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nvteighen

September 19th, 2007, 03:22 PM

Hi everyone!
I'm creating a new Free License and would really like your feedback... You can see the Draft here (http://eleutherialicense.wordpress.com) and comment them (or comment them here, it's the same).

Well, surely most of you will tell me it's absolutely unnecessary having GFDL and GPL. Let me explain what is my aim:

Sadly, GPL and GFDL, though FSF says you can use it for anything, they are too specific in their topics, so they are very hard to use outside software and documentation. Then, we have CC, but they are too vague and don't offer any protection against patents or other problems that have appeared, for example. So, I wanted to make something between them.

Also, I've tried to prevent any kind of attack with any kind of law against free software, not only patents. We'll never know what our "enemies" might plan.

nvteighen

September 24th, 2007, 08:43 AM

Well, the blog was a dissaster, so I put the License text here to give it a chance. Feel free to comment!

“Eleuthería” Public License
Version 1.0

DRAFT 1 FOR VERSION 1.0. THIS TEXT IS LEGALLY VOID.

Copyright (c) 2007 Eugenio M. Vigo, of the License Draft
Permission is granted to publish this text only without modifying it.
Any other license notice is void.

--Start of proposed License text--

Copyright (c) 2007 Eugenio M. Vigo
Permission is granted to publish and/or modify this License text the terms of
its own section 9.

Preamble

“Eleuthería” means, in Ancient Greek, “freedom” and it is what we, publishing this
License, are willing to achieve: to give more freedom to webpages or books readers
or software users or anyone else to be able to publish them wherever they want,
modify them, study them and also let others to be able too.

But, if there are already other licenses that do the same, what is this for? This
License tries to be the most general as possible, so it can be simply applied to
any kind of work, but always trying to give great freedom and for everyone. What
freedoms?:

A. Freedom to use.
B. Freedom to share.
C. Freedom to change and share the changes You made.

To ensure these freedoms are totally preserved in time for every licensee, this
License asks you to follow some conditions to protect those freedoms to be denied
by the many current threats on them on some activities, specially in software and
programming.

We would like to thank the Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org/) for being
a pioneer on these freedom ideals through their licenses. To draft this License, we
have inspired ourselves on some features from their GNU Free Documentation License
(GFDL), but also from their GNU General Public License (GPL) too. We believe these
licenses have an undoubtful historical influence that cannot be denied; for this
reason, we have “forced” our License to be fully compatible with theirs. Also, by
making this License as simple as possible, we have tried to make it as compatible
as possible with the rest of free licenses like Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike. We hope this compatibilty could be extended in future also
to more licenses, always with the aim to help and never to harm, because we will
always be too few to defend freedom.
At last, we would like to say that we have also given great freedom for the License
text itself, so this could eventually bring many new and better licenses to life,
always only if they are done to contribute to the ideals of free licenses and free
culture.

Terms and conditions

0. Definitions

The “License” refers to the complete text, including Preamble and Appendix, of the
“Eleuthería” Public License Version 1.0. Published drafts will not be considered
Licenses and have absolutely no legal value.

Under “Work” we mean any creative creation of any kind and in any medium to which
current law gives copyright to a person, group or entity and includes a license
notice from them telling this creation can be published and/or modified (as defined
below) under the terms of this License.

“Copyright Holder” will mean that person, group or entity that legally possesses
copyright on the Work, be it or not its author.

Any Work will be called a “Derivative Work” if made from another Work through any
kind of change and/or transformation and/or partial or total translation of the
original Work in any way that, under current law, needs explicit permission from
the Copyright Holder of the original Work. Moreover, any Work that includes or is
itself a partial copy of another different Work that under current law needs
explicit permission from the Copyright Holder, will also be considered a Derivative
Work. To “modify” will mean any action that results in a Derivative Work.

To “publish” will mean to copy, distribute or transfere a given Work in such manner
that it can be accessed by the general public, but will not refer to mere
interaction with the Work through a computer network. Any person, group or entity
that publishes a Work will be referred to as a “Publisher”, be it or not its
Copyright Holder.

