Establishing dialogue between the Debian project and OGC regarding Document & Software Notice terms

[Sebastiaan Couwenberg]

Because I've been unable to get feedback from Thorsten Alteholz or any
of the other FTP masters about this issue, I'm now directing this to
debian-legal in the hope we can get a dialog going between the Debian
project and the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium). I'm getting the
impression that the FTP masters are unwilling to discuss this issue
because it might constitute legal advise which is problematic in the US,
or because they only enforce the DFSG and not set the terms of its
interpretation.

A recurring problem with geospatial software in the Free Software
community and Debian in particular has been the terms of the OGC
Document Notice and Software Notice licenses. The problematic OGC
license terms were first discussed with you after the rejection of
TinyOWS [0]. The discussion triggered by the rejection raised some
issues [1] that to this day cannot be resolved because we've not been
able to establish a dialogue between the Debian FTP masters and OGC.

In February 2015 the problematic OGC licenses were discussed on the
OSGeo standards list [2], because the PyCSW project and its packaging
was affected by the same issues as TinyOWS [3]. OGC followed that
discussion and wants "to do whatever possible to ensure that OGC
licensing is not a hurdle".

OGC has provided George Percivall (CC'ed) as a contact point to discuss
the OGC license terms, and I hope we can determine the appropriate
person or team in Debian to fulfil this role on the Debian side. The FTP
masters seemed the best choice initially, but their lack of feedback on
this issue make doubt they want to help resolve this issue. If
debian-legal is also not the appropriate contact in Debian, can you
suggest who would be a good contact in Debian to discuss the licensing
issues with people from OGC?

Scott Simmons (also CC'ed) informed me [4] that they never heard back
from Debian when they tried to discuss this issue. Since I directed them
to the general ftpmaster@ contact and that didn't work out, I addressed
Thorsten Alteholz personally [5] since has was the FTP master to reject
these packages and involved in the follow-up discussion. That also
didn't work out, so now I'm trying my luck with debian-legal.

[0]
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grass-devel/2014-January/017300.html
[1]
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grass-devel/2014-January/017321.html
[2] https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/standards/2015-February/000834.html
[3]
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grass-devel/2014-November/024520.html
[4] https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/standards/2015-November/000937.html
[5] https://lists.debian.org/debian-gis/2015/11/msg00038.html

Kind Regards,

Bas

-- 
 GPG Key ID: 4096R/6750F10AE88D4AF1
Fingerprint: 8182 DE41 7056 408D 6146  50D1 6750 F10A E88D 4AF1

Re: Establishing dialogue between the Debian project and OGC regarding Document & Software Notice terms

[Walter Landry]

Sebastiaan Couwenberg  wrote:
> Because I've been unable to get feedback from Thorsten Alteholz or any
> of the other FTP masters about this issue, I'm now directing this to
> debian-legal in the hope we can get a dialog going between the Debian
> project and the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium). I'm getting the
> impression that the FTP masters are unwilling to discuss this issue
> because it might constitute legal advise which is problematic in the US,
> or because they only enforce the DFSG and not set the terms of its
> interpretation.

debian-legal does not dispense official Debian advice.  It is just a
bunch of people with experience in how Debian looks at legal issues.
So we can not give you an sort of official advice.  This applies even
to this email.  I am not empowered to give official Debian advice.

With that said, the people behind ftp-master are very busy and do not
have time for lengthy discussions of legal minutiae.  They rely on
discussions in debian-legal to sort out the issues and fix obvious
problems.

So in this kind of situation, the usual procedure is to convince
debian-legal that you have fixed the license.  Then software with that
new license get's submitted.  ftp-master then decides whether they
like the end result.

This has the unfortunate possibility that ftp-master may
disagree with debian-legal.  In practice, debian-legal has been more
conservative than ftp-master.  So if you get it through debian-legal,
it should be fine with ftp-master.

As for the specifics of this license, the original rejection for TinyOWS

  
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grass-devel/2014-January/017300.html

is, I think, clear about what the problem is.  You have to allow
modifications.  Thorsten's further rejection at

  
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grass-devel/2014-January/017321.html

also mentions the ability to freely modify.  The "Proposed Text" at

  http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OGC_XML_Schemas_and_FOSS4G_Software_Distribution

might work, but only if it is a request, not a binding requirement.
That is not clear to me.

