license

The Third Draft

The third draft of the GPLv3 has been released. The draft is a result of feedback from various sources (general public, official discussion committees, and two international conferences held in India and Japan). The draft incorporates significant changes since the previous draft (July 2006). This draft is planned to be the penultimate draft prior to the formal release of the official GPLv3.

Changes in this draft include:

* First-time violators can have their license automatically restored if they remedy the problem within thirty days.
* License compatibility terms have been simplified, with the goal of making them easier to understand and administer.
* Manufacturers who include the software in consumer products must also provide installation information for the software along with the source. This change provides more narrow focus for requirements that were proposed in previous drafts.
* New patent requirements have been added to prevent distributors from colluding with patent holders to provide discriminatory protection from patents.

    The draft will be open for comments and discussion for sixty days. Following this the FSF will release a “last call” draft, followed by another thirty days for discussion before the FSF’s board of directors approves the final text of GPL version 3.

    Richard Stallman, president of the FSF and principal author of the GNU GPL, said, “The GPL was designed to ensure that all users of a program receive the four essential freedoms which define free software. These freedoms allow you to run the program as you see fit, study and adapt it for your own purposes, redistribute copies to help your neighbor, and release your improvements to the public. The recent patent agreement between Microsoft and Novell aims to undermine these freedoms. In this draft we have worked hard to prevent such deals from making a mockery of free software.”

    Posted on by mklang

    GPLv3 Update

    The work on version three of the GNU General Public License (Wikipedia) is moving along nicely. A news update on the progress reads:

    The second discussion draft of GPLv3 was released eight months ago, in July 2006. We had never planned to let so much time pass between public releases of the license. We felt it was important to fully discuss a few specific issues, including the recent patent deal between Novell and Microsoft, before proceeding with the process. A new discussion draft will be released on March 28 at 10:00 AM US Eastern time; it represents the outcome of those discussions, and the rationale document that will accompany it explains how we arrived at these decisions. However, we remain absolutely committed to hearing input from as much of the free software community as possible before publishing a final version of the license. We are adjusting the drafting process to make sure that everyone interested has an opportunity to make their voice heard.

    The third discussion draft will be open for comment for sixty days. Based on the feedback we receive during this window, we may publish new language from time to time for additional review. For example, if someone points out a side effect of some term that we hadn’t considered before, we may publish updated text for that section aimed at addressing the issue. These changes will be announced on the GPLv3 web site and mailing list.

    We will continue to take feedback from public comments and discussion committees as before. In addition, if there are common questions about the license, we will address those in blog posts on the GPLv3 web site. Our goal is not to preempt discussion or criticism of the draft, but rather to enhance that discussion by helping the community fully understand the text. We are also considering other ways to solicit input, which we will announce as they are planned.

    After this discussion period is over, we will publish a last call draft. That draft will be open for comment for thirty days, and the final license will be published shortly afterwards. We would like to thank everyone for their continued support during this process, and their assistance as we work to make the our licenses the best they can be.

    Read more about the GPLv3 and the progression of its development at the GPLv3 site.

    Posted on by mklang

    Creative Commons v3

    A bit late to blog about the obvious but at the same time it feels wrong not to blog about such a central event in the Creative Commons project. Anyway the news is (if you haven’t heard about it already) that CC now has released its latest versions of the license. Welcome to version 3.0.

    The latest version of the Creative Commons licenses â?? Version 3.0 â?? are now available. To briefly recap what is different in this version of the licenses:

    Separating the â??genericâ?? from the US license

    As part of Version 3.0, we have spun off the â??genericâ?? license to be the CC US license and created a new generic license, now known as the â??unportedâ?? license. For more information about this change, see this more detailed explanation.

    Harmonizing the treatment of moral rights & collecting society royalties

    In Version 3.0, we are ensuring that all CC jurisdiction licenses and the CC unported license have consistent, express treatment of the issues of moral rights and collecting society royalties (subject to national differences). For more information about these changes, see this explanation of the moral rights harmonization and this explanation of the collecting society harmonization.

    No Endorsement Language

    That a person may not misuse the attribution requirement of a CC license to improperly assert or imply an association or relationship with the licensor or author, has been implicit in our licenses from the start. We have now decided to make this explicit in both the Legal Code and the Commons Deed to ensure that â?? as our licenses continue to grow and attract a large number of more prominent artists and companies â?? there will be no confusion for either the licensor or licensee about this issue. For a more detailed explanation, see here.