Any person, group or entity who receives a Work under the terms of this License
will be addressed as “You”.

Under “Title” will be meant the place where the publicly and commonly known name
of the Work is legibly and so identifiablely placed.

The Work will be in an “Appropriate Medium” if it is on a format either physical
or virtual that allows human modification and publishing without any restriction
nor any control device, is able to be modified with tools available to the general
public and is either an international standard recognized by the International
Standards Organization (ISO) or a “de facto” standard for a certain activity.

1. Applicability

You agree with the terms and conditions stated in this License by performing any
action with the Work that requires, according to current copyright and/or any
other intellectual propierty law of any kind, explicit permission from the
Copyright Holder. This License is that legal permission. The Licence will cease to
be applied to the Work only either when copyright for the given Work expires
according to current law or in the cases forseen in the License itself.

This License is subject to the current law appliable where You are. Any conflict
between law and any term of this License will make its application to the Work
absolutely void and the partial application of this License is in any case
prohibited.

2. Basic rights

This License grants You, royalty-free, the irrevocable right to use the Work in
any way You consider convenient under your own responsability, to publish it the
way You prefer at best, either commercially or not, to modify it and to publish
and use Derivative Works, without any other restrictions outside the ones of this
License. The Copyright Holder, through this License, guarrantees not to use any
legal medium against You because of legally exercising the rights given by this
License.

3. Publishing of non-modified copies

You have the right to publish unaltered copies of the Work, either commercially or
not, given that these following conditions are respected:

A. Preserve all copyright notices and the license notice for this License unaltered
in the Work. You may add translations of those notices as an additional help,
clearly marking them as informal translations with no legal value.
B. Include an unaltered copy of the License with each copy of the Work. You may use
indistinct and equivalently any published official translation. If the Work is made
of several parts that will be published in different moments and/or mediums, this
requirement must be applied with each part published separately.
C. You must publish the Work in an Appropriate Medium, nevertheless if You also
publish it in a medium that is not.
D. You must deliver along the Work all necessary information needed to make any
Derivative Work that could be created from the Work not to have any limitation
contrary to the rights given by this License.
E. List the names of the authors of the Work near the Title in a legible and
clearly indentifiable way. This requirement can be waived with explicit permission
from the involved authors.
F. It is prohibited to publish the Work with any other additional condition not
forseen in this License.

You have the right to include your name near the Title as Publisher, using for this
the most appropriate term in your language, and/or to remove any to past Publishers.
Also, You have the right to remove any informal translation of copyright and
license notices. But, You are allowed to remove them only if those references to
past Publishers or informal translations have a note that clear and undoubtly
identify them like that.

4. Publishing Derivative Works

You have the right to create a Derivative Work from the Work and publish it, either
commercially or not, given that these following conditions are respected:

A. Preserve all copyright notices and add your own.
B. Preserve unaltered the license notice for this License and, thus, publishing the
Derivative Work under this License. You may add translations of this notice as an
additional help, clearly marking them as informal translations with no legal value.
C. Include an unaltered copy of the License with each copy of the Work. You may use
indistinct and equivalently any published official translation. If the Work is made
of several parts that will be published in different moments and/or mediums, this
requirement must be applied with each part published separately.
D. You must publish the Work in an Appropriate Medium, nevertheless if You also
publish it in a medium that is not.
E. You must deliver along the Work all necessary information needed to make any
Derivative Work that could be created from the Work not to have any limitation
contrary to the rights given by this License.
F. Add your name as author in a legible and indentifiable way near the Title.
G. It is prohibited to publish the Work with any other additional condition not
forseen in this License.

You have the right to remove any reference to past Publishers and also any informal
translation of copyright and/or license notices. Also You may remove any reference
to past authors excepting copyright notices. But, You are allowed to remove them
only if those references to past Publishers or authors or informal translations
have a note that clear and undoubtly identify them like that.

