Mark -
Thank you for taking the time to write up your views on the distinctions
between LiveCode Ltd's interpretation of the GPL and those of the
Drupal, Wordpress, and Joomla projects. I'm quoting it here in its
entirety because I believe it's worth a second read; IMO it represents
some of the most cogent thinking on the subject we've seen, well
expressed in the spirit of fostering a healthy ecosystem for everyone.
There is one difference between LC and Drupal/Wordpress/Joomla which is
inherent though, rather than interpretive: LC is offered under dual
license, while the others are not.
Of course that only affects the questions specific to mixing license
types, but those seem to comprise the majority of this discussion here.
In this morning's Community meeting Peter and I spent the bulk of our
time reviewing both sets of questions, those relating to GPL
interpretation and those relating to possible mixing of the license
types, and many other considerations as well. It was one of our longer
meetings, in which we reviewed the specific examples Kay,
Bramanathaswami, and others have presented.
Peter, Kevin, Mark Waddingham, and the rest of the core team have the
same goal as everyone here: an earnest embracing of open source while
also making sure the project remains sustainable for the benefit of both
open source and proprietary developers alike.
They recognize that further guidance would be useful, but as a practical
matter the conference planning is very much a key demand on their time
right now, since we're just a couple weeks from kickoff of their biggest
annual event.
So the plan at the moment is to review the use-cases presented in light
of precedent established by other GPL-governed projects, and to provide
guidance on how that applies to the position LC is in with its dual
licensing, sometime soon after the conference.
This has been a useful discussion, touching on specifics that are
important to all of us. So far, in my own view I haven't seen anything
that can't be resolved to everyone's satisfaction, so I'm hopeful that
once the core team has the conference behind them we'll be in a good
position to reach a set of guidelines that will be productive for all.
In the meantime, Mark Waddingham's earlier suggestion may suffice for now:
If your project's goal is to share source code the GPL-governed
Community Edition can be a good choice, and for any other goals the
proprietary license as we've always had is available as well.
If there's a pressing circumstance requiring immediate action with
regard to licensing, please write to support AT livecode.com and they
may be able to work out special licensing considerations for your
use-case, as they've done with their EULA terms for developers facing
unusual circumstances in the past.
--
Richard Gaskin
LiveCode Community Liaison
rich...@livecode.org
Mark Wilcox wrote:
On Fri, Jul 22, 2016, at 03:38 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
Mark Wilcox wrote:
> My concern around LiveCode over-reaching with their derivative
> work claims (which are significantly stronger than those made
> by WordPress and Drupal)
In what way(s)?
OK, it's not wise to pull too hard on this thread, because LiveCode does
potentially have an issue with people distributing stackfiles
commercially, separate from a copy of the engine.
That said, several noteworthy points exist in this regard:
1) First, the Software Freedom Law Centre - which tends to be rather
biased in attempting to push copyright law interpretations in a way
that strengthen's copyleft licenses - has only given an opinion on
WordPress themes, not plugins. That analysis suggested that the PHP
code in themes was essentially trivial, just calling a fixed set of
APIs to enable the CSS and images to be used in the right places.
It's debatable but not unreasonable to suggest that the PHP code in
themes is subject to the GPL. The SFLC specifically said that the CSS
and images were not subject to the GPL.
2) A core WordPress contributor, Mark Jaquith, publicly stated at the
time of the SFLC statement on themes that the same argument applied
to plugins as well. He has since reconsidered that opinion and isn't
so convinced about themes any more either (see his comment on this
blog:
https://enriquesthoughts.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/wordpress-is-gpl-must-your-plugin-be-as-well/
- specifically:
"Very well argued. My thinking on this matter has evolved since I wrote
my post, 3+ years ago. The thing about the GPL is that it is a legal
hack. For it to work, it relies on legal concepts like what constitutes
a derivative work. And while some plugins could unambiguously be
derivative works, I no longer think they must necessarily be so, and I
suspect the majority would not be considered derivative works (by a US
court, at least). Same goes with themes with the caveat that themes are
more likely to contain code lifted from WordPress, so they might veer
towards derivation more often than plugins do."
Proprietary WordPress plugins are extremely common and largely
tolerated. Proprietary themes do still exist but are slightly more
frowned upon.
3) Drupal modules/plugins are frequently designed to modify the way that
Drupal works. That does create some reasonable case for them being
derivative works. The reality is probably that some Drupal plugins
are derivative and some are not.
4) LiveCode is basically claiming that anything written in the language
is derivative. There is no precedent for this anywhere. Also, large
parts of the language itself are not really owned by LiveCode, it has
been previously released under more permissive licenses. Effectively
by creating a language, you create a new form of expressing creative
works. It is almost certainly not possible to copyright everything
expressed in a language. Add to this that the language is "English-
like" and a lot of the time LiveCode are trying to claim copyright
over English words... likely to be laughed out of court.
5) One of the most critical elements in a court's decision on whether or
not any use of a copyrighted work is "fair use" is the degree of
transformative nature of the work. The LiveCode engine is a general
purpose runtime designed to execute arbitrary programs, on its own it
doesn't "do" anything. The same broadly applies to any APIs it
provides. It would be very easy to argue that creating almost any app
that has a useful specific function is highly transformative of the
engine code.
6) All is not lost for LiveCode in (5) because distributing a standalone
would involve a direct copying of the entire engine, which would very
likely override the transformative nature of the use in almost every
conceivable case. However, the amount of LiveCode owned copyrightable
material in a stackfile is likely very small and the amount in a script-
only stack almost non-existent.
7) No-one can know the actual position for certain because this has
never been tested in court.
> I'd really hope to see a more enlightened policy here
Apparently some clarification would be useful.
Don't try to force the GPL on stackfiles created with the community
edition, only standalones. Encourage dual licensing or permissive
licensing. Allow the community edition users to create valuable code
that can also benefit commercial users. Even encourage them to dual
license and sell that without getting a commercial license (we're not
talking about a big market LiveCode would lose out on here). By all
means suggest that anyone building a successful business around this
practice should buy a license to support LiveCode but don't try to force
them to do so with GPL FUD.
Frankly, even with a commercial license, the idea that someone else
owns copyright over the essence of my own creative works is
abhorrent. My instinctive reaction to a tool vendor that claims that
is not to use the tool at all. What if LiveCode the company fails? I
understand very deeply the complexity and costs involved in creating
such a tool and want to see LiveCode succeed commercially. I just
think this is a terribly user-hostile way of going about it with a
very unsound legal basis.
Mark
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