Re: Scope of Creative Commons ShareAlike licensing for game assets

2014-11-11 Thread beuc 
Hi,

On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 11:55:40AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> Nils Dagsson Moskopp  writes:
> > Developers often point to the music they used for the reason behind
> > that and claim that the scope of the Creative Commons ShareAlike
> > licensing requires that code must also be licensed CC BY-NC-SA, thus
> > definitely non-free according to DFSG and FSF criteria.
> 
> This would be a question of whether one (part of the) work constitutes a
> “derived work” of the prior one. If a jurisdiction would rule that the
> answer is affirmative, then yes, the derived work must comply with the
> license conditions of the prior work.

Alternatively, you can point out how many GPL'd games are using CC
BY-SA music, while the licenses are incompatible, and the music was
composed independently of the project:

- 
http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs//main/f/fretsonfire-songs-muldjord/fretsonfire-songs-muldjord_2.dfsg-1_copyright
- 
http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs//main/s/supertuxkart/supertuxkart_0.8.1-2_copyright
- 
http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs//main/f/freedink-data/freedink-data_1.08.20140901-1_copyright
- 
http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs//main/f/flare/flare_0.19-1_copyright

and even GPL + weird non-free license (though in this case from the same 
project):
- 
http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs//non-free/w/warsow-data/warsow-data_0.42-1_copyright

There are countless other examples in the archive.

Of course the combination BY-SA+BY-NC cannot be used in a commercial
context, but as you point out it should be possible to make an
alternative BY-SA-only with music replacements (or no music).

SunRider is describing themselves as "a 100% free game which is open
source, DRM-free, and free to modify and use for all personal and
non-commercial purposes" (http://sunrider-vn.com/main/donate/) so even
if their repo says "NC" (https://github.com/vaendryl/Sunrider) I
believe they are good-faith'd.

Cheers!
Sylvain


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Re: confirm apache 1 and gpl-1+ situation

2014-11-11 Thread Simon McVittie 
On 11/11/14 06:44, Florian Weimer wrote:
>> http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/xmlrpc-c.git/tree/tools/turbocharger/mod_gzip.c?h=debian-sid
> 
> I don't think this file is even compiled, so its license does not
> matter.

I believe the ftp-masters' current interpretation of the DFSG is that
unused files in source packages are still required to be under a DFSG
license, or be removed. However, if this file is not compiled, its
license does not matter other than "it's some DFSG license, and it's
mentioned in the copyright file".

(Insert a #error to confirm that it isn't compiled? :-)

S


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Re: confirm apache 1 and gpl-1+ situation

2014-11-11 Thread Simon McVittie 
[Re-sending with the necessary Ccs, sorry for the duplicate on
debian-legal.]

On 11/11/14 06:44, Florian Weimer wrote:
>> http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/xmlrpc-c.git/tree/tools/turbocharger/mod_gzip.c?h=debian-sid
> 
> I don't think this file is even compiled, so its license does not
> matter.

I believe the ftp-masters' current interpretation of the DFSG is that
unused files in source packages are still required to be under a DFSG
license, or be removed. However, if this file is not compiled, its
license does not matter other than "it's some DFSG license, and it's
mentioned in the copyright file".

(Insert a #error to confirm that it isn't compiled? :-)

S


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Re: confirm apache 1 and gpl-1+ situation

2014-11-11 Thread Ben Finney 
Florian Weimer  writes:

> * Paul Gevers:
> > [3]
> > http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/xmlrpc-c.git/tree/tools/turbocharger/mod_gzip.c?h=debian-sid
>
> I don't think this file is even compiled, so its license does not
> matter.

Source packages are part of Debian; if the file is non-free, it must not
be in the source package in Debian.

-- 
 \ “I must say that I find television very educational. The minute |
  `\   somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book.” |
_o__)—Groucho Marx |
Ben Finney


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Re: Non-freeness of the AFL v3.0

2014-11-11 Thread Francesco Poli 
On Thu, 06 Nov 2014 23:39:28 +0100 Florian Weimer wrote:

> * Francesco Poli:
[...]
> > Could you please write a (short, but reasoned) point-by-point rebuttal
> > of my license analysis?
> 
> 

Hello Florian,
thanks for taking the time to write a rebuttal.

> 
> I think it is fair to interpret “available documentation” in the
> context of the Original Work and the modifications made.  It is
> similar to the build scripts requirement in the GPLv3.

Maybe, but you'll probably agree that it is not crystal clear...

> 
> You have confused “Licensor” and the licensee (“You”).

Actually, I did write that the absence of a requirement *for the
licensee* to distribute source could weaken my concerns about the
definition of source.

> 
> Clause 5 is mostly a NOP, and certainly not comparable at all to the
> Afferro GPL because the AFL is not a copyleft license.