It is recommended that You include a list of changes You made to the Work, if the
nature of the Derivative Work allows it. If You decide to follow this
recommendation, the list will be considered a part of the Derivative Work.

5. Surrender of incompatible legal rights

When publishing a Work under this License, You agree to ceade to any member of the
public that receives it all legal rights of any kind, granted to You before or
after the publishing of the Work, that do not allow to exercise the rights granted
by this License. To make this effective, You have to deliver along with the License
any legal document that guarrantees this surrender; the text itself of the License
can be sufficient in some countries. Along with this, You compromise yourself not
to use any legal procedure related to this surrendered rights against any legal
licensee.

If You are not in conditions to surrender those rights or believe You are not,
either because of a private agreement or with a public entity or because You do not
own those rights or any other reason, You are not allowed to publish the Work under
this License.

Rights derived from a registered trademark are the only exception to the terms
established on this section.

6. Termination

If You perform any modification and/or partial or total copy of the Work or any
other action with it not respecting the terms and conditions of this License and/or
current law, You automatically lose all your rights under this License. People who
have received copies of the Work from You will mantain their rights if they are in
full compliance with the License and/or current law.

If You cease all violations, You regain your rights under this License unless the
Copyright Holder of the Work explicitly terminates your rights under this License
prior sixty (60) days after the cessation.

7. Compatibility with other licenses

You are allowed to publish modified and exact copies of the Work under other
licenses along with the “Eleuthería” Public License only if this are compatible
between them, this means, that there is absolutely no contradiction in their terms
and conditions with those of this License.

But, if those other licenses is any version of any valid GNU license published by
the Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org/), You are allowed to publish the
Work under any of these without need of compatibility. If any contradiction may
arise, they will be always resolved in favor of the GNU license.

8. Future versions of this License

This License may be revised in the future for adjusting it to new needs, but it
will always keep its original spirit as established in the Preamble. Each version
has a distinguishing number that identifies it.

You are allowed to publish the Work under the versions of this License, either
past or future, that were explicitly given by the Copyright Holder. If the
Copyright Holder has not explicitly stated any version, it will be assumed that is
exclusively the version of the License You have received.

9. Terms of use of the License text.

You are allowed to publish copies of this License text or also modified copies
exclusively under the terms of this section. For this section, the Work is the
License itself.

A. If You publish a Derivative Work meant to be used as a license text, You must
exclusively comply with these following terms:
i. This new derivate license must agree with the basic rights established
on the Preamble and section 2 and, thus, be a free license.
ii. This new license must have a name different to “‘Eleuthería’ Public
License” or “Licencia Pública ‘Eleuthería’” and shall not include any
direct reference neither to those names nor to the author of this License.
iii. Replace the copyright and license notice by yours. It is not mandatory
to include this section in the new resulting license.
B. If You publish a Derivative Work that is a partial or total translation of this
License:
i. State immediately near the Title that your translation is not official
and has no legal value.
ii. Add your own copyright and licence notice, but preserve in the
translation those of the License.
C. If You publish a Derivative Work that does not belong to the previous cases, You
have to follow the terms in section 4 of this License, but, although requirement B
of that section, the license notice will have to be changed to: “Permission is
granted to publish and/or modify this Work, either commercially or not, under the
terms and conditions of the ‘Eleuthería’ Public License 1.0.”
D. If You publish unaltered copies of the License text for any purpose, You have to
follow the terms in section 3 of this License, but in this case it is not needed to
follow requirement B of that section.

End of terms and conditions

Appendix: Recommended steps to publish Works under this License
In this Appendix, “you” will be used as the second person pronoun as in normal
speech and not as defined in section 0.

If you wish to publish a Work under this License, it is necessary just to place a
notice that states it can be published and/or modified under the terms of this
License and include a copy of it. The steps given in this section are not mandatory,
but are recommendations for the best use of the licensed Work by the public.

As copyright and license notices, we recommend to use the following:

Copyright (c) YEAR NAME
Permission is granted to publish and/or modify this Work, either commercially or
not, under the terms and conditions of the “Eleuthería” Public License VERSION.

