Re: possible licensing issues with some scsh source files
Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> writes:
> On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 10:39:56AM +0100, Daniel Kobras wrote:
>> We're currently trying to sort out the non-free status of scsh within
>> Debian. Most of the issues are unambiguous, however, I'd like to see
>> some more opinions on the following two clauses contained in a couple of
>> source files.
>>
>> scsh-0.6.4/scheme/big/sort.scm:
>>
>> ;;; 2. Users of this software agree to make their best efforts (a) to return
>> ;;; to the T Project at Yale any improvements or extensions that they make,
>> ;;; so that these may be included in future releases; and (b) to inform
>> ;;; the T Project of noteworthy uses of this software.
>
> Harmless. My best effort consists of waving a gerbil at my workstation
> and hoping something along those lines happens. (If this were an
> actual requirement, rather than a vague request, it would be a
> problem. I strongly discourage people from writing noise like this
> into licenses though - put it in the README where it belongs.)
"Best Effort" is a term with specific legal meanings. "obligation to
attempt to meet a goal using every reasonable means available," isn't
a perfect definition, but it's close. In particular, it doesn't
consider the costs or consequences of those actions to you: even
Chinese dissidents can send e-mail, so they have to do so.
This is not a Free license.
>> ;;; 3. All materials developed as a consequence of the use of this software
>> ;;; shall duly acknowledge such use, in accordance with the usual standards
>> ;;; of acknowledging credit in academic research.
>
> This is close to some things that would be a problem, but with no real
> constraints on what form acknowledgement must take, harmless ("usual
> standards of acknowledging credit in academic research" is a readable
> citation that is sufficient to find the origin, for anybody who cares
> enough to do so).
This is, at worst, reducible to the BSD advertising clause. It's not
reducible to a copyright notice in the binary: if I'm giving a talk
about a program I wrote for a professor, I'm obligated by academic
honesty to mention inspirations and contributions *in the talk*.
So I would read this clause as requiring acknowledgement of
inspiration and origins in advertising material, sales pitches, and
documentation.
-Brian
--
Brian T. Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/
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