LWN: Comments on "LinuxCon: The tragedy of the commons gatekeepers"

Broader Definition of Free Cultural Works

cov — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 10:23:48 +0000

I'd be interested to hear how Richard Fontana thinks freedomdefined.org compares.

LinuxCon: The tragedy of the commons gatekeepers

khim — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 15:20:34 +0000

I would prefer that copyright and patents be treated separately, in separate licences.

To make it possible to create "free software" and then start charging for it? Thnx, but no, thnx. As long as the software is covered by both copyrights and patents you need permissions from both branches of law to use it.

I very much would prefer to live in a world where something copyrightable can not be patented and vice versa, but, sadly, our world is not like this.

By the same rule, you can consider CC0 a free licence because it means the program can be free software, if you live in a part of the world where software is not patentable. It does not actively try to fight against the problems caused by software patents. But that does not make it non-free, just non-copyleft.

When part of the world where software is not patentable was large this approach was entirely acceptable. But as this part shrinks the usability of such licenses diminishes. Worse: with something like BSD license you can argue that you have an implicit patent grant (for why else anyone will want to release something using such liberal terms if s/he does not want to give the ability to actually use it?), but with CC0 the intent to mislead you into adoption of the technology with later bait-and-switch tactic is obvious from the onset: how can you claim it's "free software" in this case?

And if you'll read the discussion about CC0 then you'll find out that it was, indeed, the whole point: The patent language that exists comes out of conversations with the scientific data community, whom were a large target of adoption for the tool. This community felt strongly that there was a need to clearly waive something into the public domain without also waiving patents in the process.

I can understand why CC0 did what it does: it's designed to release data which is you think are not covered by patents at all but which may contain something patented by mistake and you want to retain the right to backtrack. Simple and understandable desire. Unfortunatelly text as written makes it very easy to use CC0 to lay RAMBUS-style booby-traps.

LinuxCon: The tragedy of the commons gatekeepers

JoeBuck — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 16:33:44 +0000

I think RMS made a big mistake here, but the reasons go back to the time that "open source" was taking off (late 1990s). ESR and his gang were going around telling CEOs that yes, there was this cranky leftist from the People's Republic of Cambridge, but his good work was in the past and his ravings could be ignored, and open source was just a better way for them to make more money without paying for as many programmers. He wasn't invited to speak at conferences that promoted the "open source" idea, and was reduced to heckling from the audience. RMS could be accused of being paranoid, but people really were out to get him, so he invented invariant sections because he thought of it as a way of preventing people from censoring him.

The original GNU manuals only permitted verbatim copying, so compared to that, the GFDL is more free. Still, I think that the idea of invariant sections, if it was ever useful, does more harm than good and should be dropped; there are plenty of other ways to communicate effectively, and distributions would have no motivation to censor the GNU manuals by taking out the free software advocacy if the sections were not invariant.

LinuxCon: The tragedy of the commons gatekeepers

epa — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 15:06:44 +0000

It's that they apply different standards for computer programs and other works. RMS has himself said that the idea of freedom doesn't apply in quite the same way when dealing with texts expressing what someone believes, or thinks, or was willing to do. They are not functional in the same way as a computer program. Restrictions on these texts don't impact on your freedom in the same way as an inability to change software your computer runs.

While this distinction makes sense in everyday life, I don't believe it is wise for an organization like the FSF to apply different standards to different kinds of work - at least not if they are all covered by copyright. But this does explain why the Emacs manual is considered 'free documentation' even if a program with invariant sections would not be considered free software.

LinuxCon: The tragedy of the commons gatekeepers

epa — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 09:40:00 +0000

I would prefer that copyright and patents be treated separately, in separate licences. We normally judge a program to be free software if the licence means it *can* be free for some users, even if that licence does not guarantee that it *must* be free for all users. For example a BSD-licensed program is free software for those who receive it under the original licence, but if a Unix vendor packages it up under restrictive terms, it is not free for other users even though they are running the same program. By contrast the GPL attempts to make sure the program is free software for everybody (or not distributed at all).

By the same rule, you can consider CC0 a free licence because it means the program can be free software, if you live in a part of the world where software is not patentable. It does not actively try to fight against the problems caused by software patents. But that does not make it non-free, just non-copyleft.

