MJ Ray wrote: > Josh, Good summary. I think you've taken recent discussions about them > into account a bit. I've a few comments... Thanks. You had mentioned that it would be better to word summaries in terms of software covered by the license, rather than the license itself. > On 2004-07-09 22:59:18 +0100 Josh Triplett <josh.trip@verizon.net> wrote: >> * Clause 6c requires modified versions that are not distributed to the >> public to be provided to the original developer on request. This >> requirement fails the "Desert Island" test and the "Dissident" test (see >> sections 9a, 9b, and 12o of the DFSG FAQ at >> http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html). > > I think it would be better to refer to the DFSG directly if we can. Agreed. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of anything in the DFSG that I could point to which would directly cover the right to make private modifications. Given that this issue seems to be one of the most common Freeness issues that isn't covered in the DFSG, at some point it should be added as an additional Guideline. >> DFSG-free licenses must >> allow non-distributed or privately-distributed modifications, and cannot >> require distribution to anyone, except for requiring that source be >> distributed to those who receive a binary. > > The wording of this seems clumsy and it's probably confusing. Better to > avoid paraphrasing the DFSG: that way lies the whisper game. I suspect > it's sufficient to state that compelled upstream distribution of > non-public mods fails to meet them. OK. I was actually attempting to paraphrase the desert island test, in this case, and I then added the last part of that sentence to indicate that copyleft isn't a problem. However, I'll correct this in a second draft. >> * The license contains a "choice of venue" clause, which states that >> "Disputes shall be settled by Amsterdam City Court.". > > Not in the copy of the QPL I'm looking at! > > If you wish to summarise the views on libcwd, please do that instead. I > think that would be more directly useful right now, even. My apologies; I assumed (incorrectly, I now see), that the copy of the QPL pointed to in the original review request to debian-legal (http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/libcwd/libcwd/LICENSE.QPL?rev=1.1) was a valid copy of the QPL 1.0, given that there was no indication in that file that the license had been modified from the original. I will correct this in a second draft. Also, I do plan to help with the libcwd case, but I wanted to summarize the QPL first, because the author seems to really want something more official than mailing list discussions to tell him that the QPL is non-free. I thought a license summary on http://www.debian.org/legal/licenses might help in that regard. >> Since in many legal jurisdictions, a party that fails to appear and >> defend themselves in the courts of the given jurisdiction will >> automatically lose such a dispute, such "choice of venue" clauses >> place an undue burden on the recipient of the software in the face >> of any legal action (whether legitimate or not), and are therefore >> considered non-free. > > "non-free by some." Or maybe many. At least I hope for a Smart Person > explaining why we're wrong on these, as they are in a couple of painful > places and I have trouble believing that Mozilla, OSI and FSF all slept > through this problem. Recall that the IBM Common Public License contains "Each party waives its rights to a jury trial in any resulting litigation.", and it is listed as free by both the OSI and FSF. I suspect that people are not used to the "guidelines"/"case law" approach and the level of detailed license analysis on debian-legal, and expect something more like the OSI's "checklist" approach. I suspect that one of the major objections to choice of venue clauses (as opposed to choice of law clauses) is that they place more of a burden on those being sued. I also suspect that "If you sue us over this software, you must do so in this jurisdiction" would be far less problematic than "If we sue you over this software, you must defend yourself in this jurisdiction". After all, we are much more concerned about being sued than about the ability to sue the author. >> For software currently licensed under the QPL 1.0 whose authors desire >> its inclusion in Debian, debian-legal recommends licensing that software >> under a Free Software license such as the GNU GPL, either in place of or >> as an alternative to the QPL 1.0. > > Should we suggest striking 6c and the choice of venue as an acceptable > (but inconvenient thanks to source patches only, and not recommended) > alternative? That should be mentioned, yes. It should also be noted in such a suggestion that this alternative would be GPL-incompatible. Also, such a license takes advantage of the deprecated DFSG 4, which may or may not be removed in the future; should that be noted as well? > Definitely should note that Qt, the most prominent example of a > QPL-covered work, is also available under the GPL. I almost did that, but I was hesitant to point to a specific piece of software in a license summary. - Josh Triplett
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