Cheers,
Walter Landry
wlan...@caltech.edu

Re: Establishing dialogue between the Debian project and OGC regarding Document & Software Notice terms

[Ben Finney]

Sebastiaan Couwenberg  writes:

> Because I've been unable to get feedback from Thorsten Alteholz or any
> of the other FTP masters about this issue, I'm now directing this to
> debian-legal in the hope we can get a dialog going between the Debian
> project and the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium).

Thank you for your dedication to ensuring freedom for software
recipients.

I will make time later today for a better response, but for now:

* This forum, ‘debian-legal’, has no special authority nor special
  qualifications. We are a discussion forum to help the FTPMaster team,
  who *do* have that authority but are limited in their capacity to deal
  with these discussions.

* The response to situations such as you describe is, generally, “choose
  a widely-used, free software license whose conditions are already
  well-understood in the free software community”. Fortunately, this
  doesn't require special authority or qualifications to recommend :-)

-- 
 \ “If history and science have taught us anything, it is that |
  `\ passion and desire are not the same as truth.” —E. O. Wilson, |
_o__)  _Consilience_, 1998 |
Ben Finney 

Re: Establishing dialogue between the Debian project and OGC regarding Document & Software Notice terms

[Sebastiaan Couwenberg]

On 06-12-15 20:34, Walter Landry wrote:
> Sebastiaan Couwenberg  wrote:
>> Because I've been unable to get feedback from Thorsten Alteholz or any
>> of the other FTP masters about this issue, I'm now directing this to
>> debian-legal in the hope we can get a dialog going between the Debian
>> project and the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium). I'm getting the
>> impression that the FTP masters are unwilling to discuss this issue
>> because it might constitute legal advise which is problematic in the US,
>> or because they only enforce the DFSG and not set the terms of its
>> interpretation.
> 
> debian-legal does not dispense official Debian advice.  It is just a
> bunch of people with experience in how Debian looks at legal issues.
> So we can not give you an sort of official advice.  This applies even
> to this email.  I am not empowered to give official Debian advice.
> 
> With that said, the people behind ftp-master are very busy and do not
> have time for lengthy discussions of legal minutiae.  They rely on
> discussions in debian-legal to sort out the issues and fix obvious
> problems.

Thanks for the feedback. It seems debian-legal is at least a better
venue for this discussion, although not a party that OGC can have a
dialogue with.

> So in this kind of situation, the usual procedure is to convince
> debian-legal that you have fixed the license.  Then software with that
> new license get's submitted.  ftp-master then decides whether they
> like the end result.

We have chicken-and-the-egg problem here, before OGC can fix the license
we need to establish a dialogue between the Debian project and OGC to
discuss the needed changes.

> As for the specifics of this license, the original rejection for TinyOWS
> 
>   
> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grass-devel/2014-January/017300.html
> 
> is, I think, clear about what the problem is.  You have to allow
> modifications.  Thorsten's further rejection at
> 
>   
> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grass-devel/2014-January/017321.html
> 
> also mentions the ability to freely modify.  The "Proposed Text" at
> 
>   http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OGC_XML_Schemas_and_FOSS4G_Software_Distribution
> 
> might work, but only if it is a request, not a binding requirement.
> That is not clear to me.

In the PyCSW discussion a good argument was made about the OGC Software
Notice terms not being problematic for Debian, because its terms are
identical to the W3C licenses and we have files licensed under those
terms in main:

http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grass-devel/2014-November/027146.html
https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/standards/2015-February/000845.html

Are the terms of the 'W3C Software and Document Notice and License' DFSG
complaint? If so, wouldn't it be sufficient to unambiguously license the
OGC CITE tests and XSD schemas under those terms to be DFSG compliant too?

Kind Regards,

Bas

-- 
 GPG Key ID: 4096R/6750F10AE88D4AF1
Fingerprint: 8182 DE41 7056 408D 6146  50D1 6750 F10A E88D 4AF1

Re: Establishing dialogue between the Debian project and OGC regarding Document & Software Notice terms

[Scott Simmons]

Thank you for the replies, Walter and Ben. George and I are both currently in 
Australia/New Zealand, but will discuss these messages when we get to a common 
location on Tuesday!

Best Regards,
Scott

Scott Simmons
Executive Director, Standards Program
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
tel +1 970 682 1922
mob +1 970 214 9467
ssimm...@opengeospatial.org 

The OGC: Making Location Count…
www.opengeospatial.org 




> On Dec 6, 2015, at 12:47 PM, Ben Finney  wrote:
> 
> Sebastiaan Couwenberg  writes:
> 
>> Because I've been unable to get feedback from Thorsten Alteholz or any
>> of the other FTP masters about this issue, I'm now directing this to
>> debian-legal in the hope we can get a dialog going between the Debian
>> project and the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium).
> 
> Thank you for your dedication to ensuring freedom for software
> recipients.
> 
> I will make time later today for a better response, but for now:
> 
> * This forum, ‘debian-legal’, has no special authority nor special
>  qualifications. We are a discussion forum to help the FTPMaster team,
>  who *do* have that authority but are limited in their capacity to deal
>  with these discussions.
> 
> * The response to situations such as you describe is, generally, “choose
>  a widely-used, free software license whose conditions are already
>  well-understood in the free software community”. Fortunately, this
>  doesn't require special authority or qualifications to recommend :-)
> 
> -- 
> \ “If history and science have taught us anything, it is that |
>  `\ passion and desire are not the same as truth.” —E. O. Wilson, |
> _o__)  _Consilience_, 1998 |
> Ben Finney 

Re: Establishing dialogue between the Debian project and OGC regarding Document & Software Notice terms

[Ben Finney]

Sebastiaan Couwenberg  writes:

> OGC has provided George Percivall (CC'ed) as a contact point to
> discuss the OGC license terms, and I hope we can determine the
> appropriate person or team in Debian to fulfil this role on the Debian
> side.

That seems to me a strange way to approach this.

The Social Contract for the Debian Project explicitly states that works
acceptable for inclusion in Debian must not have conditions specific to
Debian.

So the Debian Project can't enter bilateral negotiations of software
freedom between a copyright holder and Debian recipients; the Social
Contract deliberately excludes that. To be acceptable in Debian, the
work's license conditions need to grant software freedoms to all,
regardless of (and prior to) the work being in Debian or not.

> The FTP masters seemed the best choice initially, but their lack of
> feedback on this issue make doubt they want to help resolve this
> issue. If debian-legal is also not the appropriate contact in Debian,
> can you suggest who would be a good contact in Debian to discuss the
> licensing issues with people from OGC?

I think it's unhelpful to be seeking some delegate as though a bilateral
negotiation is to take place.

If that's not being sought, then a simple open examination of license
conditions, and their effects on software freedom, should suffice.

We're certainly happy to discuss the effects on software freedom of a
work's set of license conditions, but ultimately with copyright law as
it stands today such a discussion can only be very one-sided. The Debian
Project can't change the license terms of the work, only the copyright
holders can do that. Discussion should be directed toward actions the
copyright holder needs to take in order to grant a license that makes
all recipients of the work free.


Sebastiaan Couwenberg  writes:

> We have chicken-and-the-egg problem here, before OGC can fix the
> license we need to establish a dialogue between the Debian project and
> OGC to discuss the needed changes.

I don't see how that's a prerequisite. The license terms are available
to examine; the Debian Free Software Guidelines and a lot of expertise
in interpreting them are available; and known free-software license
texts that are well-established are already available.

So, are we able to proceed to discuss the matter openly without the
prior condition of “establish a dialogue between the Debian Project and
OGC”?

-- 
 \ “I think Western civilization is more enlightened precisely |
  `\ because we have learned how to ignore our religious leaders.” |
_o__)—Bill Maher, 2003 |
Ben Finney

Re: Establishing dialogue between the Debian project and OGC regarding Document & Software Notice terms

[Walter Landry]

Sebastiaan Couwenberg  wrote:
> In the PyCSW discussion a good argument was made about the OGC Software
> Notice terms not being problematic for Debian, because its terms are
> identical to the W3C licenses and we have files licensed under those
> terms in main:
> 
> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-grass-devel/2014-November/027146.html
> https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/standards/2015-February/000845.html
> 
> Are the terms of the 'W3C Software and Document Notice and License' DFSG
> complaint? If so, wouldn't it be sufficient to unambiguously license the
> OGC CITE tests and XSD schemas under those terms to be DFSG compliant too?

The Software license looks fine.  It is the Document license which is
problematic.  The first link above claims that there are many files
already in Debian already under the W3C document license.  I could not
find any with a cursory search.  Do you have specific examples of
files that Debian ships that are covered by the W3C Document license?

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlan...@caltech.edu

Re: Establishing dialogue between the Debian project and OGC regarding Document & Software Notice terms

[Ben Finney]

Ben Finney  writes:

> Sebastiaan Couwenberg  writes:
>
> > I'm now directing this to debian-legal in the hope we can get a
> > dialog going between the Debian project and the OGC (Open Geospatial
> > Consortium).
>
> Thank you for your dedication to ensuring freedom for software
> recipients.
>
> I will make time later today for a better response

I will reply in full to the public ‘debian-legal’ forum, since I agree
that you've chosen an appropriate venue to discuss this. Anyone
interested in following this discussion, please subscribe
https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/>.

-- 
 \   “Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except |
  `\for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand |
_o__) knowledge.” —Erwin Knoll |
Ben Finney 

OGC work, license conditions (was: Establishing dialogue between the Debian project and OGC regarding Document & Software Notice terms)

[Ben Finney]

Sebastiaan Couwenberg  writes:

> A recurring problem with geospatial software in the Free Software
> community and Debian in particular has been the terms of the OGC
> Document Notice and Software Notice licenses.

What works are being considered for entry to Debian? What exact grant of
license does the copyright holder of those works make to recipients, and
where is that text granting explicit permission under particular license
conditions?


For context in this discussion, I had to go searching for the current
license conditions to which you're referring.

I think you mean the license conditions available currently at
http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/document> and at
http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/software>.


As of 2015-12-07, http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/document> gives
this text:

Document Notice

Public documents on the OGC site are provided by the copyright holders
under the following license. The software or Document Type Definitions
(DTDs) associated with OGC specifications are governed by the Software
Notice. By using and/or copying this document, or the OGC document from
which this statement is linked, you (the licensee) agree that you have
read, understood, and will comply with the following terms and
conditions:

Permission to use, copy, and distribute the contents of this document,
or the OGC document from which this statement is linked, in any medium
for any purpose and without fee or royalty is hereby granted, provided
that you include the following on ALL copies of the document, or
portions thereof, that you use:

1.  Include a link or URL to the original OGC document.
2.  The pre-existing copyright notice of the original author, or if it
doesn't exist, a notice of the form: "Copyright © 
Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/document (Hypertext is preferred,
but a textual representation is permitted.)
3.  If it exists, the STATUS of the OGC document.

When space permits, inclusion of the full text of this NOTICE should be
provided. We request that authorship attribution be provided in any
software, documents, or other items or products that you create pursuant
to the implementation of the contents of this document, or any portion
thereof.

No right to create modifications or derivatives of OGC documents is
granted pursuant to this license. However, if additional requirements
(documented in the Copyright FAQ) are satisfied, the right to create
modifications or derivatives is sometimes granted by the OGC to
individuals complying with those requirements.

THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED "AS IS," AND COPYRIGHT HOLDERS MAKE NO
REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, OR TITLE; THAT THE CONTENTS OF THE DOCUMENT
ARE SUITABLE FOR ANY PURPOSE; NOR THAT THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SUCH
CONTENTS WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY THIRD PARTY PATENTS, COPYRIGHTS,
TRADEMARKS OR OTHER RIGHTS

COPYRIGHT HOLDERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL
OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF ANY USE OF THE DOCUMENT OR THE
PERFORMANCE OR IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CONTENTS THEREOF.

The name and trademarks of copyright holders may NOT be used in
advertising or publicity pertaining to this document or its contents
without specific, written prior permission. Title to copyright in this
document will at all times remain with copyright holders.



As of 2015-12-07, http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/software> gives
this text:

Software Notice

Back to OGC copyright notice.