LinuxCon: The tragedy of the commons gatekeepers

njwhite — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 09:30:36 +0000

> Every second spent thinking about this stuff is a second not spent doing something useful.

It's tempting to agree with you, but I think you're missing something important.

While the legal problems which are created for us are really annoying and harmful, the process of discussing values in software is very positive, even though it's so often provoked by some awful license or harmful action by a large player.

It isn't just about the software, it's about the freedom, the control over our lives.

LinuxCon: The tragedy of the commons gatekeepers

ballombe — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 22:40:40 +0000

One big difference between Debian and both the FSF and the OSI is that Debian is actively distributing software, which means that they incur the cost of complying with the license, and potentially legal liability.

For example, a license that would require Debian to provide source for packages that have been removed from the archive less than 3 year ago would probably be rejected by the FTP masters for being too impractical.

LinuxCon: The tragedy of the commons gatekeepers

rfontana — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:44:29 +0000

> Perhaps also the difference between MXM and CC0 is that the
> awareness of the problems caused by a license not including a patent
> clause is increasing all the time, and CC0 was submitted 2-3 years
> after MXM.

No, because it was with MXM, the earlier license, that you saw
heightened concern (granted, on OSI's license-review mailing list [or
license-discuss if it was pre-license-review]) about a limited patent
license grant, while with CC0, the later license-like thing, there was
initially no concern about the reservation-of-patent-rights clause.

LinuxCon: The tragedy of the commons gatekeepers

josh — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:36:29 +0000

The issue of the FSF judging their own licenses leniently seems particularly problematic in the case of the GFDL, which contains several clauses that would have instantly tripped the proprietary-license-o-meter if they didn't come from the FSF.

LinuxCon: The tragedy of the commons gatekeepers

juliank — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:53:20 +0000

There are also licenses considered FOSS by both FSF and OSI, but not by Debian; such as the the Open Software License in version 1.1 (though OSL 3.0 seems to be considered free, at least code licensed that way was part of Debian).

LinuxCon: The tragedy of the commons gatekeepers

gerv — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:32:43 +0000

Perhaps also the difference between MXM and CC0 is that the awareness of the problems caused by a license not including a patent clause is increasing all the time, and CC0 was submitted 2-3 years after MXM.

Gerv

Debian-legal

gerv — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:31:49 +0000

AIUI, debian-legal has never had authority in these matters, although it has had a strong advising voice; it's always been up to the ftp-masters. But IANADD so ICBW.

Gerv

LinuxCon: The tragedy of the commons gatekeepers

jackb — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 14:43:06 +0000

The tragedy is the amount of wasted time and effort that has to be devoted to working around the legal fiction of IP.

Every second spent thinking about this stuff is a second not spent doing something useful.

LinuxCon: The tragedy of the commons gatekeepers

kirschner — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 08:22:15 +0000

"Richard thought that the idea of defining FOSS based on open development criteria ("license insufficiency" above) is based on correct intuitions. We need to expand beyond the idea of licenses in terms of how we define software freedom."

I agree that if we want to evaluate if something is Free Software or non-free software we have to look at more than the license. Just one example, it does not help us if the software, we use over a network has a GPL license text on the server, we cannot access those rights. So it is Free Software for the person who runs the server, but it is not Free Software for me, accessing the server. (And there are cases where this is ok.)

But we should not mix the software model (if something is Free Software or non-free) with the development model. You can develop Free Software on your own, sell it to one other company, and that's it. (IIRC the average number of developers on sourceforge is one.) On the other hand you can develop a software "for scientific use" between several universities, and through the restriction of "scientific" use, it is non-free. We should differ between the software model, the business model, and the development model. See "What makes a Free Software Company" under "Point 1: Think clearly" for more details.

Debian-legal

wichert — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 07:30:38 +0000

At least historically for Debian the decision if a license was DFSG-compliant or not was not made by the ftpmaster team but by consensus on the debian-legal list. This would occasionally lead to heated debates but the discussion was always open and transparant. I have not been involved with Debian for a few years so that might have changed by now. If so I can only guess as to why - the old approach worked even though it was not very fast.