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Re: Falcon P.L. license (ITP:Bug#460591)



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Josselin Mouette wrote:
> On ven, 2008-03-21 at 10:09 +0100, Giancarlo Niccolai wrote:
>>> This clause makes the license a copyleft one. It is free, but
>>> this is a huge restriction compared to the original license.
>>> And this turns the license into yet another copyleft license
>>> that will be incompatible with other ones.
>>>
>> I see; you are talking of comma 4.5 in the specific?
>>
>> I actually added it after some talk with FSF about "requiring the
>>  derivative work to be distributed copyleft too". In other words,
>> the aim of this comma is to prevent someone from adding a
>> "frobotz" statement which nitfols the blorbs, and then distribute
>> an xFalcon as a closed source product.
>
> Sure, this is the whole point of copyleft and it is a very good
> thing. But copyleft has its drawbacks, especially when it comes to
> license compatibility. This is why you should more seriously
> consider using an existing copyleft license. License proliferation
> is not a good thing; copyleft license proliferation is destructive.
>
I am already fixing things to release Falcon with dual license GPLv3
and FPLL.


>
>>>> 5. *Distribution of Embedding Works and Scripts*.
>>> I don’t think you can claim anything on the copyrights of
>>> scripts using your language, but this is definitely something
>>> you should ask your lawyer.
>> This license doesn't state there are copyright claims on the
>> scripts; actually it should do the opposite. If there is any
>> point implicitly or explicitly stating it, please point it out
>> and it will be fixed.
>
> It does claim the copyright by asking to apply the license to it.

Ok, I get the point. I actually wanted to protect scripts but the only
fact that they are mentioned may lead to think (also, may bring out
the legal question), that scripts were mine in the beginning and I am
so kind to set them free. I will remove the script things, and just
require that closed source works using FPLL state it.

>
>>> If you really want to explicitly tell that you don’t need to
>>> follow the license for writing scripts, you should add a notice
>>> that this license and your copyright claims don’t apply to the
>>> said scripts, and this will be much better.
>> The point is that, as previously noted, the patentability of
>> grammar sets (i.e. artificial languages) has been recently
>> debated. Including the definition of the scripts in this license
>> has the aim to prevent a Big Guy to come in, add a frobotz
>> statement and patent the resulting language (or, as someone has
>> pointed out, just patent the grammar someone else wrote as-is).
>> Or in other words, I did it to maintain freedom of the grammar
>> set this language define (it means, freedom for everyone to use
>> and extend it).
>
> No one can patent the grammar that you wrote, so this is completely
>  useless. The only point of these clauses seem to claim the
> copyright on scripts using the language.

Pitifully, this isn't the case, but I see that using the term
"scripts" is a near-miss to my target here. As I said, "scripts" will
be off.

As it is now, it is unclear if you can take your scripts, run them
with an interpreter you did and release your scripts and your
interpreter without FPLL, and that wasn't my aim. Removing the term
script and bounding FPLL to the product to which is applied (in this
case, Falcon engine), seems much more reasonable.


Thanks for clarification.

Giancarlo.

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