On Mon, 15 Jul 2013 12:13:16 +0200 Erik Josefsson wrote: > On 07/14/2013 12:04 PM, Francesco Poli wrote: > >> > I have a package which is licensed under CC-BY 2.0 > > Ouch! :-( > > > > Estonia has been using e-elections software since 2005 and now it's > finally verifiable: > > https://github.com/vvk-ehk/evalimine > > But the licence is cc-by-nc-nd. There are a number of things that strike me as awkward in this piece of news. First of all, we are talking about a program here, aren't we? CC licenses are recommended *against* for programs, even by the Creative Commons Project itself [1] [1] http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Can_I_apply_a_Creative_Commons_license_to_software.3F (please note that they use the term "software" in its strictest meaning of "computer programs", not in the broadest meaning that I prefer: http://www.inventati.org/frx/essays/softfrdm/whatissoftware.html ) Secondly, the choice of a blatantly non-free CC-by-nc-nd license makes me suspect that the intent is to obtain a (misunderstood) anti-tampering security by forbidding any modification whatsoever (nd = no-derivative): if this is the case, I think that the result is very different from the intended one; the program is clearly non-free, but no security is obtained, since what matters is (technically) guaranteeing that the publicly visible source really corresponds to what is being executed on the voting system, not that nobody is legally able to create modified versions of the program. I am Cc:ing Gunnar Wolf on this point, since he has written a lot of articles on e-voting in his blog, and he may have something more specific to say about this aspect. > > How can I convince the Eesti Vabariigi Valimiskomisjon (Estonian > National Electoral Committee) to re-licence/dual-license it so it > complies with the DFSG? This is tricky: persuading people is a difficult art, and I am no expert. I would recommend you to persuade them to re-license in a sane and DFSG-free manner, for instance under the terms of the Expat (a.k.a. MIT) license [2]. [2] www.jclark.com/xml/copying.txt But how you could persuade them is not obvious: persuasion techniques have to be adapted to the target... I hope this helps, at least a little. Bye. -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
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