Oi, you're quite the speaker, aren't ya? In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on Fri, 14 Apr 2006 17:28:47 -0700, "Ted Mittelstaedt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
tedm> OpenSSL needs to stick with the license that most closely tedm> reflects the philosophy of it's authors. That is, right now, an tedm> "advert clause" license, that is why the "advert clause" is in tedm> there. If some people in the community have a problem with tedm> that, that is their problem, not mine and not OpenSSL's. Uhmm, you pretend to speak for the OpenSSL authors (Hi, I'm one of them!), and I can't recall you having asked us at all what our opinion is. As far as I can see, the rest of the team (those with write access to the repo) have stayed clear of this discussion, and I believe it's for good reasons. I'm probably just too bull-headed to stay away :-). I, for one, would like to see the advert clause removed, and I believe I +1'd the original post in this thread so show my personal approval. As far as I've understood the story, that the way the OpenSSL license is formed is a more or less direct result of conditions made by Eric Young. Now, Eric isn't an OpenSSL author and has never been. He's the author of SSLeay, from which OpenSSL is derived (well, continued upon would be a more correct term). To kindly ask him to allow us to have a less restrictive license is a perfectly sensible thing to do, whatever the reasons! I actually don't know if the rest of the OpenSSL team agree with me or not, but every time there's been a discussion about the license (and this is definitely not the first time), it has always been ended by saying that we're bound by the desires of Eric Young. My conclusion is that most of the OpenSSL team would like to remove the advert clause *if we could*. Please do not pretend to speak for us when you haven't even asked! tedm> >Do you *really* feel that way? That anything anyone gets out of tedm> >OpenSSL is manna from the gods and they have no right to tedm> >criticize it -- tedm> tedm> Pretty much. Don't you? Speaking only for myself, I would say that anyone has the right to criticize! That's part of freedom of speach, and one that is actually exercised every day in form of bug reports! If we weren't open to critique, how the hell would we develop to anything but pickers of our own navel fuzz? tedm> If the removal of the advert clause would bring huge benefits to tedm> thousands of people that might be something. You have not tedm> established this. This is a regularly reoccuring topic, maybe that's something to consider? tedm> I will point out though for middleware producers, that the tedm> benefits of not having to reinvent the wheel have some cost; tedm> tracking this stuff is one of them. And I will further point tedm> out that EVEN IF the OpenSSL license was modded to help these tedm> people, that any middleware producer IS STILL GOING TO HAVE TO tedm> REVIEW -all- licenses of -all- software they use, because they tedm> will not know if there is a gotcha in any of those. You do have a point there. tedm> Keep in mind that the courts have not ruled on the idea that tedm> just because you link your code into GPL code that you lose all tedm> rights to control licensing of your portion of the code. This tedm> is a revolutionary idea of the FSF's and it is frequently tedm> pointed out in legal circles how this is one of the big weak tedm> spots of the GPL, and would likely be invalidated. tedm> tedm> My reading of copyright law is that the GPL cannot control how I tedm> license my copyrighted software just because I link an object tedm> module into their code or vis-versa. The FSF vehemently tedm> disagrees and this linking issue is one of the central reasons tedm> why the GPL is called a viral license, and it is one of the tedm> linchpins of the argument that the advertising clause in OpenSSL tedm> is a burden. Are you a lawyer? I know of two lawyers you do not agree with you, at least as far as I understand what they write. On of them is the author of the GPL. tedm> The law already has provisions for that. Regardless of what tedm> Jack Smith wants, the law says if I'm paying him hourly to write tedm> code, the copyright to the code belongs to me, not to him. I tedm> don't really have any feelings one way or another on his desire, tedm> because it's not a decision for him to make - per the law, not tedm> per me. You mean the *american* copyright law. Please be specific, as there are some differences between countries. There is one article in the Berne Convention, on which most copyright law is based today, that american copyright law disregards; article 6bis, Moral Rights, see http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/6bis.html . That article does give the actual author the right to have a say on how his/her work is used. Swedish copyright law implements that article in its copyright law. tedm> The GPL community could at least give a shot at leading by tedm> example - by accepting license other than the GPL. They do. If you read their own pages on it, they have a list of them, and will say for each of them if it is compatible with the GPL or not. Cheers, Richard ----- Please consider sponsoring my work on free software. See http://www.free.lp.se/sponsoring.html for details. -- Richard Levitte [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://richard.levitte.org/ "When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -- C.S. Lewis ______________________________________________________________________ OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org User Support Mailing List openssl-users@openssl.org Automated List Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED]
