[gentoo-dev] Documentation licenses and license_groups

[gentoo-dev] Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Ulrich Mueller]

So far, the license_groups entries only contain software licenses,
but no documentation licenses like CCPL-Attribution-ShareAlike-3.0
or FDL-1.3. This has the strange consequence that most GNU software
cannot be installed if one sets ACCEPT_LICENSE="@FSF-APPROVED
@OSI-APPROVED", because the Texinfo manuals are typically licensed
under one of the GNU FDL variants.

Shouldn't all licenses listed at <http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/>
(unless marked as non-free) be added to FSF-APPROVED? These would be
the following:

Free Documentation Licenses:

   FDL*
   OPL

Licenses for Works of Practical Use Besides Software and
Documentation:

   FDL*
   CCPL-Attribution-2.0 (and later versions? FSF mentions 2.0 only)
   CCPL-Attribution-ShareAlike-2.0 (and later versions?)
   DSL
   FreeArt

Licenses for Fonts:

   Arphic
   OFL*

Licenses for Works of Opinion and Judgment (maybe omit this group?):

   CCPL-Attribution-NoDerivs-3.0 (there's only 2.5 in ${PORTDIR}/licenses/)
   ("GNU Verbatim Copying License" - not yet in ${PORTDIR}/licenses/)

Alternatively, a new group like "FSF-APPROVED-NONSOFTWARE" (I'm sure
that a better name can be found ;-) could be introduced for the above.

Ulrich

Re: [gentoo-dev] Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Vincent Launchbury]

Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> Shouldn't all licenses listed at <http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/>
> (unless marked as non-free) be added to FSF-APPROVED? These would be
> the following:

Great idea, that would remove a lot of hassle.

Also, I was wondering about LGPL-2 and GPL-1, surely they're
GPL-compatible? The suggested license header in
/usr/portage/licenses/GPL-1 contains "either version 1, or (at your
option) any later version." The LGPL-2 suggests 2 or later also. It's
strange that the FSF doesn't mention them.

Either way, the groups should definitely be expanded.

[gentoo-dev] Re: Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Duncan]

Vincent Launchbury posted on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:15:10 -0500 as excerpted:

> Also, I was wondering about LGPL-2 and GPL-1, surely they're
> GPL-compatible? The suggested license header in
> /usr/portage/licenses/GPL-1 contains "either version 1, or (at your
> option) any later version." The LGPL-2 suggests 2 or later also. It's
> strange that the FSF doesn't mention them.

The FSF "or later version" clauses are generally optional, and GPL-1 is 
not considered free software, AFAIK.  Couple that with the fact that 
Gentoo's license settings don't distinguish between the licenses with the 
"or later version" clause and those without, and GPLv1 licensed packages, 
regardless of whether they have the "or later version" clause or not, 
cannot be added to the FSF-approved list, because some may NOT have that 
clause, and Gentoo doesn't make the distinction.

Periodically there's talk of adding "+" versions of at least the FSF 
licenses, but while it would probably be quite a good thing, it'd be a 
LOT of VERY boring work poring thru all those packages and either 
updating to the + version, or leaving comments in each one saying they'd 
been checked already.  When people realize the work involved, talk 
quickly dies, as there are always other more pressing projects to work 
on, bugs to fix, etc.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

[gentoo-dev] Re: Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Tue, 5 Jan 2010, Duncan  wrote:

> [...] and GPL-1 is not considered free software, AFAIK.

Why would that be? There are fairly small changes from GPL-1 to GPL-2.
The only important one is the addition of the "Liberty or Death" [1]
clause (section 7 of the GPL-2).

Ulrich

[1] <http://fsfe.org/projects/gplv3/fisl-rms-transcript.en.html#liberty-or-death>

[gentoo-dev] Re: Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Duncan]

Ulrich Mueller posted on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:31:09 +0100 as excerpted:

>>>>>> On Tue, 5 Jan 2010, Duncan  wrote:
> 
>> [...] and GPL-1 is not considered free software, AFAIK.
> 
> Why would that be? There are fairly small changes from GPL-1 to GPL-2.
> The only important one is the addition of the "Liberty or Death" [1]
> clause (section 7 of the GPL-2).

