Re: DRAFT: debian-legal summary of the QPL
On 2004-07-10 19:35:58 +0100 Josh Triplett <josh.trip@verizon.net>
wrote:
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. [...]
Personally, I'm not sure that is as much of a problem as the
requirement to distribute unpublished mods to a central authority on
request. I'd be interested to know whether this aspect of the tests is
grounded in the DFSG, and see that information added to the FAQ.
It can be argued that 6c requires the developer to pay something on
demand from the original developer (DFSG 1) or is discrimination
against a significant group (DFSG 5) and the task of political
opposition (DFSG 6), although some don't think that's convincing.
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.
Maybe. Where did these tests originate? There's no reference in the
FAQ.
[...] 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.
I'm sure that this has been covered, but does this modified QPL
infringe any copyrights or trademarks by being called QPL? Rather a
nasty hack perhaps, but libcwd really shouldn't be in main yet, if so.
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.
As you can read elsewhere, I am not convinced that debian-legal is
equipped or wise to try to analyse licences in abstract. It seems more
helpful to build case studies on that page by summarising the Real
Work of this list, to show people how DFSG applies to their software.
I'd welcome your opinion, as someone who is drafting a summary. Thread
starts at http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/06/msg00521.html
MJ Ray wrote:
"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. [...]
Actually, now I look, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised by OSI
farting. Their "process" appears to rely on random laymen raising
objections against a summary prepared by the licensor's lawyer, at
least in the public part of their process.
http://www.opensource.org/docs/certification_mark.php#approval
Unfortunately, FSF is mostly a black box to outsiders like me. I have
asked them questions sometimes, but the answers so far have been slow,
incomplete and/or cautious first-line responses, rather than involving
any words from the decision-makers. This has been a problem I've had
with FSF, Inc for a long time. We all know that they have good lawyers
involved, but I can't figure out the reasoning myself and the people
who have answered questions fully get offended that you even ask the
question. The Europeans are more accessible, but seem not to want to
duplicate the US FSF licensing team, so I don't have any official
channel for questions there.
Further, if FSF front-line volunteers connect a request with anything
sent to this list, I get bloody suspicious questions back and I think
it gets tagged as "low priority, answer before next ice age". Why
can't you all get over stuff and take each case as it comes? Learn
from it, but get over it. Gah!</rant>
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. [...]
Is this hindering cost-free distribution by being able to demand
payment to represent the licensee in that venue? Or do we regard this
as discrimination by denying foreign defendants the right to be heard
in a local court using their residency's law and language, as normally
would happen?
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.
I agree with you about that.
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?
Yes, good idea.
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.
I think it's definitely merited here, as the link between Qt and the
QPL's original motivation is strong.
As I wrote before, I think a summary of consensus on the libcwd
situation is more useful than a licence summary. I can see that it's
easy to slip into using debian-legal as a general licence analysis
workshop, but it's more use to debian to look at practical concerns.
--
MJR/slef My Opinion Only and not of any group I know
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ for creative copyleft computing
"Before we try to work out if he's competent,
let's work out if he's conscious." (anon. exam marker)
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