Its potential harm may be not comparable to that of the Affero GPL v3
restriction, but I am still concerned that the clause may mean one has
to obtain express license acceptance assent from remote users.

> 
> Clause 6 can be misused, but we can deal with that if ad when it
> happens.

Yes, that's more or less what Andrew Suffield said and I agreed with
him.

> 
> Clause 9 is indeed unclear.  Based on Larry Rosen's comments, it may
> refer to the acceptance of the umbrella/aggregation license terms
> during the installation process of some distributions.

If I understand what you mean, this umbrella license acceptance step is
something that the current debian-installer does not enforce (and, just
to be clear, I would be against any proposal to implement such a step).

Anyway, I am not convinced that Larry Rosen was talking about this kind
of umbrella license acceptance step. He seems to think that the Debian
Project is behaving correctly, but

 a) he seems to make extravagant statements (such as the one quoted by
Walter [1])

 b) he speaks for himself as author of the license text; his
interpretation may be the "canonical" one, but it won't be
necessarily followed by all the copyright holders

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2014/11/msg3.html

> 
> Your remaining points are controversial (you already said so).

Please note that  "controversial" != "necessarily false"  .

You seem to imply that, when some people consider a clause to be
non-free, while some others consider it acceptable, the Debian Project
should necessarily follow the latter opinion, and neglect the former.

I would say that the opposite should be done in many cases, to stay on
the safe side...


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Re: YaBB Public License

2014-11-11 Thread Francesco Poli 
On Fri, 07 Nov 2014 17:14:48 +1100 Riley Baird wrote:

> Hi -legal!

Hello Riley!

> 
> There is some forum software called YaBB which is released under the
> "YaBB Public License". It is evidently non-free, but I want to convince
> them to change it.

I hope you are going to persuade them to adopt a well-known and clearly
DFSG-free license (such as the GNU GPL v2, which is apparently the base
from which they derived their non-free "YaBB Public License").

> I've made a list of problems that I've found, but
> before I ask upstream to change the license, can someone please make
> sure that I haven't missed any?

I have just read through the license text and I haven't spotted any
further issues, besides the ones you mentioned, except for one:
the license text is clearly derived (in part) from the GNU GPL v2 text.

Creating a modified version of the GPL is permitted [1] by the FSF, but the
preamble has to be dropped (but it was not!) and the
instructions-for-use have to be modified to not mention GNU (but they
were not modified enough!).
Only the requirement to change the license name seems to be complied with.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL

[...]
> Thanks,
[...]

You're welcome and good luck with your persuading effort!
Bye.

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Re: Scope of Creative Commons ShareAlike licensing for game assets

2014-11-11 Thread Bas Wijnen 
On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 10:53:30AM +0100, b...@debian.org wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 11:55:40AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> > Nils Dagsson Moskopp  writes:
> > > Developers often point to the music they used for the reason behind
> > > that and claim that the scope of the Creative Commons ShareAlike
> > > licensing requires that code must also be licensed CC BY-NC-SA, thus
> > > definitely non-free according to DFSG and FSF criteria.
> > 
> > This would be a question of whether one (part of the) work constitutes a
> > “derived work” of the prior one. If a jurisdiction would rule that the
> > answer is affirmative, then yes, the derived work must comply with the
> > license conditions of the prior work.
> 
> Alternatively, you can point out how many GPL'd games are using CC
> BY-SA music, while the licenses are incompatible, and the music was
> composed independently of the project:

Yes, and aside from that, you can suggest them to dual-license their
code.  If the GPL (or whatever free license they choose) is incompatible
with the art and can therefore not be used (which I don't believe to be
true), it still allows you to get rid of the problematic art and use the
GPL license anyway.

In other words, if they are worried about their code becoming
non-distributable if they don't license it under a specific license,
suggest that instead of _changing_ the license, they can _add_ a
license.  So it's CC-BY-SA-NC just to be sure, but also GPL for the
parts that allow it.

> SunRider is describing themselves as "a 100% free game which is open
> source, DRM-free, and free to modify and use for all personal and
> non-commercial purposes" (http://sunrider-vn.com/main/donate/) so even
> if their repo says "NC" (https://github.com/vaendryl/Sunrider) I
> believe they are good-faith'd.

Eh, no...  "For all personal and non-commercial purposes" sounds like
they really intend to be non-free (in the non-commercial sense).  It is
possible that they didn't apply that restriction, but merely accepted it
for parts of the artwork.  If so, they might be open to dual-licensing.

Thanks,
Bas


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Re: YaBB Public License

2014-11-11 Thread Riley Baird 
> You're welcome and good luck with your persuading effort!

I've brought up the topic here:
http://www.yabbforum.com/cgi-bin/community/YaBB.pl?num=1415772639/0

We'll see how the topic goes.


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