This OGC work (including software, documents, or other related items) is
being provided by the copyright holders under the following license. By
obtaining, using and/or copying this work, you (the licensee) agree that
you have read, understood, and will comply with the following terms and
conditions:

Permission to use, copy, and modify this software and its documentation,
with or without modification, for any purpose and without fee or royalty
is hereby granted, provided that you include the following on ALL copies
of the software and documentation or portions thereof, including
modifications, that you make:

1.  The full text of this NOTICE in a location viewable to users of the
redistributed or derivative work.
2.  Any pre-existing intellectual property disclaimers, notices, or
terms and conditions. If none exist, a short notice of the following
form (hypertext is preferred, text is permitted) should be used
within the body of any redistributed or derivative code: "Copyright
© [$date-of-document] Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. All Right

Re: Establishing dialogue between the Debian project and OGC regarding Document & Software Notice terms

[Ben Finney]

Sebastiaan Couwenberg  writes:

> In February 2015 the problematic OGC licenses were discussed on the
> OSGeo standards list [2], because the PyCSW project and its packaging
> was affected by the same issues as TinyOWS [3]. OGC followed that
> discussion and wants "to do whatever possible to ensure that OGC
> licensing is not a hurdle".

Glad to know that, thank you for the references.


Ben Finney  writes:

> So, are we able to proceed to discuss the matter openly without the
> prior condition of “establish a dialogue between the Debian Project
> and OGC”?

I'll assume we are good to proceed with an open discussion of the
effects of license grants, and license conditions, on software freedom.


Ben Finney  writes:

> What works are being considered for entry to Debian? What exact grant
> of license does the copyright holder of those works make to
> recipients, and where is that text granting explicit permission under
> particular license conditions?

We'll need to see the complete *grant* of license, so we know exactly
what works are entailed, what permissions are granted to recipients, and
what the complete set of license conditions is.


> As of 2015-12-07, http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/document> gives
> this text:
>
> Document Notice
>
> Public documents on the OGC site are provided by the copyright holders
> under the following license. The software or Document Type Definitions
> (DTDs) associated with OGC specifications are governed by the Software
> Notice.

It's worth noting that the “Software Notice” (below) claims to apply to
works “including software, documents, or other related items”.

So this paragraph, which claims that “Public documents on the OGC site
are provided by the copyright holders under the following license [the
OGC Document Notice license]”, leaves open the question of what is the
intended full set of license conditions: both? only one? some other set?
A clear explicit grant of license in the work would be very helpful.

> By using and/or copying this document, or the OGC document from
> which this statement is linked, you (the licensee) agree that you
> have read, understood, and will comply with the following terms
> and conditions:

That's an unreasonable condition. A free software license is not
conditional on any form of acknowledgement from the recipient.

> Permission to use, copy, and distribute the contents of this
> document, or the OGC document from which this statement is linked,
> in any medium for any purpose and without fee or royalty is hereby
> granted,

Grants permission to copy, redistribute, for any purpose and for any
fee. Good.

No permission granted to redistribute modified works. This violates DFSG
§3 “Derived Works”.

> provided that you include the following on ALL copies of the
> document, or portions thereof, that you use:
>
> 1.  Include a link or URL to the original OGC document.

If the recipient has the document, but does not have such a URL, this
clause denies their license. That's worrisome.

> 2.  The pre-existing copyright notice of the original author, or if it
> doesn't exist, a notice of the form: "Copyright © 
> 
> Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
> http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/document (Hypertext is 
> preferred,
> but a textual representation is permitted.)

The text “All rights reserved” is both legally null (copyright is
effective everywhere without that text), and immediately contradicted by
the grant of rights earlier. It should be removed, IMO.

> 3.  If it exists, the STATUS of the OGC document.

No information in this text as to how to satisfy this clause, and its
terms aren't defined. I have no idea what effect this is meant to have,
so can't judge its effect on software freedom.

> When space permits, inclusion of the full text of this NOTICE
> should be provided.

How is the “should” to be interpreted here? If it is normative, this
becomes a requirement (another condition of the license). If it's not
normative, it becomes a mere request. Best to avoid this ambiguity by
making it a clear condition or a clear request.

> We request that authorship attribution be provided in any
> software, documents, or other items or products that you create
> pursuant to the implementation of the contents of this document,
> or any portion thereof.

How does this differ from the earlier condition of attribution? If it's
reduntant, it should be removed. If it's an additional request for
attribution, it's not clear what extra is being requested.

> No right to create modifications or derivatives of OGC documents
> is granted pursuant to this license. However, if additional
> requirements (documented in the Copyright FAQ) are satisfied, the
> right to create modifications or derivatives is sometimes granted
> by the OGC to individuals complying w