Web of Trust still usable (as before)

Posted Jul 11, 2019 14:16 UTC (Thu) by mirabilos (subscriber, #84359)
In reply to: Web of Trust still usable (as before) by gus3
Parent article: GnuPG 2.2.17 released

I’m a bit annoyed of the current usability (or not) of SSL, what with people that don’t need bank-level security deciding to ditch TLSv1.0 altogether, and the rising use of ECC ciphersuites with nōn-free implementations (DJB’s) or that were NSA-influenced or are patent-encumbered (one of these applies to *all* ECC ones…) with no interoperability. Protocol ossification is a thing, you know.

But that’s off-topic here, and I’m not going to discuss it on a webforum.

Web of Trust still usable (as before)

Posted Jul 11, 2019 21:16 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (11 responses)

I thought that DJB's code is in public domain now?

Web of Trust still usable (as before)

Posted Jul 11, 2019 23:24 UTC (Thu) by mirabilos (subscriber, #84359) [Link] (10 responses)

DJB has not died on or before 31ˢᵗ December 1948, so his works are *not* in the Public Domain outside of the USA. (Whether his PD dedication is valid inside the USA is also questionable, but of no relevance to me.)

DJB also has refused, multiple times, to offer a fallback copyright licence (many others I asked did), wilfully ignoring concerns even from OSI licence discussion/review members.

Web of Trust still usable (as before)

Posted Jul 12, 2019 14:11 UTC (Fri) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (9 responses)

How are DJB public-domain software different from other public-domain software ?

Web of Trust still usable (as before)

Posted Jul 12, 2019 15:45 UTC (Fri) by murukesh (subscriber, #97031) [Link] (8 responses)

IIRC in some jurisdictions, it's just not enough in some cases for the creator to say X is in the public domain. They have to explicitly waive some rights. That's why licenses like CC0 exists. (See, for example, https://www.lib.umn.edu/copyright/cc0-and-public-domain .) So if DJB is just saying his software is in PD, some people might need a proper license to be able to use his software. :/

Web of Trust still usable (as before)

Posted Jul 13, 2019 18:13 UTC (Sat) by mirabilos (subscriber, #84359) [Link] (7 responses)

ballombe wrote:

>> How are DJB public-domain software different from other public-domain
>> software ?

They are not, that is the point.

murukesh wrote:

> IIRC in some jurisdictions, it's just not enough in some cases for the
> creator to say X is in the public domain. They have to explicitly
> waive some rights.

While this is true for some jurisdictions, in many jurisdictions authors
cannot voluntarily place a work into the Public Domain.

The worse problem is, however, that the Berne Convention grants
protection to a work in all *other* Berne Convention signatory countries
“in the same way a work of a citizen of that country is protected”, so
in a country that doesn’t allow their citizens to voluntarily give up
copyright, works from outside are also not permitted that. And even more
importantly, only copyright is harmonised in the Berne Convention, not
absence thereof.

It is known a court case in which a USA government employee successfully
defended their copyright over a work they did in the government position
(which is automatically PD in the USA, not vague like DJB’s statement)
in a European country.

This is why we can’t have nice things (unless the authors grant fallback
licences for their work for all the other Berne Convention signatories).

Web of Trust still usable (as before)

Posted Jul 17, 2019 10:05 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (6 responses)

> It is known a court case in which a USA government employee successfully
defended their copyright over a work they did in the government position
(which is automatically PD in the USA, not vague like DJB’s statement)
in a European country.

How many European countries have estoppel or the equivalent?

If DJB has voluntarily placed his work in the Public Domain, then estoppel will protect you any where it applies. The problem with the government employees is quite likely because they were not the people who placed it in the public domain ...

Cheers,
Wol

Web of Trust still usable (as before)

Posted Jul 17, 2019 10:10 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Also, aren't the "rights that cannot be abandoned" the "moral" rights ie the right to be named as author, etc etc? Even in the US it should not be possible, albeit under different laws, to have those rights taken away.

