On Wed, May 15, 2002 at 03:20:37PM -0400, Michael Sweet wrote: > OK, for the purposes of clarification, how does the following > additional sentence sound: > > No developer is required to provide these exceptions in a > derived work. Sounds great. It sounds like we're utterly on the same page, it's just that some folks are easily confused by "dual-licensing" and what it means. > I've put the ammended license agreement up on the CUPS server > for your complete review: > > http://www.cups.org/new-license.html Looks fine to me; in fact that's one of the best license pages I've ever seen from a company (well, not just a company -- anyone, period). Here's what I like about it: 1) a plain English introduction for people whose eyes glaze over at the first mention of a "software license" (there are many such people :) ); 2) a grant of extra permissions above and beyond the GPL's terms, clearly noted and separate from the GPL text itself; 3) explicit notice that third parties are not compelled to adopt those additional exceptions in their own redistributions (for those who really understand the GPL, this goes without saying, but it seldom harmful to be perfectly clear and I appreciate your efforts); 4) You deal with trademarks without commingling them with copyright concepts; this is a subtle point that many people screw up, but any intellectual property attorney can tell you that copyrights and trademarks just ain't the same thing. It's refreshing to see a command of that fact from a software company, where the norm appears to be assertion of trade secret, copyright, patent, and trademark protection all for the same product. Who needs Adam Smith's invisible hand when you can have the mailed fist of TROs, PIs, summary judgements, and forced settlements? 5) explicit notice that alternative licensing arrangements are available to those who are uncomfortable with the GPL; too many people hold the mystical belief that the GPL somehow precludes a copyright holder from relicensing his or her own work, and call the GPL "not free" as a result. My kudos to you for all of the above. It's refreshing to see a company that has a solid grasp of free licensing, applies it to their products, and puts things in plain language on their website instead of leaving things ambiguous and using weasel words per their lawyers' advice so as to keep open future possibilities of customer exploitation. Is ESP a privately held corporation? It's rare to see such levels of integrity in a publicly traded company. You can probably guess that I'm a difficult person to impress; my thanks to you and your company for your forthrightness and responsiveness. That on top of the merits of your software, and I'm starting to see why one of my co-workers is such a strong advocate for CUPS. :) I am satisfied that any software licensed under the terms on http://www.cups.org/new-license.html as of the date of this message is DFSG-free. Does anyone on debian-legal disagree? -- G. Branden Robinson | I just wanted to see what it looked Debian GNU/Linux | like in a spotlight. branden@debian.org | -- Jim Morrison http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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