Quickly checking wikipedia (without verifying further), I'm probably 
thinking about a different license, but I had it in my head that GPLv1 
had a "no commercial use" clause (or allowed it), and that is why it was 
no longer considered free software, as it impinged on the user's freedom 
to use as they wish.  Pending further research, therefore, I'll just say 
I seem to have been mistaken.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Vincent Launchbury]

Duncan wrote:
> Quickly checking wikipedia (without verifying further), I'm probably
> thinking about a different license, but I had it in my head that GPLv1
> had a "no commercial use" clause (or allowed it), and that is why it
> was no longer considered free software, as it impinged on the user's
> freedom to use as they wish.  Pending further research, therefore,
> I'll just say I seem to have been mistaken.

Looking in section 2b, it mentions that you must "[cause work containing
GPL'd code..] to be licensed at no charge to all third parties... "
(excluding warranty protection). This is most probably the issue, that
you can't sell it.  I hadn't realized this before.

> The FSF "or later version" clauses are generally optional

But isn't this a problem with GPL-2 and 3 also? The term GPL-compatible
is too vague--which version is it referring to? For example, see
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/ again:

   Please note that GPLv2 is, by itself, not compatible with GPLv3.
   However, most software released under GPLv2 allows you to use the
   terms of later versions of the GPL as well.

So doesn't it already assume that GPL-2 code contains the 'later
version' option?

But in any case GPL-1 is probably not suitable for either license group,
if theres a case where it can't be sold.

I still support Ulrich's suggestions though.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Jeroen Roovers]

On Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:00:57 -0500
Vincent Launchbury <vincent@doublecreations.com> wrote:

> But isn't this a problem with GPL-2 and 3 also? The term
> GPL-compatible is too vague--which version is it referring to? For
> example, see http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/ again:
> 
>    Please note that GPLv2 is, by itself, not compatible with GPLv3.
>    However, most software released under GPLv2 allows you to use the
>    terms of later versions of the GPL as well.
> 
> So doesn't it already assume that GPL-2 code contains the 'later
> version' option?

No, it just says most GPL-2 software was released with the "version 2 or
later" clause, as in "This software is released under the GPL version 2
or later".

That's a promise that any later version will do for /this/ software, not
in any way a promise that whatever was released as GPL-2 can be
redistributed as GPL-3.


     jer

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Vincent Launchbury]

Jeroen Roovers wrote:
> No, it just says most GPL-2 software was released with the "version 2 or
> later" clause, as in "This software is released under the GPL version 2
> or later".
> 
> That's a promise that any later version will do for /this/ software, not
> in any way a promise that whatever was released as GPL-2 can be
> redistributed as GPL-3.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant, doesn't the
GPL-COMPATIBLE license group assume that GPl-2 is v2+? If an ebuild is
listed as GPL-2, but it's version 2 only, then surely it isn't
GPL-compatible, because it's incompatible with GPL-3.

> Of course you can sell the software (as long as you distribute the [perhaps]
>derivative sources), you just can't /license/ it for money.

>Please look into the legal verbiage - you seem incredibly confused as to what
>it all means and you're confusing the matter even more for others.

Thanks for clearing that up. If that's the case, then isn't GPL-1 in the
same boat as GPL-2? As they are both incompatible with GPL-3 if the "or
any later version" clause isn't included.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Jeroen Roovers]

On Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:00:57 -0500
Vincent Launchbury <vincent@doublecreations.com> wrote:

> Duncan wrote:
> > Quickly checking wikipedia (without verifying further), I'm probably
> > thinking about a different license, but I had it in my head that
> > GPLv1 had a "no commercial use" clause (or allowed it), and that is
> > why it was no longer considered free software, as it impinged on
> > the user's freedom to use as they wish.  Pending further research,
> > therefore, I'll just say I seem to have been mistaken.
> 
> Looking in section 2b, it mentions that you must "[cause work
> containing GPL'd code..] to be licensed at no charge to all third
> parties... " (excluding warranty protection). This is most probably
> the issue, that you can't sell it.  I hadn't realized this before.

Of course you can sell the software (as long as you distribute the
[perhaps] derivative sources), you just can't /license/ it for money.

Please look into the legal verbiage - you seem incredibly confused as
to what it all means and you're confusing the matter even more for
others.


     jer

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Tue, 05 Jan 2010, Vincent Launchbury wrote:

[about GPL-1 being non-free]

> Looking in section 2b, it mentions that you must "[cause work
> containing GPL'd code..] to be licensed at no charge to all third
> parties... " (excluding warranty protection). This is most probably
> the issue, that you can't sell it. I hadn't realized this before.

