Re: C-FSL: a new license for software from elstel.org
Some general feedback:
On 21/01/16 22:49, Elmar Stellnberger wrote:
CONVERTIBLE FREE SOFTWARE LICENSE
Version 0.8, 2016-01-21 , *** This is just a draft ***
copyright 2016, by Elmar Stellnberger
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this
license document. You must not modify the license itself.
This license applies to any software containing a notice by the
copyright holder saying that it may be used under the terms of the
Convertible Free Software License. If a specific version number is
mentioned then usage rights include this version as well as any newer
version which will always be similar in spirit to this license. The
term Convertible Free Software license may be abbreviated as C-FSL.
1. Any work under this license comes completely without any warranty
or any kind of liability such as lost revenues, profits, harm or
damage of any kind even if the authors should have been advised of the
possibility of such harm or damage. It may be seen as research work
and does not claim for fitness to any particular usage purpose.
2. The term 'source code' applies to the preferred form that is used
to develop or apply changes to a work under this license referred to
herein as 'the work'. You are allowed to modify or change the source
code if you accept that the resulting changed work will become subject
to this license. As soon as you apply any change this is an implicit
consent to fully comply with this license and a consent that the work
may be used under this license.
3. It is your obligation that the changed version of your sources will
be available to the public for free. Available for free means that
there will be no undue hinderance in obtaining the given item like a
registration of the person who wants to download or obtain the given
item. Available for free also means that you must not charge for the
given item itself apart from the possibility to require a reasonable
charge for the physical reproduction of the data.
You pretty much are forcing that each time the text editor contents are
changed, a commit with that revision is immediatly published on the
internet.
4. You are allowed to issue an 'automatic derivation process' on the
source code which will result in so called 'object code'. As soon as
you wanna share the object code with other people you are oblidged to
make all utilities and data necessary to obtain the object code either
availabel under C-FSL or any other open source license approved by
opensource.org. The given data and utilities need to be available to
the public for free.
This means a propietary compiler cannot be used with these programs
(even if the source code are eg. standard C89).
5. When appyling changes to the source code you need to leave your
name, your email address and the date of your modifications so that
other people may contact you. We suggest to list all changes by
contributors either in a separate changelog file or in the header of
the changed file.
You should allow anonymous contributions, or contributing under a pen name.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars
Also IMHO it should allow collapsing several entries of the same author,
or even summarising the whole changelog (if the original authors only
mentioned author names, for instance).
Furthermore you need to give your changed version a 'marker' which may
be used to distinguish it from the upstream version when being
distributed to other people. The distributed product needs to be of
the form upstream name - dash upstream version - dash your marker
optionally followed by a version number under your control. The marker
needs to be unique, at least two letters in size. We suggest it to
reflect the name of your company or distribution.
What about the fork of a fork of a fork?
IMHO it should be possible to replace the marker of the intermediate
company, without having to append to the version or use different name.
6. You may choose to create a fork of a work under C-FSL by giving it
a completely different name. However you need to assert that people
will know that your fork is based on the original work. If your
program has a graphical user interface the whole C-FSL license as well
as in case of a fork a complete reference to the base product
including email address and web presence must be accesssible via the
GUI. Otherwise a plain text copy of this license as well as the
aformentioned reference to the base product where applicable need to
be given and packed alongside the distributed product. If your program
has a comprehensive help, a manual or info page and is a fork the base
product needs to be fully referred to there including a contact email
and web presence. It does not apply to quick or short command line
help output as long as a more comprehensive help page is also available.
What if the original author prefers a simple: «This file is licensed
under C-FSL, see http://c-fsl.license/legal»;?
Asking not to _remove_ license banners would be better.
7. Contributing to a work under C-FSL means that you will give a group
called the 'original authors' a consensus based right to re-license
your derived work so that it will be available under both licenses:
the C-FSL and the newly applied license. The original authors are the
group of people who have initially started to create a work. They
shall be mentioned at the beginning of the changelog or the file
header of changes. As soon as there is a consensus to do so by all
original authors the work may either be re-licensed, published as
upstream version without a marker or new people may be accepted and
mentioned as 'original authors'.
This will probably lead to some ambiguity.
8. No work under C-FSL shall be deemed part of an effective measure
under anti-circumvention laws like under article 11 of the WIPO
copyright treaty adopted on 1996-12-20 or any similar law. You must
assert that the right to use, modify, generate object code and
distribute any software under C-FSL will not be infringed by patent
claims or similar law. Every contributor grants by the act of
contributing to a work under C-FSL a non-exclusive, worldwide and
royalty-free patent license to any prospective contributor or user of
the given work applicable to all his 'essential patemt claims'. The
essential patent claims comprise all claims owned or controlled by the
contributor.
"patemt"
9. A work under C-FSL which is used as a component, plug-in, add-on of
another product, which is combined or which links against another work
needs either to be put under an open source license as approved by
opensource.org or it needs to be put under C-FSL as well.
I think you got it backwards? Did you mean "A work which is used as a
component, plug-in, add-on of a product under C-FSL"?
Usage of proprietary libraries and kernel modules pose an exception to
this rule. There must be a functionally equivalent open source library
for any proprietary library which is required by a work under C-FSL in
order to run and execute. No such restriction applies to kernel
modules. The term 'kernel' refers to the core of an operating system.
Libraries which provide operating system services use a well defined
binary interface but do not 'link' against the kernel. Libraries are
separated components which link against the given work or other
components. The term 'linking' refers to the relocation of references
or addresses when the library is combined with another component in
order to make the combined aggregate executable or runnable. Such
references are typically bound to symbols which are part of the common
interface between the library and the component which the library is
combined with at runtime.
This should be rewritten in a more clear way.
Also, despite the apparent spirit of the license, it probably isn't
allowing linking against eg. the libc of a propietary OS when there
isn't a free license implementing the syscalls for that OS.
10. This license is either governed by the Laws of Austria or by the
laws of any member state of the European Union where the first
mentioned original author lives or is a resident. Disputes shall be
settled by the nearest proper court given the home town or location of
the first original author. If any of the terms stated in this license
were not in accordance with the law of the country that governs this
license all other parts of the license shall remain valid.
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