In VERSION, you may add one or more specific versions or a version “and later” or
“and former” or, simply, “any”, or whatever you prefer. Remember that if you don’t
specify, the version that will apply will be exclusively that of the License text.

It is highly recommend to publish the Work in an Appropriate Medium. This is not
mandatory for the original Copyright Holder, but remember that who receive the Work
and want to exercise their rights given by the License will have to use an
Appropriate Medium; if the medium you use isn’t an Appropriate Medium, you might
harden licensees the exercise of their rights.

If you want to be sure you’re not unvoluntarily restricting the rights yourself are
giving, it may be useful that you follow the License terms and conditions yourself,
even if it’s not mandatory for you.

--End of proposed License text--

:::

September 24th, 2007, 12:23 PM

I have a feeling that it could be quite problematic that you allow changing the License to GPL at any time. If I understood you correctly, your aim was to create a license for those occasions where the GPL is not really applicable.

Now I ask myself: what's the problem with that? Okay, the GPL talks about source code and such ... that might look weird, but it isn't really a big problem. As long as the license still serves its purpose. So, in my opinion, real problems would only arise if a (overspecialized?) part of the GPL could be misinterpreted. However, if this could happen, couldn't it also happen with your License? After all, anyone can effectively change your license to GPL - and thus still misinterpret GPL-terms (since they precede before your license's terms)

Additionally, I am not sure, if your license really is GPL compatible: What you allow is "Your license + GPL (where GPL takes precedence)". (i.e. "GPL with some additional clauses") However, that is NOT eqal to "GPL (only)". And - as far as I know - GPL is only compatible to GPL (without any additions)

Generally, Dual Licensing works like "use it under the terms of License A OR License B ". Whereas your license is like "License A AND (optionally) License B in addition".

I like the idea of having a GPL-like license for any kind of content. However, if it is meant to be GPL-COMPATIBLE, I would definitely talk with the GNU-people about it ...

nvteighen

September 24th, 2007, 01:35 PM

Kvark

September 24th, 2007, 04:20 PM

As the next step after this feedback step you could contact the Software Freedom Law Center and similar organizations for help.

IANAL so my ideas may be invalid.

How about this generalization of "source code". When distributing the work you must offer it in equal quality and in a format that provides equal ability to edit the work to the quality and format you received the work in. To "offer it" could be subject to requirements similar to GPL's requirements for how source code should be offered.

For example if you receive vector graphics you can't redistribute as bitmap graphics only as that can't be edited as vector graphics. If you receive lossess audio you can't redistribute as lossy audio only as lossy is less suited for editing. If you receive a high resolution .png image you can't redistribute the lossy .jpg format or scaled down version only. If you receive a text document you can't redistribute printed only. If you receive source code you can't redistribute machine code only.

The license needs to grant permission to circumvent technological measures to perform the actions it grants permission to do. Permission to redistribute doesn't mean anything if the work is in a DRM'd format that prevents it and you don't have permission to circumvent the protection.

The license needs to deal with patents somehow.

Like the GPL this is a very long and complicated license. The more details there are the more room there is for finding some loophole somewhere in it. Maybe it could be made shorter and easier to understand. For example is it necessary to define "derivative work", a term that is already clearly defined in copyright law?

It doesn't seem practical to distribute such a long license text plus the list of authors the license mentions with a song played on a radio stream or an avatar displayed on a forum. Maybe settle for an URL hidden in an image comment, tag in a music file, mention by a radio DJ or footnote on a printed paper. If the license and "source" is freely available at that URL.

PS. If this license really can be applied to any kind of copyrighted work... can it be applied to itself?

ssam

September 24th, 2007, 05:48 PM

if you have not already please have a look through http://www.opensource.org/

they have a list of all the opensource licences. maybe they have one that will do the job you want.

also if your licence is not 'ok'ed by the OSI then cannot really call it open source. for example sourceforge will only host a project if it is under an OSI approved licence. also if you try to sell a product as 'open source' you must use an OSI licence.

you may want to look at the efforts of microsoft to get their licences approved. a search for "OSI Microsoft Permissive License" will find many articles

nvteighen

September 24th, 2007, 07:15 PM

How about this generalization of "source code". When distributing the work you must offer it in equal quality and in a format that provides equal ability to edit the work to the quality and format you received the work in. To "offer it" could be subject to requirements similar to GPL's requirements for how source code should be offered.

