On 2004-10-14 18:39:31 +0100 Carlos Laviola <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[...]
Since none of us can possibly suffer a commercial loss, and since
FIGlet
is not registered with the Copyright Office, there is no one with
standing
to sue for statutory damages (actual damages being obviously $0).
Is this assuming all contributors live in a particular jurisdiction?
Do they?
[...] How sure are you that a declaration that something is in the
public domain actually makes it so? Lawyers don't agree on this
point.
I looked at the web site of Union for the Public Domain
http://www.public-domain.org/ and finding useful nothing there, I
emailed someone there. No reply yet.
I must admit that I lack the legal expertise to claim that the AFL
2.1
conforms to the Debian Free Software Guidelines, since it talks about
needlessly complicated things like patents and jurisdictions.
Both the Open Source Initiative and the Free Software Foundation have
analyzed the AFL and declared it conformant to their definitions of
"open
source" and "free".
The FSF list evaluates licences in abstract, not applied to particular
software. Also, I suspect they assume that no free software patents
are valid, so ignore those aspects, but I don't have a sure answer
either way about that.
The current process of the failed Open Source Initiative seems to say
that they do not analyse licences themselves, but use the licence
author's or owner's lawyers. The author of the AFL is the OSI board's
legal adviser.
[...] The AFL,
on the other hand, is a contract between licensor and licensee whereby
the licensor makes promises (mostly to refrain from certain things)
that the licensee can readily enforce in court.
I think this is the reason it is a practical problem. Entering into a
contract readily enforceable in court usually needs some evidence of
proper offer and acceptance, which most GNU/Linux distributions can't
record. I could be wrong because I am not a lawyer but some of my
friends are.
If it's a contract, why isn't it called "Academic Free Contract" just
to make that clear? ;-)
I suspect Larry Rosen's work was part of the motive for Branden
proposing the contract/ autocrat test for licences.
--
MJR/slef My Opinion Only and not of any group I know
Creative copyleft computing - http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
Speaking at ESF on Sat 16 Oct - http://www.affs.org.uk/