The same section 2b exists in GPL-2:

   "[...] to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties
   under the terms of this License."

Ulrich

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Richard Freeman]

On 01/05/2010 01:07 PM, Duncan wrote:
> Periodically there's talk of adding "+" versions of at least the FSF
> licenses, but while it would probably be quite a good thing, it'd be a
> LOT of VERY boring work poring thru all those packages and either
> updating to the + version, or leaving comments in each one saying they'd
> been checked already.

I think that this should at least be added.  If some things are more 
conservatively labeled as v2 when it should be v2+ it doesn't cause all 
that much harm.  Over time the licenses would get updated, and then we'd 
have more useful metadata.

The whole concept of GPL-compatible doesn't work when GPL2 isn't 
compatible with GPL3, and vice-versa, and all the way back to 1.  At 
best we can have GPL3-compatible or GPL2-compatible or whatever.  What 
happens when GPL4 comes out and we need to edit the group again?  What 
will that break?

[gentoo-dev] Re: Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Duncan]

Richard Freeman posted on Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:05:52 -0500 as excerpted:

> I think that this should at least be added.  If some things are more
> conservatively labeled as v2 when it should be v2+ it doesn't cause all
> that much harm.  Over time the licenses would get updated, and then we'd
> have more useful metadata.

I agree.  The problem has been finding someone who cares enough about it 
to push it thru the process.

Keep in mind that until recently, it wasn't really practical to do 
anything (automated, at least) with the license metadata anyway, so 
whether we had the "xxx+" license specifiers or not wasn't of any real 
practical use anyway.  Now that license sets are reasonably working, the 
plus licenses would actually have a practical application.

So my guess is that in practice, mostly the same people (plus/minus) who 
cared enough to pushed license sets thru from a proposal to working 
practicality, will probably be the ones that, now that /that/ works, 
will /eventually/ push plus licenses into the mix, for much the same 
reason.

BTW, if there's a dev (or group) willing to lead such a thing, put my 
name on the list as a user willing to put some time into doing the leg 
(aka internet) work on it.  I don't know how much, but I'm certainly 
interested enough to want to follow developments, and will try to do some 
of the leg work, as I can, for the interested devs to look over and 
commit.

Gentoo's way of course is to use bugzilla, with a tracker bug.  I guess 
that's my permission to CC me. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-dev] Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Tue, 05 Jan 2010, Vincent Launchbury wrote:

> Also, I was wondering about LGPL-2 and GPL-1, surely they're
> GPL-compatible? The suggested license header in
> /usr/portage/licenses/GPL-1 contains "either version 1, or (at your
> option) any later version." The LGPL-2 suggests 2 or later also. It's
> strange that the FSF doesn't mention them.

It would be strange if the GPL-1 wasn't GPL-compatible.

> Either way, the groups should definitely be expanded.

I just went though a recent stage3. We would need the following
licenses in addition to @FSF-APPROVED and @OSI-APPROVED to cover all
packages in it:

   BZIP2
   CRACKLIB
   FLEX
   freedist
   LGPL-2
   libgcc     (add-on clause for GPL-2)
   libstdc++  (add-on clause for GPL-2)
   PAM        (identical to "|| ( BSD GPL-2 )"?)
   popt       (identical to MIT)
   SMAIL
   tcp_wrappers_license

They all look like free software licenses to me (but IANAL), with
the exception of "freedist" which only says "Freely Distributable".
It is used by two packages in stage3, namely sys-apps/man-pages and
sys-apps/man-pages-posix.

Ulrich

Re: [gentoo-dev] Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Hanno Böck]

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Am Dienstag 05 Januar 2010 schrieb Ulrich Mueller:
> Licenses for Works of Opinion and Judgment (maybe omit this group?):
> 
>    CCPL-Attribution-NoDerivs-3.0 (there's only 2.5 in ${PORTDIR}/licenses/)
>    ("GNU Verbatim Copying License" - not yet in ${PORTDIR}/licenses/)

I think they don't belong there - no matter what the fsf thinks (I think their 
views about different freedoms on software and on documents are a bit weird), 
I think we should have a "free" license set which guarantees the four 
freedoms, no matter if it's software or documentation.