For example if you receive vector graphics you can't redistribute as bitmap graphics only as that can't be edited as vector graphics. If you receive lossess audio you can't redistribute as lossy audio only as lossy is less suited for editing. If you receive a high resolution .png image you can't redistribute the lossy .jpg format or scaled down version only. If you receive a text document you can't redistribute printed only. If you receive source code you can't redistribute machine code only.

This License only allows to redistribute source code, not machine code (of course, you can give both, but never machine code alone). I understand your complain and in someway, I was expecting opinions on this, because I'm not fully comfortable with my "Appropriate Medium" definition.

The license needs to grant permission to circumvent technological measures to perform the actions it grants permission to do. Permission to redistribute doesn't mean anything if the work is in a DRM'd format that prevents it and you don't have permission to circumvent the protection.

The license needs to deal with patents somehow.

Don't do that Sections 2 & 5? Honestly, I think that's covered. I may mistaken of course.

It doesn't seem practical to distribute such a long license text plus the list of authors the license mentions with a song played on a radio stream or an avatar displayed on a forum. Maybe settle for an URL hidden in an image comment, tag in a music file, mention by a radio DJ or footnote on a printed paper. If the license and "source" is freely available at that URL.

Hmm... That is something I left out... Maybe the GPL approach is the best.

PS. If this license really can be applied to any kind of copyrighted work... can it be applied to itself?

Read Section 9! ;-) (in some cases, the license applies to itself).

if you have not already please have a look through http://www.opensource.org/

they have a list of all the opensource licences. maybe they have one that will do the job you want.

also if your licence is not 'ok'ed by the OSI then cannot really call it open source. for example sourceforge will only host a project if it is under an OSI approved licence. also if you try to sell a product as 'open source' you must use an OSI licence.

you may want to look at the efforts of microsoft to get their licences approved. a search for "OSI Microsoft Permissive License" will find many articles

Thanks! That will be for Draft 2+1... ("Release Candidate 1", maybe?)

Thanks for your input! Hopefully I can Draft 2 include these and other improvements.

Kvark

September 24th, 2007, 10:58 PM

Don't do that Sections 2 & 5? Honestly, I think that's covered. I may mistaken of course.
Those sections don't even mention technological protection measures or patent based restrictions. Maybe they do still cover those topics and any similar issues that may arise later, I can't figure that out. I'm also confused about the mentions of surrendering rights. I thought copyright licenses worked by granting a conditional permission to a specific receiver to do stuff copyright law doesn't allow, not by surrendering parts of the author's general rights to the copyright. Maybe those sections are just beyond my ability to understand.

nvteighen

September 25th, 2007, 03:27 PM

What I tried to say at Section 2 is that the copyright holder grants you not to use any legal medium because of exercising the rights granted by the license; this includes the original author, so if he possesses a patent license, he can't sue you if you redistribute the work. The same for DRM-circumvention, the original author can use them (further authors of derivative works can't), but because of section 2, he can't sue you if you break the DRM and redistribute the work.

Section 5 deals with patent licenses too, but related to republishers or editors: according to it you must give to any recipient of the (derivative) work all related legal documents necessary to grant you that you won't be sued because of using the license's features.

The surrendered rights is actually an idea of mine, but from the GPLv3. The idea is to guarrantee that the terms of the license will not be cut by the author using other "intellectual propierty" rights he may have. Maybe the name of the section should be changed?

As sections 2 & 5 were the last I wrote, they may be more difficult than the rest. I'll check them... It's really better to catch this problems now than after! I'm going to start working on making Draft 2 at the weekend, if I can.