CISST licence and DFSG

[Jochen Sprickerhof]

Hi,

as part of packaging ROS [1] for Debian, I've found a file [2] under the
CISST licence [3]. Can someone comment on the DFSG compatibility of it?

Thanks!

Jochen

P.S.: Please Cc me as I'm not on the list.

[1] http://www.ros.org/
[2] 
https://github.com/ros/cmake_modules/blob/0.4-devel/cmake/Modules/FindXenomai.cmake
[3] https://cisst.org/cisst/license.txt

-- %< full copy for reference %< --

CISST Software License Agreement

Version 1.0 (October 30, 2006)

PURPOSE

The Johns Hopkins University's Engineering Research Center for
Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology (CISST ERC) has
developed a software package ("CISST") that provides C++ libraries to
facilitate the development of computer-integrated surgery systems.
This Software License Agreement ("Agreement") covers downloads from
the CISST package maintained by The Johns Hopkins University ("JHU").
If you distribute Software (as defined below) downloaded from CISST,
all of the paragraphs of this Agreement must be included with and
apply to such Software.

Your downloading, copying, modifying, displaying, distributing or use
of any software, documentation, and/or data from CISST (collectively,
the "Software") constitutes acceptance of all of the terms and
conditions of this Agreement. If you do not agree to such terms and
conditions, you have no right to download, copy, modify, display,
distribute or use the Software.

DOWNLOADING AGREEMENT - License from JHU with Right to Sublicense
("Software License").

1. As used in this Software License, "you" means the individual
   downloading and/or using, reproducing, modifying, displaying and/or
   distributing the Software and the institution or entity which
   employs or is otherwise affiliated with such individual in
   connection therewith. The Johns Hopkins University ("JHU") hereby
   grants you, with right to sublicense, with respect to JHU's rights
   in the software, documentation, and data, if any, which is the
   subject of this Software License (collectively, the "Software"), a
   royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, make
   derivative works of, display and distribute the Software, provided
   that:

   (a) you accept and adhere to all of the terms and conditions of
   this Software License;

   (b) in connection with any copy of or sublicense of all or any
   portion of the Software, all of the terms and conditions in
   this Software License shall appear in and shall apply to such
   copy and such sublicense, including without limitation all
   source and executable forms and on any user documentation that
   includes license information, prefaced with the following
   words: "All or portions of this licensed product have been
   obtained under license from The Johns Hopkins University and
   are subject to the following terms and conditions:"

   (c) you preserve and maintain all applicable attributions,
   copyright notices and licenses included in or applicable to the
   Software;

   (d) modified versions of the Software must be clearly identified
   and marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the
   original Software; and

   (e) you consider making, but are under no obligation to make, the
   source code of any of your modifications to the Software freely
   available to others on an open source basis.

2. The license granted in this Software License includes without
   limitation the right to (i) incorporate the Software into
   proprietary programs (subject to any restrictions applicable to
   such programs), (ii) add your own copyright statement to your
   modifications of the Software, and (iii) provide additional or
   different license terms and conditions in your sublicenses of
   modifications of the Software; provided that in each case your use,
   reproduction or distribution of such modifications otherwise
   complies with the conditions stated in this Software License.

3. This Software License does not grant any rights with respect to
   third party software, except those rights that JHU has been
   authorized by a third party to grant to you, and accordingly you
   are solely responsible for (i) obtaining any permissions from third
   parties that you need to use, reproduce, make derivative works of,
   display and distribute the Software, and (ii) informing your
   sublicensees, including without limitation your end-users, of their
   obligations to secure any such required permissions.

4. The Software, as provided by JHU, was designed for research
   purposes only and was not reviewed or approved by the Food and Drug
   Administration or by any other agency. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE
   THAT CLINICAL USE OF THE JHU SOFTWARE IS NEITHER RECOMMENDED NOR
   ADVISED. Any modification or commercialization of the Software,
   whether for clinical use or otherwise, is at the sole risk of the
   party or parties engaged therein. You further agree to use,
   reproduce, mak

Re: CISST licence and DFSG

[Francesco Poli]

On Mon, 9 Nov 2015 22:39:41 +0100 Jochen Sprickerhof wrote:

> Hi,

Hello Jochen!

> 
> as part of packaging ROS [1] for Debian, I've found a file [2] under the
> CISST licence [3]. Can someone comment on the DFSG compatibility of it?