    BY-SA â?? Compatibility Structure Now Included

    The CC BY-SA 3.0 licenses will now include the ability for derivatives to be relicensed under a â??Creative Commons Compatible License,â?? which will be listed here. This structure realizes CCâ??s long-held objective of ensuring that there are no legal barriers to people being able to remix creativity in the way that flexible licenses are intended to enable. More information about this is provided here.

    Clarifications Negotiated With Debian & MIT

    Finally, Version 3.0 of the licenses include minor clarifications to the language of the licenses to take account of the concerns of Debian (more details here) and MIT (more details here).

    As part of discussions with Debian, it was proposed to allow the release of CC-licensed works under DRM by licensees on certain conditions â?? what was known as the â??parallel distribution languageâ?? but this has not been included as part of Version 3.0 of the CC licenses.

    Below is a list of CC blog posts about Version 3.0:

    Getting to Version 3.0
    Version 3.0 â?? Public Discussion Launched
    Version 3.0 â?? Revised License Drafts
    Version 3.0 â?? Itâ??s Happening & With BY-SA Compatibility Language Too

    Posted on by mklang

    Britannia Rules / Britannia Sucks

    Creative Commons’ UK film competition “Mix & Mash” in association with Google UK invites short video submissions mixing and mashing digital content under the theme: Britannia Rules / Britannia Sucks .

    Remixing digital content is the basis for this competition. Digital pictures, sound or films licensed through Creative Commons and Public Domain material need to be used. Entrants can use their creativity to remix the work of others with their own. The result will be a collage of original and re-used material.

    Films will be made available online under a Creative Commons Noncommercial license. For terms and conditions, and more details go to:www.MixandMash.cc

    Posted on by mklang

    Incompatible Licenses

    This morning a short question was posed on one of the Creative Commons mailing lists (cc-community).

    I have a simple question. Why are all the Creative Commons licenses incompatible with the GPL?

    This was an excellent little question and since then the mailing list has been busy sending in responses and thoughts. Since this is an open mailing list it is ok to quote one of the answers which I found very well written and helpful in explaining this important issue. The reply comes from Greg London and is as follows:

    (broad brushstrokes follow.
    Nit-pickers need not apply)

    If you’re talking about converting
    content between the CC-SA and GNU-GPL
    licenses, then the problem is basically
    a side effect of copyleft.

    Copyleft licenses keep the content Free
    by demanding that the content and any
    derivatives are always available under
    the same license as the original.

    This prevents someone from putting more
    restrictions on the work and taking a
    version of Free content private.

    Almost counter intuitively, copyleft
    protects the content by disallowing
    someone from removing restrictions on
    the work. This could be abused by allowing
    someone to first convert the content from
    a copyleft license to a public domain license,
    and then allowing the person to create
    proprietary forks.

    So, copyleft keeps the work Free by demanding
    that the content and its derivatives must always
    be held under the same license as the original.

    Which means that if you have two copyleft
    licenses, but they have different requirements,
    they are incompatible. The GNU-GPL and CC-SA
    licenses are both copyleft. But the GNU-GPL has
    a source code requirement that the CC-SA does not.

    If you took CC-SA content and converted it to
    GNU-GPL, you would be adding a source code
    requirement to the content that did not exist
    before. And if you took GNU-GPL content and
    converted it to CC-SA, you’d be removing the
    source code requirement.

    And since both say you can’t change the requirements,
    converting between either license is disallowed.

    The idea CC is apparently working on for making
    licenses inter-operable is to put language into
    the license that allows the content to be licensed
    under the original license, or any license that is
    deemed to be similar enough, for some fuzzy definition
    of “enough”.

    They already have something like this that makes sure
    that, for example, the different language versions
    of CC-SA are compatible with each other. The way I
    understand it, they’re are going to try to use the
    same approach to expand compatibility outside of the
    CC-SA licenses.

    Since no CC license has a “source code” requirement,
    I don’t think any CC license will ever be directly
    interchangable with GNU-GPL. But they are trying to
    solve the problem of license proliferation by building
    in a mechanism that will allow all the content to be
    transferred to licenses that are deemed “close enough”.

    I hope this helps.

    You can join the list and/or read the archives.

