Re: CMU LTI Licence

[Francis Tyers <spectre@ivixor.net>]

Many thanks for your message, as I'm sure you appreciate, we also take 
free/open-source software and licensing very seriously, otherwise we
wouldn't have gone through such a long email exchange to obtain
clarification.

Best wishes,

Fran

El ds 23 de 01 de 2010 a les 10:22 -0500, en/na Alan W Black va
escriure:
> Fran,
> 
> The license we include is a standard CMU license that we have used for a 
> number of our open source speech products over the last ten years, the 
> license has been checked by a number of different legal groups both 
> within and outside CMU.  The additional clause 5 has been added due to a 
> requirement and respect to the original groups involved in the 
> collections.  Although we are aware that some groups may only use the 
> data if it follows some existing predefined license that they own legal 
> group has approved, we do not see it necessary to change our license 
> when we have already had it vetted by a large number of groups.
> 
> If this license does not satisfy your particular requirements then 
> unfortunately this data cannot be used by you.  That is a decision that 
> all developers make when choosing to use external resources.
> 
> At CMU we take open source and licensing very seriously and choose the 
> license conditions based on what we decide will give the maximum benefit 
> for the potential user groups, without compromising our funding sources 
> and collaborators.  It requires hard decisions and negotiations in order 
> to please as many groups as we can.  In doing so we cannot always please 
> everyone all the time, but that is in the nature of licenses.
> 
> We are fully aware of the consequences of adding clause 5, which we do 
> not have on much of our open source releases, but we still decided that 
> was the best option given the data that we have.  We knew that this 
> would exclude some people from being able to use the data, but we still 
> made that decision.
> 
> Alan
> 
> Alan W Black                                email: awb@cs.cmu.edu
> Associate Professor
> Language Technologies Institute             http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~awb/
> Carnegie Mellon University                  tel: +1-412-268-6299
> 5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh PA, 15213, USA. fax: +1-412-268-6298
> 
> 
> Robert Frederking wrote:
> > Well, my understanding is that, unfortunately, most companies won't 
> > touch anything that's under GPL, so I don't think that's a solution.  We 
> > don't want to exclude commercial entities.
> > 
> >    Bob
> > 
> > Francis Tyers wrote:
> >> First of all, thanks to CMU for releasing the data. I've no doubt it
> >> will be valuable to people working in the field.
> >>
> >> I don't particularly like terms like "lawyerbomb" and "obnoxious
> >> advertising clause", but this merits a response.
> >>
> >> People who don't get paid to work on the software they develop, aren't
> >> employed by big universities or companies are understandably concerned
> >> about getting sued -- you can say "but they've never been sued before,
> >> so why should they worry" -- but this isn't really convincing. They can
> >> get frustrated that people make more work for themselves and others.
> >>
> >> * Making up your own 'free/open-source' licence:     More work for 
> >> you, more work for them.
> >>
> >> * Choosing an existing tried and tested 'free/open-source' licence: 
> >>     Less work for you, less work for them.
> >>
> >> Furthermore, they can also find it frustrating that a non-profit
> >> organisation would release their work under a licence that is
> >> incompatible with that of over 60% of free software.[1]
> >>
> >> Fran
> >>
> >> PS. Some of these same issues are reviewed in Ted Pedersen's excellent
> >> 2008 article:
> >> http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse/Pubs/pedersen-last-word-2008.pdf
> >>
> >> =Notes=
> >>
> >> 1. http://www.blackducksoftware.com/oss/licenses#top20
> >>
> >> El dv 22 de 01 de 2010 a les 18:29 -0500, en/na Job M. van Zuijlen va
> >> escriure:
> >>  
> >>> Some of the verbiage used in this discussion (lawyer bomb...) doesn't
> >>> particularly encourage people to make their data freely available.
> >>> What happened to common sense?  I think CMU's initiative should be
> >>> commended.
> >>>  
> >>> Job van Zuijlen
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> From: Robert Frederking Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 16:32
> >>> To: Francis Tyers Cc: mt-list@eamt.org Subject: Re: [Mt-list] Public 
> >>> release of Haitian Creole language data
> >>> byCarnegie Mellon
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> 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.
> >>>
> >>> 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.
> >>> Please use the data however you want; just don't say you originally
