On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 04:19:32PM -0800, Ben Reser wrote: > On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 04:37:32PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > > > 3. The end-user documentation included with the redistribution, if > > > any, must include the following acknowledgment: > > > > > > "This product includes software developed by X-Oz Technologies > > > (http://www.x-oz.com/)." > > > > > > Alternately, this acknowledgment may appear in the software itself, > > > if and wherever such third-party acknowledgments normally appear. > > I'd like to remind everyone this is directly taken from the Apache 1.1 > license. Okay. How is that relevant? [snip] > Why are these questions not being asked also about the Apache license as > well? Because the subject of this thread is the X-Oz license? Because as far as I know, the first time those questions had been asked in precisely that form was when I wrote them earlier today? (I hereby attest that the message to which you replied was wholly of my own authorship, except where I explicitly quoted others -- i.e., I didn't plagiarize someone's "list of questions to ask about licenses" or something like that). > Why haven't they been asked before? Probably, some of them have. In any case, I think the answer to your question is that debian-legal is a fairly informal, organic body that has only over the past year to year-and-a-half started to get more formal about how it handles licensing issues for the Project. This list, in the sense of the kind of traffic and discussion you see on it, didn't spring out of the forehead of Zeus. It sort of accreted and evolved, as its contributors gained experience. > How is this organizations use of language that we've used for several > years any more questionable than the ASFs? Why do you infer that the ASF's interpretation of the same language should *not* be questioned? The X-Oz license is new (well, if 6 months old or so, is "new", anyway). Is there some deadline we should know about, after which a license must be treated as DFSG-free by default no matter what its actual terms? > > > 4. Except as contained in this notice, the name of X-Oz Technologies > > > shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, > > > use or other dealings in this Software without prior written > > > authorization from X-Oz Technologies. > > This clause also isn't new. It's already in the existing X licenses. Yes; the X.Org Foundation is aware of that, and last I checked, someone was going to bring it up with the Open Group. While this happened on the public xorg_foundation mailing list, feel free to poke me for a status update in a couple of weeks if you don't hear anything, as I should be keeping an eye on it. > > 6) What does "or otherwise" mean? It would seem to include all forms of > > communication other than advertising (examples include magazine reviews, > > blog postings, and so forth). > > > > 7) What does "or other dealings" mean? It would seem to include all > > activities that can be promoted other than sale or use (examples include > > charitable donations of copies of the software, or the "cooking" of a > > CD-ROM with a copy of the software encoded on it in a microwave oven). > > > > 8) As far as the participants on the debian-legal mailing list are > > aware, there is no jurisdiction in the world in which a right to use the > > name of a copyright holder for promotional purposes automatically > > attaches to any copyright license, no matter how liberal its terms. Can > > you tell us why X-Oz Technology, Inc., feels this clause is necessary? > > Based upon what I've been told from them directly they included it > because it had always been there. They wanted a license that was > similar to the existing X licenses. Okay. Should people not be willing to accept responsibility for the licenses they apply to their software, even when they write those licenses? Even if a license is formed but cutting-and-pasting language from other licenses, the "author" under this process is responsible for understanding and explaining its meaning to potential licensees. That's my opinion, anyway. > I really don't understand why the X-Oz / XFree86 licenses are being > picked on (and I really think they are being picked on) over these > license terms. Other projects use these same terms. I haven't seen > anyone suggest Apache or XFree86 under the 1.0 license should be pulled > because of these problems. > > Nor has this language ever proved to be a problem so far for these other > projects. Failure to be vigilant in the past is a poor justification for failure to be vigilant now. I have no problem with using the level of scrutiny I -- and others -- have brought to bear on the X-Oz license to other licenses. In fact, I think that would be a good thing. It cannot hurt the FLOSS community to get more sophisticated about these things. That way, we better serve the interests of our friends who are bored to tears by legal crap and would rather just be writing and debugging code. -- G. Branden Robinson | The more ridiculous a belief Debian GNU/Linux | system, the higher the probability branden@debian.org | of its success. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Wayne R. Bartz
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature