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FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy
= FSFE wants to better protect Free Software licenses from bankruptcy = [Read online: http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20120730-01.en.html ] When the companies or authors that license Free Software enter bankruptcy there is a risk that granted Free Software licenses will face legal challenges in some jurisdictions. FSFE is now trying to prevent this situation in Germany. The expert institution ifrOSS supported by FSFE suggests German Ministry of Justice to include a specific Free Software clause in the German Insolvency Code. It is not entirely clear what can happen to the Free Software licenses that were granted by rights holders either before or after they went bankrupt. This lack of clear rules could greatly endanger functioning of the Free Software, which depends on the contributions from numerous rights holders. Some time ago, German Ministry of Justice published an initiative to improve the regulation of licenses during the insolvency proceedings. As a response, ifrOSS (Institute for Legal Questions on Free and Open Source Software) supported by FSFE now prepared the suggestion of the Free Software clause that could effectively remove the problems specifically associated with the Free Software. The clause ensures that Free Software licensing model would not be negatively affected by a bankruptcy of a licensing rights holder. It makes it clear that any offer to grant Free Software license made before the licensor's bankruptcy can be accepted by anyone even after the bankruptcy proceedings started. FSFE asks the German Ministry of Justice to consider this proposal favourably as it can greatly contribute to the legal certainty of the Free Software based industries, such as automotive, mechanical engineering and IT field. ifrOSS together with FSFE asks the government to include the following clause in the newly proposed § 108a of the Insolvency Code (/Insolvenzordnung, InsO/): Original version: "(4) Wenn der Schuldner durch Lizenzvertrag unentgeltlich ein einfaches Nutzungsrecht für jedermann einräumt, so findet die Regelung des § 103 InsO keine Anwendung. Das vom Schuldner vor des Insolvenzverfahrens abgegebene Angebot auf Abschluss eines solchen Lizenzvertrags, kann auch nach Eröffnung angenommen werden." English version: "(4) When the debtor grants somebody a non-exclusive right by means of a license agreement without consideration, the rule stipulated in § 103 Insolvency Code shall not apply. Debtor's offer to conclude such license agreement made before the initiation of the insolvency proceedings can be also accepted after the insolvency proceedings have been initiated." Shall the Free Software face similar problems in other jurisdictions, we kindly invite you to contact us or take similar steps. FSFE works for the public good. Its activities can be supported by signing up at http://fsfe.org/support == Further links == - Legislative Initiative of the German Ministry of Justice (de) http://www.der-betrieb.de/content/pdfft,0,466327 - The press release of ifrOSS (de) http://www.ifross.org/artikel/vorschlag-des-ifross-insolv... - The entire proposal of ifrOSS (de) https://www.ifross.de/ifross_html/120506%20Stellungnahme%... == About the Free Software Foundation Europe == The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit non-governmental organisation active in many European countries and involved in many global activities. Access to software determines participation in a digital society. To secure equal participation in the information age, as well as freedom of competition, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) pursues and is dedicated to the furthering of Free Software, defined by the freedoms to use, study, modify and copy. Founded in 2001, creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE. http://fsfe.org/ Contact: Matthias Kirschner, Free Software Foundation Europe, Linienstr. 141, 10115 Berlin, t +49-30-27595290, m +49-1577-1780003 _______________________________________________ Press-release mailing list Press-release@fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release (Log in to post comments)
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Jul 30, 2012 16:14 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Yes, that has always bugged me. What if FSF tomorrow goes bankrupt, perhaps because of malicious actions of its board of directors (of course, I'm speaking hypothetically). And then $LARGE_CORP buys FSF and publishes GPL 4.0 which would say: "All your rights are belong to $LARGE_CORP!"
Are there any safeguards against it?
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Jul 30, 2012 16:28 UTC (Mon) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link] The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the GNU General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. If the FSF is liquidated, it will legally cease to exist, and no one will have the legal authority to make a new version of the GPL to which the "any later version" clause applies. If, on the other hand, the FSF itself tried to do something similarly questionable, it would no doubt be a violation of the implied promise made by the "new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version" clause.
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Jul 30, 2012 16:37 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> it would no doubt be a violation of the implied promise made by the "new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version" clause.
The problem is who gets to decide.
As far as many people are concerned, GPLv3 isn't in the same spirit as GPLv2
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Jul 30, 2012 16:58 UTC (Mon) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link]
> As far as many people are concerned, GPLv3 isn't in the same spirit
> as GPLv2
In many cases, that perception is based on a misunderstanding. GPLv3 fixes some "bugs" in GPL2, notably regarding DRM (Stallman was farsighted, but he didn't see that coming when GPL2 was written).