If I place my work in the Public Domain, that does not alter the fact that I am the author. In a country without moral rights, that permits my work to be copied unattributed. In a country with moral rights, I can demand that my name be attached to it. In both circumstances it should be illegal to attach someone else's name because that's plagiarism, or mis-attribution, or false description, or whatever other immoral behaviour you want to call it.

Cheers,
Wol

Web of Trust still usable (as before)

Posted Jul 17, 2019 11:50 UTC (Wed) by mirabilos (subscriber, #84359) [Link]

The tool to place all exploitation rights that come under copyright law effectively into the public domain (lowercased deliberately) in the EU is not a PD dedication but a permissive licence to the general public, http://copyfree.org/standard/licenses is an appropriate list by the Ⓕ Copyfree initiative to that point (except Unlicense which isn’t a licence (it’s a very problematic PD dedication) and does not belong on that list, but apotheon hasn’t taken it down yet), or to licence the right itself to licence the work (which CC0 does).

In our countries, you cannot have moral rights but no exploitation rights, you can only licence the latter away, but both are bound to your person until you die, then for another 70 years plus how many seconds or days it takes to reach the next 1ˢᵗ January to your heirs. (That being said, there are reasons why you cannot execute your exploitation rights; having created the work as an employee is one.) In Germany specifically (don’t know about other countries), you can even recall the latter if you gave away an exclusive licence, after 30 years, to prevent exploitation (heh) of the creative people.

Web of Trust still usable (as before)

Posted Jul 17, 2019 11:45 UTC (Wed) by mirabilos (subscriber, #84359) [Link] (3 responses)

The rights do not come from a contract with DJB, they come from my own country’s laws and the Berne Convention, are automatic (inherent from a creation of a work that passes threshold of originality), and can only be licenced. (Incidentally, they cannot be transferred either except with death, so those nice papers the FSF likes to collect from GCC contributors are mostly worth nothing.)

Perhaps I could, as a private individual, use his stuff, but I certainly cannot include it in an OSS work and licence said OSS work to others, *especially* not if it’s a copylefted work in which I’m not the (otherwise) sole rights holder. IANAL, but that might even be copyfraud.

Plus, DJB doesn’t say anything granting. He just says “you don’t need a licence” (which is plain wrong), even when specifically asked and explained this point.

Web of Trust still usable (as before)

Posted Jul 17, 2019 13:41 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (2 responses)

Plus, DJB doesn’t say anything granting. He just says “you don’t need a licence” (which is plain wrong), even when specifically asked and explained this point.

In the US, the only person who gets to sue you for copyright infringement is the copyright proprietor. Therefore if DJB has no intention to sue anybody for infringing his copyright, ever, then as far as he's concerned he doesn't need to bother with an explicit license. The fact that this leaves potential propagators of his software (especially ones outside the US, where copyright law may work differently, particularly with respect to the public domain) on rather thin ice, legally speaking, is obviously not his problem. In addition, DJB is not known to be eager to admit that he's wrong about something, and that doesn't help, either.

This of course should render anyone contemplating using DJB's code cautious. It's certainly one of several reasons why I personally won't touch any of his stuff with a long pole if I can avoid it.

Web of Trust still usable (as before)

Posted Jul 17, 2019 20:42 UTC (Wed) by mirabilos (subscriber, #84359) [Link] (1 responses)

Open Source is not about getting sued (or not), it’s about promising to my users that the code (well, work) is available under a good licence.

Besides, as I said, if I’ll include it into another work, especially one under strong copyleft, this might be copyfraud, which has consequences for me independent of what DJB said.

That being said, DJB is a “hostile upstream” wrt licencing, and without an explicit licence from him, he can always go back on his word. (This might even have influence on the interpretation in court, since I *did* ask him.)

Issuing a fallback copyright licence for everyone else is just the decent thing to do, too.

Web of Trust still usable (as before)

Posted Jul 18, 2019 13:25 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Issuing a fallback copyright licence for everyone else is just the decent thing to do, too.

Oh, absolutely. I don't want to defend DJB – he's obviously a brilliant mathematician and a pretty good programmer but software project stewardship doesn't seem to be his strong suit.