> >>> collected it.
> >>>
> >>>     Bob
> >>>
> >>> Francis Tyers wrote:    
> >>>> [ Sorry in advance for cross posting ]
> >>>>
> >>>> I'm going over this on the debian-legal mailing list (a good place to
> >>>> ask about issues in free/open-source software licensing).
> >>>>
> >>>> There is a question about clause 5 of the licence:
> >>>>
> >>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> ##  5. Any commercial, public or published work that uses this data
> >>>> ##
> >>>> ##     must contain a clearly visible acknowledgment as to 
> >>>> the           ##
> >>>> ##     provenance of the 
> >>>> data.                                           ##
> >>>>
> >>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> >From debian-legal:
> >>>>
> >>>>  My concern is whether, contrary to the favourable interpretation you
> >>>>  give, this is intended to act like an obnoxious advertising clause.
> >>>>
> >>>>  In other words, what will satisfy “contain” in “contain a clearly
> >>>>  visible acknowledgement”? Is it sufficient for the acknowledgement 
> >>>> to   be “clearly visible” only after inspecting various files in the 
> >>>> source
> >>>>  code?
> >>>>
> >>>>  Or is the copyright holder's intent that the acknowledgement be 
> >>>> clearly
> >>>>  visible to every recipient, even those who receive a non-source 
> >>>> form of
> >>>>  the work? The latter would be a non-free restriction, like the  
> >>>>  obnoxious advertising clause in the older BSD licenses.
> >>>>
> >>>>  This looks, as it is currently worded, more like a lawyerbomb now 
> >>>> that  I consider it. I would appreciate input on this from 
> >>>> legally-trained   minds.
> >>>>
> >>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Could you confirm if that clause means that the acknowledgement should
> >>>> be _clearly visible_ to _every recipient_ or would it suffice to be
> >>>> visible after inspecting the source code?
> >>>>
> >>>> Thanks for your help in this and best regards,
> >>>>
> >>>> Francis Tyers
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> El dj 21 de 01 de 2010 a les 22:59 -0500, en/na Alon Lavie va escriure:
> >>>>        
> >>>>> Hi Francis,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Thanks for the suggestion, but we were advised to leave the 
> >>>>> licensing language as is.  Our licensing language is effectively 
> >>>>> equivalent to the MIT license.and is unambiguous with respect to 
> >>>>> releasing the data for any use (commercial or non-commercial).
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Best regards,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> - *Alon*
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Francis Tyers wrote:
> >>>>>            
> >>>>>> El dj 21 de 01 de 2010 a les 14:49 -0500, en/na Robert Frederking va
> >>>>>> escriure:
> >>>>>>                  
> >>>>>>> The Language Technologies Institute (LTI) of Carnegie Mellon 
> >>>>>>> University's
> >>>>>>> School of Computer Science (CMU SCS) is making publicly available 
> >>>>>>> the
> >>>>>>> Haitian Creole spoken and text data that we have collected or 
> >>>>>>> produced. We
> >>>>>>> are providing this data with minimal restrictions in order to
> >>>>>>> allow others to develop language technology for Haiti, in 
> >>>>>>> parallel with our
> >>>>>>> own efforts to help with this crisis. Since organizing the data 
> >>>>>>> in a useful
> >>>>>>> fashion is not instantaneous, and more text data is currently 
> >>>>>>> being produced
> >>>>>>> by collaborators, we will be publishing the data incrementally on 
> >>>>>>> the web,
> >>>>>>> as it becomes available.  To access the currently available data, 
> >>>>>>> please
> >>>>>>> visit the website at  http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/haitian/
> >>>>>>>                         
> >>>>>> Would you consider also dual/triple licensing the data under an 
> >>>>>> existing
> >>>>>> free software licence, such as the MIT licence[1] or the GNU GPL[2] ?
> >>>>>> This way it could be combined with existing data under these licences
> >>>>>> (e.g. the majority of free/open-source software) and researchers and
> >>>>>> developers don't need to hire legal advice to determine if they can
> >>>>>> combine their work with yours.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Best regards,
> >>>>>> Fran
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Licence#License_terms
> >>>>>> 2. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> Mt-list mailing list
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>                   
> >>>>
> >>>>         
> >>> ______________________________________________________________________
> >>>
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> >>>     
> >>
> >>
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> >>   
> > 
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