The most popular misunderstanding of GPL3 (even made by Linus) was that you'd *always* have to give up your encryption keys if you published GPL3 software. Actually, all it does is plug the "Tivo" loophole by saying "if you use GPL software, but try to enforce that your hardware only runs a specific signed binary, that's considered cheating, and you must publish the keys required by the hardware".
If you look at the "four freedoms" as the guiding principles, I think GPL3 is definitely in the same spirit as GPL2.
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Jul 30, 2012 19:33 UTC (Mon) by butlerm (subscriber, #13312) [Link]
> The problem is who gets to decide.
If you don't trust the FSF, and aren't willing to let your code be used in projects that use other FSF licenses, don't use the "any later version" clause. If you require copyright assignment, or are the only copyright holder, or require contributors to license contributions under a license that allows the project to relicense, you can wait and see what the new versions are like.
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Jul 30, 2012 20:57 UTC (Mon) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]
In GPL version 3, for free software projects that want to allow users to be able to upgrade to later versions of the GPL, there is a new option which provides an alternative to just specifying "or any later version" in clause 14:
If the Program specifies that a proxy can decide which future
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Jul 30, 2012 19:39 UTC (Mon) by gmaxwell (subscriber, #30048) [Link]
The FSF is a tax exempt charity. There are special rules governing the disposition of the assets of charity in the event of its closure. If the FSF were to go bankrupt it would transfer the copyrights it holds to another organization which is similar in purpose.
The general concern expressed here is not applicable in most places. The concern is basically that the license is _effectively_ revocable (e.g. that new copies can't be made). This isn't expected or believed to be the case in most places, and if it is it's a problem independent of bankruptcy because software authors sometimes turn evil or crazy.
(The situation is not so tidy for patents, on the other hand, which is one of several severe flaws in some of the 'open patent license' stuff— it's believed that otherwise irrevocable patent licenses can be revoked in bankruptcy, a reason avoid trusting freely licensed patents held by anything but charities)
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Jul 30, 2012 19:58 UTC (Mon) by welinder (guest, #4699) [Link]
That ignores the period in bankruptcy proceedings.
In such a period the FSF would be in existence, but would be controlled
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Aug 12, 2012 21:22 UTC (Sun) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Except that most of the code "owned" by the FSF has been given to them under contract.
aiui the contract of sale forbids such. The trustee would have no ability to "sell on" the code, because in doing so he would be breaching the terms of its "purchase", and creating a copyright violation.
Just as any future version of the GPL must remain in the same spirit as the earlier versions - the "four freedoms" are your guide here, aiui any copyright assignment to the FSF says that the FSF can only relicence the code to a "four freedoms friendly" licence.
If the FSF can't relicence it as commercially friendly, then nor can a "trustee in bankruptcy" - at least, not unless they get a Judge like the SCOG bankruptcy Judge who redefines what words in the English language mean!
Cheers,
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Aug 12, 2012 21:36 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> If the FSF can't relicence it as commercially friendly...
but they were able to put in the wikipedia exception, allowing anything that was in wikipedia as of a given date to be converted to a different license that they didn't control (which includes it's own "or future version" clause)
If they can allow code to be relicensed under a different license that's controlled by someone else that you don't have such a contract with, what's to keep a couple such transitions from letting your code get to a license that is BSD under some conditions (possibly even only for some particular company)?
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Jul 30, 2012 16:49 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Most Free Software programs specify either a specific version of the GPL or a specific version "and any later version". So if Evil GPL4 comes out, it will have no effect. Any existing software users can continue operating under versions up to GPL3 and ignore Evil GPL4. Naturally, no new free software will pick Evil GPL4 as a license.
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Jul 30, 2012 16:52 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
The problem is, $LARGE_CORP would still get access to all of the code under the "GPLv2/3 or later" license. It would be able to republish it under a proprietary license, for example.
And it won't be easy for projects to actually change "GPLv2/3 or later" to "GPL2/3" because it might require consent of many authors.
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Jul 30, 2012 16:58 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
actually, if they just include one patch that's GPL 2/3 then the result can only be distributed under those licenses.
Yes, $LARGE_CORP could go back to an earlier version, or could work to extract individual parts, but it wouldn't take long for this to be impractical.
This "pollution" of the codebase is why Busybox officially changed from GPLv2+ to GPLv2, they realized that they had included GPLv2 only code for quite a while and instead of trying to relicense or eliminate the GPLv2 only code they shifted the project license (and therefor by default the license of future contributions) to GPLv2
FSFE wants to better protect free software licenses from bankruptcy Posted Jul 30, 2012 17:09 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] I suppose that's true, but even assuming $LARGE_CORP could take Free Software and close it, the closed variant would wither and die, so there wouldn't be much point.
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