Re: GPL v3 Draft 3- text and comments
The following is intended to be a compression of your comments down into the
most important points (generally, the areas you are concerned about),
to aid further discussion. As well as some responses to your comments. (I
had to manually fix the quoting, so apologies if I mess it up somewhere).
"Francesco Poli" wrote in message
20070402001302.3900b4c6.frx@firenze.linux.it">news:20070402001302.3900b4c6.frx@firenze.linux.it...
[...]
3. No Denying Users' Rights through Technical Measures.
No covered work shall be deemed part of an effective technological
measure under any applicable law fulfilling obligations under article
11 of the WIPO copyright treaty adopted on 20 December 1996, or
similar laws prohibiting or restricting circumvention of such
measures.
:::: Problematic: possibly untrue
This clause is improved (being now denationalized), but still
problematic. It could be seen as an untrue statement in some cases.
How can the licensor say that the covered work won't be judged as "part
of an effective technological measure" under a given law? That is for
the courts to decide. In some scenarios, GnuPG may actually be
considered "part of an effective technological measure" and could be
deemed so by a judge...
I think most courts do not rule on uncontested fact. This clause is probably
intended to
prevent EvilCorp(TM) from claiming that the work falls into that class. The
other party
is unlikely to contest that, claiming the work does fall into that class, as
that could
only hurt said other party.
When you convey a covered work, you waive any legal power to forbid
circumvention of technical measures to the extent such circumvention
is effected by exercising rights under this License with respect to
the covered work,
:::: Bad: possibly overreaching
This clause is clearer than in the previous draft, but still
troublesome, as it seems to be overreaching. For instance, it could be
interpreted as covering legal powers to forbid "computer crimes" such as
unauthorized intrusion into computer systems.
E.g.: suppose that the covered work is a vulnerability scanner, or
password cracker, or anyway a tool that could be used (among other
things) to break into other people's computers. Using that tool in this
manner is exercising a right "under this License" and is a circumvention
of appropriate technical measures set to protect a computer system or
network from unauthorized access. Gaining unauthorized access to a
protected computer system or network is forbidden by law in several
jurisdictions; do I waive such a legal protection, when I convey the
covered work?
I suggest dropping the waiver entirely, thus leaving the following
disclaimer only.
===> waiving legal rights can be seen as a fee: this clause could fail
DFSG#1
and you disclaim any intention to limit operation or
modification of the work as a means of enforcing, against the work's
users, your or third parties' legal rights to forbid circumvention of
technical measures.
Agree with your assesment, assuming the disclaming of intention could
let a defentent invoke estoppel or other similar.
Presumably that clause is intended to prevent the "obvious" workaround
of moving the anti-copyprotection-circumvention law outside the copyright
law.
Overall, I find this to be one of the parts of the licence that is very
unclear if
approched without knowing it is about DCMA-style anti-circumvention laws.
If one was not aware of that problem, one may well be quite confused while
tying
to figure out the purpose of that section
[...]
d) If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must
include a convenient feature that displays an appropriate
copyright notice, and tells the user that there is no warranty for
the work (unless you provide a warranty), that licensees may
convey the work under this License, and how to view a copy of this
License. Specifically, if the interface presents a list of user
commands or options, such as a menu, a command to display this
information must be prominent in the list; otherwise, the
work must display this information at startup. However, if the
Program has interactive interfaces that do not comply with this
subsection, your work need not make them comply.
:::: Bad: too restrictive
Clause 5d in GPLv3draft3 is basically unchanged with respect to previous
drafts. It's worse than the corresponding clause 2c in GPLv2... :-(
It's an inconvenience and border-line with respect to freeness.
Actually this clause restricts how I can modify what an interactive
program does when run. It mandates a feature that I *must* implement in
*any* interactive interface of my modified work. It's very close to
place an unacceptable restriction on modification. What is more awkward
is that it seems that when a non-interactive work is modified so that it
becomes an interactive work, the modifier is *compelled* to implement
these features in *any* newly created interactive interface...
I would like to see clause 5d dropped entirely.
===> very close to fail DFSG#3
Agree. The default here is to assume such a message exists, and allow not
adding/maintaining one
if it does not exist already. I suspect most GPL'ed works besides those of
the FSF do not
have any such message at all. So that case should be worked as the default.
That type of rewording is likely to make that clause nicer, and closer to
the GPL v2
version. Of course I'd be in favor of dropping it completely.
