the licensor's clear instruction
in the straightforward meaningful way.
> The licensor has simultaneously told me I am allowed to do baz, and
> I am not allowed to do baz.
No he hasn't. He has told you clearly that you are not allowed to do
baz, and only by willfully misreading his perfectly clear instructions
have you managed to construct a faulty reading that is contradictory.
> When a licensor cannot even make a coherent statement of license,
He can. It's just you who insist on tweaking the coherent statment
into gibberish and then blaming the licensor because YOU chose to
willfully misread his statement.
> > > > > However, in practice, most people don't do what the FSF recommends in
> > > > > their FAQ. They just say "it's under the GPL" and slap
> > > > > extra restrictions somewhere else -- perhaps in a README file.
> Where did I say that? My concern has always been with this sort of
> bullshit:
> > You can copy and distribute this work under certain conditions.
> > To find out what those conditions are, take the GNU GPL and add
> > to it the requirement that you can't do baz.
Above you talked about putting the extra restrictions "somewhere else
-- perhaps in a README file".
> Including the GPL by reference as an expository aid when one is adding
> restrictions is worse than useless. It elucidates nothing
It eludicates the difference between GPL and the work's licensing
terms. The is very useless for everyone who wants to understand what
it is legal to do with the program.
> and, in every instance I can think of, results a paradoxically
> licensed work.
Only because you insist on reading the copyright statement in an
unnatural and paradoxial way. The natural and straightforward reading
of the statement has no problems.
> The GNU GPL makes reference to itself, not some other license document.
Yes. But when one adds the restriction that our hypothetical copyright
statement talks about, the result is NOT THE GNU GPL ANYMORE, and
there is no intrinsic reasion why it should mean the same as the GNU
GPL.
> Other licenses that are not the GNU GPL can be self-referential, of
> course. But, tautologially, they are not the GNU GPL, and cannot mean
> the GNU GPL when they say, whether directly or indirectly, "this
> License" or "herein".
That is exactly my point. It seems to flatly contradict your claim
that the licence decribed by
You can copy and distribute this work under certain conditions.
To find out what those conditions are, take the GNU GPL and add
to it the requirement that you can't do baz.
which IS NOT THE GNU GPL, somehow still magically means the GNU GPL
when it says "this license". It does not, and that is exactly the
point.
> As I said before: when the GNU GPL says "this License" and "herein",
> these terms are not variables. They are constants.
Yes, but they are STRING constants.
> It is not semantically possible for a different meaning to be
> superimposed on these words without changing the content, and thus the
> identity, of the document.
And "changing the content and identity" is exactly what
You can copy and distribute this work under certain conditions.
To find out what those conditions are, take the GNU GPL and add
to it the requirement that you can't do baz.
instructs the user to do.
> If they use the GNU GPL's terms and conditions as-is,
Which they do not. Point moot.
> What you describe it not useful as a license statement
I have argued that this is false.
> and it's highly misleading as a name.
I cannot see which kind of misleadingness you are referring to.
> > I don't thin we should encourage licensors to write their licenses in
> > a way that will make it more difficult than necessary for us to spot
> > non-free features of it.
> I'm not suggesting that we do so.
It WILL make it more difficult than necessary if we have to wdiff and
do tricks to find the non-free feathers, rather than simply having
them enumerated loud and clear in the license.
> I am saying, however, that "the GPL plus additional restrictions",
> of itself, is practically useless as a license strategy.
I hear you. But your arguments are not convincing, and I think that
what you're saying is false.
> and for practical purposes it's highly misleading as to the
> freedom of the work ("he said GPL, it must be okay")
Nonsense. He didn't say "GPL". He said "GPL with restrictions", so we
should be suspicious.
> ("he said GPL, it must be okay to share the code with other GPLed
> works").
He didn't say "GPL". He said "GPL with restrictions", so we
should be suspicious.
> > You can copy and distribute this work under certain conditions.
> > To find out what those conditions are, take the GNU GPL and add
> > to it the requirement that you can't do baz.
> As a matter of interpretation, it is impossible for us to, when closely
> reading and thinking about the meaning of the above, to be absolutely
> sure whether the licensor means to give us the right to do baz or not.
That is truly amazing. When he *EXPLICITLY* states that we must not do
baz, as a CLEAR EXCEPTION to the terms that he is using as the basline
for his terms, what doubt can there be?
> After all, the GNU GPL, to which we are referred, might explicitly give
> us the right to do baz, but also says that any further restriction means
> we can't distribute the work at all.
However, the resulting license is not the GNU GPL, and so what the GNU
GPL says is irrelevant for the purpose of interpreting the author's
intensions.
> ("he said GPL, it must be okay")
> ("he said GPL, it must be okay to share the code with other GPLed works").
Nonsense again. He loudly and clearly did NOT say "GPL".
> They do in fact get misled. I should have thought that the PHP Nuke
> license thread made that screamingly obvious.
The PHP Nuke fallacy was that the author tried to tack on an extra
restriction while still representing the license as the unaltered
GPL. He very much did NOT say "this is GPL with restrictions". He said
"this is GPL, period". And then in a completely other file he tried to
add restrictions anyway.
> I wouldn't say that people should *substitute* debian-legal's judgement
> for their own, but they should permit debian-legal's judgements to
> *inform* their own, to the extent that we merit respect for the
> closeness of our reasoning.
I do not disatree with this. But I violently disagree with your
suggestion that "debian-legal's judgement" should include the false
claim that
You can copy and distribute this work under certain conditions.
To find out what those conditions are, take the GNU GPL and add to
clause 3(b) a requirement that the written notice must be in
French.
is a self-contradictory copyright and licensing notice.
> END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
> 3) Everyone who redistributes the Program must pet a cat.
No. The extra restrictions is part of the terms and conditions.
> Not in cases where you have:
> 1) You can do baz, but you don't have to pet a cat when you do it.
> 2) When you redistribute, you're not allowed to require that people who
> do baz pet a cat.
> 3) You have to pet a cat when you do baz.
>
> All in the same license.
That's not what you have after doing the cut-and-paste operation
described in the copyright statement.
--
Henning Makholm "... not one has been remembered from the time
when the author studied freshman physics. Quite the
contrary: he merely remembers that such and such is true, and to
explain it he invents a demonstration at the moment it is needed."
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