Re: CMU LTI Licence
Francis Tyers <ftyers@prompsit.com> writes:
> Here is a reply from Robert Frederking at CMU.
Thank you for getting this direct communication.
> Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:32:29 -0500
> From: Robert Frederking <ref@cs.cmu.edu>
>
> I'm not a lawyer, but let me start by stating that out intent was
> simply that re-use included acknowledgement. This was not intended to
> be a splash-screen on every start-up, or making the software pronounce
> our names at the start of every sentence. :-) It only has to be
> "clearly visible" in anyone's source files.
Would it be possible to simply drop that clause altogether? Its intent,
as stated above, seems to be completely covered by existing clauses in
the license, and worded as it is currently it's dangerously vague and
over-reaching the stated intent.
> We aren't interested in suing people; we are a non-profit research
> organization. But like the Regents in California, we have a
> responsibility to our sponsors that appropriate credit is given for
> our work. So this is intended to be like the old BSD advertising
> clause, which is generally considered to be clear from a legal point
> of view.
These assurances are good, but don't have much legal weight compared to
the actual license wording. Leaving the wording as-is makes recipients
open to the exploitation of the vague wording by a hypothetical future
administration with less friendly intent.
This clause (IMO) fails the colourfully named “Tentacles of Evil” test
<URL:http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html#tentacles_of_evil>.
That it seems to be redundant with other clauses for the intent stated
above would suggest the best solution is simply to drop that clause
altogether from the license terms.
An alternative solution to this would be to dual-license the work,
granting the recipient the choice of the terms of this license or
another widely-known free-software license, such as the GNU GPL or the
Expat license <URL:http://www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt>.
--
\ “Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas |
`\ are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.” |
_o__) —Howard Aiken |
Ben Finney
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