I am in a rush, so I'll leave a more thorough and detailed analysis of
the license to other debian-legal regulars. However, I would like to
highlight a few points: see below.
Please note that what I'll express are only my own personal opinions.

[...]
> P.S.: Please Cc me as I'm not on the list.

Done.

> 
> [1] http://www.ros.org/
> [2] 
> https://github.com/ros/cmake_modules/blob/0.4-devel/cmake/Modules/FindXenomai.cmake
> [3] https://cisst.org/cisst/license.txt
> 
> -- %< full copy for reference %< --
> 
> CISST Software License Agreement
> 
> Version 1.0 (October 30, 2006)
[...]
> Your downloading, copying, modifying, displaying, distributing or use
> of any software, documentation, and/or data from CISST (collectively,
> the "Software") constitutes acceptance of all of the terms and
> conditions of this Agreement. If you do not agree to such terms and
> conditions, you have no right to download, copy, modify, display,
> distribute or use the Software.

The license insists that downloading and use require acceptance of its
terms and conditions.
DFSG-free software usually refrain from restricting use or download.

[...]
>You further agree to use,
>reproduce, make derivative works of, display and distribute the
>Software in compliance with all applicable governmental laws,
>regulations and orders, including without limitation those relating
>to export and import control.
[...]

The license imposes the licensee to comply with governmental laws,
regulations and orders. This means that, if the licensee violates such
laws, he/she is also violating the license terms: this possibly adds
copyright violation penalties to the penalties already provided for the
violation of the above mentioned laws.
This is not good: a dissident should not be prosecuted for copyright
violation in some foreign jurisdiction, if he/she violated some local
laws in his/her dictatorial country...



-- 
 http://www.inventati.org/frx/
 There's not a second to spare! To the laboratory!
. Francesco Poli .
 GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82  3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE


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Re: CISST licence and DFSG

[Ben Finney]

Jochen Sprickerhof  writes:

> as part of packaging ROS [1] for Debian, I've found a file [2] under the
> CISST licence [3]. Can someone comment on the DFSG compatibility of
> it?

Thank you for including the full text of the license terms and
conditions, for discussion in this forum.

> P.S.: Please Cc me as I'm not on the list.

Done.

> CISST Software License Agreement

The text is rather convoluted and significantly more “legalese” (long,
tortuous sentences with many clauses), so I don't feel confident yet
that I could precisely judge its effects on freedom.

Some observations:

* The text tries very hard to make it an “agreement”, not a grant of
  license. (It arrogates to the copyright holder the power to deny the
  recipient even the right to “display” or “use” the work.) That is a
  red flag; software freedom is threatened if the recipient must perform
  some specific positive action to receive such freedom.

* The conditions appear to crib from other 1980s-era university license
  texts, in particular the BSD-with-obnoxious-advertising-requirement
  conditions. That requirement is especially problematic as it
  forecloses use cases that should be permitted by a free software
  license.

* The wording is very different from, and probably incompatible with,
  existing well-understood free-software license conditions. This
  exacerbates license proliferation, and makes it needlessly difficult
  for recipients to know what the effects would be of combining works
  under other licenses with works under these conditions.

* The text in part tries to permit relicensing under “proprietary”
  conditions, without defining that. It also in part tries to encourage
  recipients to grant “open source” license in their derived works,
  without defining that. Whatever else these are supposed to mean, they
  are surely in conflict, and the whole is at risk of denying the
  recipient any effective license as a result of incoherent conditions.

* Several clauses, if binding, make the work more restrictive even than
  earlier border-line problematic license texts: e.g., requiring
  acknowledgement of the absence of FDA approval, among other
  restrictionss. A simple non-binding assertion of these would be fine;
  but phrasing them as requirements, in a legal text that explicitly
  denies license unless the recipient agrees, makes this a problem for
  freedom of the recipient.


As a result of all the above, I think we should not accept a work
licensed under these terms.

The copyright holder should be strongly encouraged to instead choose an
existing, widely-scrutinised, well-understood free software license.
(Can you take on the job of that correspondence?)

Based on the apparent intentions (as far as I can parse them from the
convoluted text), I would recommend:

* If they actually want recipients to be free to make derived works and
  redistribute under non-free license terms, the “BSD with attribution
  required and endorsement forbidden” license conditions (the “3-clause
  BSD license” https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause>).