[...]
A "User Product" is either (1) a "consumer product", which means any
tangible personal property which is normally used for personal,
family, or household purposes, or (2) anything designed or sold for
incorporation into a dwelling. [In cases of doubt concerning whether
an item is a "consumer product", the interpretation of the
Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, 15 U.S.C. 2301 et seq., shall provide the
basis for interpretation, regardless of the choice of law
determination for this License as a whole.]
:::: Problematic: very U.S.-centric
This part between squared brackets looks too U.S.-centric and awkward to
see in a license text. I feel uneasy in reading such specific
references in a license...
I suggest dropping this sentence entirely.
I don't really like this, and i question the rational.
However it seems likely to stay in some form or other.
Unless construed as discrimination against a field of
endeavor this seems to not be a freeness issue, but
just bad design.
[...]
Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, you may
supplement the terms of this License with terms effective under, or
drafted for compatibility with, local law:
:::: Kills copyleft: this is not in the spirit of GPLv2
I strongly *dislike* the entire concept of allowing a limited set of
additional requirements to be added.
That is *against* the spirit of the GPLv2 (where the FSF promised that
new versions would "be similar in spirit to the present version", see
GPLv2, section 9.) and greatly weakens the copyleft.
Yes, it enhances license compatibility (as the rationale of GPLv3draft1
explains), but the GPL never was a champion of compatibility. If the
goal were maximizing license compatibility, the best choice would be
adopting the 2-clause BSD license
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/info/BSD_2Clause.html) as the new GPL...
It would be compatible with pretty everything and clearly free, even
though non-copyleft. I'm *not* against non-copyleft free licenses, but
they definitely aren't "similar in spirit to" GPLv2...
I would be happy to see all these "permissions to add restrictions"
entirely dropped from Section 7.
===> not a Freeness issue, but a great loss, since, if this mechanism is
kept in the final GPLv3 text, GPL-compatibility will no longer be a
DFSG-compliance guarantee... :-(
Well, I would argue that it would be stupid for a licence to be deemed
gpl-incompatible due to having a different warrenty disclamer (subpart a),
for requiring the BSD/Expat/whatever notice to remain in place (subpart b),
to have a term like clause 3 of the 3 clause BSD be ruled GPL-incompatible
(subpart d).
Basically, I feel the section to be fine, as long as the wording of
those subparts are good.
[...]
b. requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices or
author attributions in source or object code forms of material added
by you to a covered work; or
:::: Kills copyleft: are these the cousins of GFDL's Invariant Sections?
What exactly is a "reasonable legal notice"? What exactly is an "author
attribution"? It seems that these terms are not defined anywhere in the
license. I'm concerned that they could be interpreted in a broad sense
and allow people to take a GPLv3'd work and add some sort of invariant
long text that nobody will ever be able to remove or modify... This
option could make a work include unmodifiable & unremovable parts and
thus fail to fully grant the freedom to modify. I would rather avoid
introducing such options in the GPLv3!
===> this option could make the work fail DFSG#3, when exercised
This could use some tightening up, but the intent does seem to be
reasonable.
11. Patents.
[...]
If you convey a covered work, knowingly relying on a patent license,
and the Corresponding Source of the work is not available for anyone
to copy, free of charge and under the terms of this License, through a
publicly available network server or other readily accessible means,
then you must either (1) cause the Corresponding Source to be so
available,
:::: Bad: possibly not enough as a protection against patents
I don't quite understand how (1) can be seen as a specific form of
shielding downstream recipients. If I am a downstream recipient who
does not have a patent license, what protection (against patent
infringement lawsuits) would I get from the existence of a network
server which makes source available to the public?
I'm puzzled.
===> this clause could be not enough to protect recipients from patent
lawsuits, and thus make the work fail several DFSG, when there are
actively enforced patents infringed by the work
I think this stems from source code not requireing a patent license.
So if the source code is available, the patent can be bypassed by having the
consumer
download and compile the code themselves. Of course all of this can only
protrect the downstream
consumer if the compiled binaries are not being passed around.
[...]
13. Use with the Affero General Public License.
:::: Kills copyleft: compatibility with a yet unknown license
[..]
I strongly recommend dropping section 13 entirely.
===> this option allows linking with works that could fail the DFSG,
unless the AfferoGPL v2 turns out to meet the DFSG (which I doubt)
Agreed with everything I just quoted there.
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