Re: possible licensing issues with some scsh source files
On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 10:55:23AM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> 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
Be careful he doesn't bite you for waving him around like that. <g>
Seriously, though, wouldn't the definition of "best effort" most likely be
that which the plaintiff could convince the court of? For instance, if
there was a contact e-mail address in the package, in a "prominent
location", and you had a perfectly working e-mail account, how hard would it
be to convince a judge that your gerbil-waving wasn't your "best" effort?
It certainly isn't as onerous as "we 0wn j00r changes" clauses, but I'm
worried that "best effort" isn't up to the user's judgement, if things turn
unpleasant.
> > ;;; 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).
I didn't see any practical problems with this clause, either. "Portions
developed by <blah>" (or even the copyright notice) should be sufficient to
satisfy this requirement.
- Matt
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