Re: CMU LTI Licence
I'm copying both Robert and the debian-legal list with this.
Best regards to both,
Fran
El ds 23 de 01 de 2010 a les 09:29 +1100, en/na Ben Finney va escriure:
> 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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