* If they actually want to encourage recipients to make derived works
  available under free license terms, then grant license “under the
  terms of the GNU General Public License, as published by the Free
  Software Foundation; either version 3 of that License or, at your
  option, any later version” https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html>.

Thank you for taking care to verify the freedom of works in Debian. Good
hunting in your efforts to resolve this issue.

-- 
 \   “… whoever claims any right that he is unwilling to accord to |
  `\ his fellow-men is dishonest and infamous.” —Robert G. |
_o__)   Ingersoll, _The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child_, 1877 |
Ben Finney 

Re: CISST licence and DFSG

[Ben Finney]

Jochen Sprickerhof  writes:

> as part of packaging ROS [1] for Debian, I've found a file [2] under the
> CISST licence [3]. Can someone comment on the DFSG compatibility of
> it?

Thank you for including the full text of the license terms and
conditions, for discussion in this forum.

> P.S.: Please Cc me as I'm not on the list.

Done.

> CISST Software License Agreement

The text is rather convoluted and significantly more “legalese” (long,
tortuous sentences with many clauses), so I don't feel confident yet
that I could precisely judge its effects on freedom.

Some observations:

* The text tries very hard to make it an “agreement”, not a grant of
  license. (It arrogates to the copyright holder the power to deny the
  recipient even the right to “display” or “use” the work.) That is a
  red flag; software freedom is threatened if the recipient must perform
  some specific positive action to receive such freedom.

* The conditions appear to crib from other 1980s-era university license
  texts, in particular the BSD-with-obnoxious-advertising-requirement
  conditions. That requirement is especially problematic as it
  forecloses use cases that should be permitted by a free software
  license.

* The wording is very different from, and probably incompatible with,
  existing well-understood free-software license conditions. This
  exacerbates license proliferation, and makes it needlessly difficult
  for recipients to know what the effects would be of combining works
  under other licenses with works under these conditions.

* The text in part tries to permit relicensing under “proprietary”
  conditions, without defining that. It also in part tries to encourage
  recipients to grant “open source” license in their derived works,
  without defining that. Whatever else these are supposed to mean, they
  are surely in conflict, and the whole is at risk of denying the
  recipient any effective license as a result of incoherent conditions.

* Several clauses, if binding, make the work more restrictive even than
  earlier border-line problematic license texts: e.g., requiring
  acknowledgement of the absence of FDA approval, among other
  restrictionss. A simple non-binding assertion of these would be fine;
  but phrasing them as requirements, in a legal text that explicitly
  denies license unless the recipient agrees, makes this a problem for
  freedom of the recipient.


As a result of all the above, I think we should not accept a work
licensed under these terms.

The copyright holder should be strongly encouraged to instead choose an
existing, widely-scrutinised, well-understood free software license.
(Can you take on the job of that correspondence?)

Based on the apparent intentions (as far as I can parse them from the
convoluted text), I would recommend:

* If they actually want recipients to be free to make derived works and
  redistribute under non-free license terms, the “BSD with attribution
  required and endorsement forbidden” license conditions (the “3-clause
  BSD license” https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause>).

* If they actually want to encourage recipients to make derived works
  available under free license terms, then grant license “under the
  terms of the GNU General Public License, as published by the Free
  Software Foundation; either version 3 of that License or, at your
  option, any later version” https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html>.

Thank you for taking care to verify the freedom of works in Debian. Good
hunting in your efforts to resolve this issue.

-- 
 \   “… whoever claims any right that he is unwilling to accord to |
  `\ his fellow-men is dishonest and infamous.” —Robert G. |
_o__)   Ingersoll, _The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child_, 1877 |
Ben Finney 

Re: CISST licence and DFSG

[Riley Baird]

> > Your downloading, copying, modifying, displaying, distributing or use
> > of any software, documentation, and/or data from CISST (collectively,
> > the "Software") constitutes acceptance of all of the terms and
> > conditions of this Agreement. If you do not agree to such terms and
> > conditions, you have no right to download, copy, modify, display,
> > distribute or use the Software.
> 
> The license insists that downloading and use require acceptance of its
> terms and conditions.
> DFSG-free software usually refrain from restricting use or download.

Is this a requirement? The Microsoft Public License states:

If you use the software, you accept this license. If you do not
accept the license, do not use the software.




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