Maxima: Difficult US export restriction issue
Hi all,
The Maxima team is having difficulty reconciling the requirements of this
letter: <http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/wfs/maxima-doe-auth.gif> with
Maxima being GPL compatible. The letter states that "the previous
paragraph should be included in the GPL and should accompany other
modifications, enhancements or derivative works of your program". That
paragraph states (also see /usr/share/doc/maxima/COPYING1):
"Distribution of such derivative works is subject to the U.S. Export
Administration Regulations (Title 15 CFR 768-799), which implements the
Export Administration Act of 1979, as amended, and/or the International
Traffic in Arms Regulations, of 12-6-84, (Title 22 CFR 121-130), which
implements the Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C. 2728) and may require
license for export."
With a very liberal interpretation of Section 8 of the GPL this could be
read as an explicit geographical distribution limitation as if written in
the body of the licence. A significant issue is that the limitation is not
the result of restriction by patents or by copyrighted interfaces.
Another approach that I suggest may be the preferred solution is to
incorporate this paragraph into the preamble of the GPL as a mere
clarifying statement/information about then-existing US law. As it would
not form part of the licence it would not make the licence GPL
incompatible. But it would still honour the ESTSC requirement that the
paragraph be included in the GPL.
So now I've hit an issue that Branden has recently raised about the FSF
designating their non-legally-binding preamble as invariant:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLOmitPreamble
Can I omit the preamble of the GPL, or the instructions for how to use
it on your own programs, to save space?
The preamble and instructions are integral parts of the GNU GPL and may
not be omitted. Please use the entire GPL. In fact, the GPL is
copyrighted, and its license permits only verbatim copying of the
entire GPL.
The preamble and instructions add up to some 5000 characters, less than
1/3 of the GPL's total size. They will not make a substantial
fractional change in the size of a software package unless the package
itself is rather small. In that case, you may as well use a simple
all-permissive license rather than the GNU GPL.
Is there a way we can add this information to the GPL Preamble for Maxima
when the FSF is claiming that only verbatim copying of the entire GPL is
permitted? It looks like this hints at a possible solution:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL
You can use the GPL terms (possibly modified) in another license
provided that you call your license by another name and do not include
the GPL preamble, and provided you modify the instructions-for-use at
the end enough to make it clearly different in wording and not mention
GNU (though the actual procedure you describe may be similar).
If you want to use our preamble in a modified license, please write to
<licensing@gnu.org> for permission. For this purpose we would want to
check the actual license requirements to see if we approve of them.
Although we will not raise legal objections to your making a modified
license in this way, we hope you will think twice and not do it. Such a
modified license is almost certainly incompatible with the GNU GPL, and
that incompatibility blocks useful combinations of modules. The mere
proliferation of different free software licenses is a burden in and of
itself.
Would Debian legal be open to a "Maxima General Public License" that is
identical to the GPL in the body of the licence but where the Preamble is
replaced with text that reads something like this (US spelling):
Preamble
The license body of the Maxima General Public License is identical to
the GNU General Public License and thus intended to be compatible with
the GNU General Public License. The Free Software Foundation's Preamble
has been replaced with the following paragraph about US Export
Administration Regulations as directed by the Department of Energy and
the Energy Science and Technology Software Center on 6 October 1998:
"Distribution of such derivative works is subject to the U.S. Export
Administration Regulations (Title 15 CFR 768-799), which implements the
Export Administration Act of 1979, as amended, and/or the International
Traffic in Arms Regulations, of 12-6-84, (Title 22 CFR 121-130), which
implements the Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C. 2728) and may require
license for export."
The letter setting out the above paragraph is available from
<http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/wfs/maxima-doe-auth.gif>. To understand
why this license was renamed and the Free Software Foundation's preamble
omitted please read <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL>
and <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLOmitPreamble>.
This preamble is for informational purposes only. One must always comply
with local laws when distributing works permitted by a software license.
I am also mailing licensing@gnu.org to see if they would like to provide
some input. I hope follow ups will be made to the Debian legal mailing list.
Regards,
Adam Warner
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