-- 
Hanno Böck		Blog:		http://www.hboeck.de/
GPG: 3DBD3B20		Jabber/Mail:	hanno@hboeck.de

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Thu, 7 Jan 2010, Hanno Böck wrote:

>> Licenses for Works of Opinion and Judgment (maybe omit this group?):
>> 
>> CCPL-Attribution-NoDerivs-3.0 (there's only 2.5 in ${PORTDIR}/licenses/)
>> ("GNU Verbatim Copying License" - not yet in ${PORTDIR}/licenses/)

> I think they don't belong there - no matter what the fsf thinks

Agreed.

> (I think their views about different freedoms on software and on
> documents are a bit weird), I think we should have a "free" license
> set which guarantees the four freedoms, no matter if it's software
> or documentation.

There are some borderline cases however. For example, man-pages-posix
contains the following clause: "Modifications to the text are
permitted so long as any conflicts with the standard are clearly
marked as such in the text." which is perfectly reasonable in this
special case, but makes it non-free if one follows the definition
blindly. (And indeed, Debian has these man pages in "non-free" which
is stupid, IMHO.)

So the plan is:
- Add GPL-1 and LGPL-2 to @GPL-COMPATIBLE
- Add a new group "@FSF-APPROVED-OTHER" containing the following:
    Arphic
    CCPL-Attribution-2.0
    CCPL-Attribution-ShareAlike-2.0
    DSL
    FDL-1.1 FDL-1.2 FDL-1.3
    FreeArt
    GPL-1 GPL-2 GPL-3
    OFL-1.1
    OPL

If there are no objections, I'll commit this in the next days.

Ulrich

Re: [gentoo-dev] Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Hanno Böck]

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Am Donnerstag 07 Januar 2010 schrieb Ulrich Mueller:
> So the plan is:
> - Add GPL-1 and LGPL-2 to @GPL-COMPATIBLE
> - Add a new group "@FSF-APPROVED-OTHER" containing the following:
>     Arphic
>     CCPL-Attribution-2.0
>     CCPL-Attribution-ShareAlike-2.0
>     DSL
>     FDL-1.1 FDL-1.2 FDL-1.3
>     FreeArt
>     GPL-1 GPL-2 GPL-3
>     OFL-1.1
>     OPL
> 
> If there are no objections, I'll commit this in the next days.

I already went ahead and committed two new sets - FREE-DOCUMENTS and MISC-
FREE.

The above ones could probably be all added to FREE-DOCUMENTS.

-- 
Hanno Böck		Blog:		http://www.hboeck.de/
GPG: 3DBD3B20		Jabber/Mail:	hanno@hboeck.de

http://schokokeks.org - professional webhosting

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Thu, 7 Jan 2010, Hanno Böck wrote:

>> - Add GPL-1 and LGPL-2 to @GPL-COMPATIBLE
>> - Add a new group "@FSF-APPROVED-OTHER" containing the following:
>> Arphic
>> CCPL-Attribution-2.0
>> CCPL-Attribution-ShareAlike-2.0
>> DSL
>> FDL-1.1 FDL-1.2 FDL-1.3
>> FreeArt
>> GPL-1 GPL-2 GPL-3
>> OFL-1.1
>> OPL

> I already went ahead and committed two new sets - FREE-DOCUMENTS and
> MISC-FREE.

> The above ones could probably be all added to FREE-DOCUMENTS.

Done, but I kept the FSF-APPROVED-OTHER set separate so that following
upstream changes will be easier.

And thanks for adding the FREE set and its FREE-{SOFTWARE,DOCUMENTS}
subsets. Accepting @FREE is enough for all packages in stage3, except
for man-pages-posix.

Not sure what we should do about this one. The crucial sentence is:
,----
| Modifications to the text are permitted so long as any conflicts
| with the standard are clearly marked as such in the text.
`----

Any opinions?

Ulrich

Re: [gentoo-dev] Documentation licenses and license_groups

[Vincent Launchbury]

Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> Not sure what we should do about this one. The crucial sentence is:
> ,----
> | Modifications to the text are permitted so long as any conflicts
> | with the standard are clearly marked as such in the text.
> `----
> 
> Any opinions?

It seems fine to me. I think it's somewhat analogous to how a modified
TeX file must have a new name: it's a minor annoyance, but it doesn't
particularly restrict the end result.