    Posted on by mklang

    BSD license question

    Brendan Scott of Open Source Law has written and posted an interesting article on Groklaw. The article posits that this is a broad misconception about the freedoms granted by the BSD license. In particular that code licensed under the BSD is not re-licensable (after modifications to the code) under “closed source” licenses as commonly believed (article in pdf).

    From the arguments presented four consequences may be drawn

    (a) the BSD appears to require that modifications be distributed only under the terms of the BSD, and that this requirement therefore cascades down to subsequent generations of code;

    (b) the license does not appear to permit the relicensing of BSD code under the terms of any other license, at least in so far as any restrictions in other licenses would seem not to be binding;

    (c) there may be some scope for arguing that the term â??modificationâ?? to the code is restricted or limited in some fashion. However, as the license only permits redistribution of â??modificationsâ?? the BSD does not permit the redistribution of any derivative work which is not a modification;

    (d) the BSD does not have a requirement for the distribution of source code. It is not clear whether this means there is a deficiency in the Open Source Definition.

    Posted on by mklang

    Search by Colour

    Don’t you hate it when you have an image stuck in your mind? In particular a picture of a picture. Thanks to basic information overload, the internet, and not least, Flickr there are more images than I can imagine. Occasionally one of these images flashes past my screen and I think “nice” before moving along. Later I attempt to look for the picture and fail miserably.

    I try retracing my steps, thinking where I had seen it, cursing my senility and realising the picture I need has gone forever (again!). The problem is, and I think of it as a problem, that there is no really good search tool for images. Now there is a partial solution to then problem.

    The Flickr Color Selectr searches Creative Commons licensed photos on Flickr by color. My problem is that after playing with it for a little while I realised that I will now see hundreds more cool images that, a few weeks later, I will never find…

    Posted on by mklang

    Gathering of the Clan

    Right, it’s too late now to avoid it and too close to ignore it. Christmas is here. This means that it’s time for the annual gathering of the family for communal grazing, socialising and extended computer-free time. It usually looks something like this:

    Hippos by Andries license by CC

    Wherever you are and however you celebrate – have a good Christmas…

    Posted on by mklang

    Torrent BBC

    The BBC must be seen as being among the avant garde of television today. Not too long ago they opened up their archives under licenses similar to Creative Commons licenses (Look at the Creative Archive License Group). In doing this they were ahead of their time.

    Now they have decided to make â??hundredsâ?? of episodes of BBC programmes via bittorrent.

    By doing this the BBC once again show that they â??getâ?? technology. While in Sweden the term file-sharing is becoming synonymous with illegal action the BBCâ??s deal with Azareus shows that they can recognize a superior distribution system when they see one.

    The new deal means that users of the software will be able to download high-quality versions of BBC programmes, including Red Dwarf, Doctor Who and the League of Gentleman. Classic series such as Fawlty Towers will also be available through a BBC “channel”. BBC News

    Naturally the BBC is not into giving away these top titles (you didnâ??t think it would be that good â?? did you?) No, the titles will be protected by digital rights management software to prevent the programmes being traded illegally on the internet.

    The BBC might carry the nickname Auntie Beeb but all I can say is that I wish my Swedish public service relatives were as creative.

    (via Boing Boing)

    Posted on by mklang

    The Sting, or why suckers happily pay

    Much of the visible focus of the Free Software vs Proprietary Software discussion revolves around products such as the browser, or the operating system. But what really gets me depressed is the fact that my own faculty has chosen to use proprietary software (the Norwegian Fronter) as their course management system. The best thing is that none of the teachers are particularly happy with this choice. But I doubt that anyone is ever happy about software.

    But the fact that we have chosen proprietary software which we cannot develop (even if we wanted to) increases the sense of: â??No, no please let us pay for the privilege of being unhappy with software we cannot improve.â??

    UPDATE: The system our faculty uses is the Open Source system called Fronter. The fact is that we have the legal technical ability to make changes to the system. The faculty have contributed in the past (Thank you, Aleksander!). The lack of understanding about this among the teachers (me included) can only be seen as a lack of internal communication.

    Just to make sure that I maintain that unhappy feeling â?? UCLA have decided to rub salt into my wound. The UCLA have decided to adopt the Moodle as their sole course management system. Moodle is licensed under the GNU General Public License and is under active development in collaboration by universities all over the world.

    Moodle is a course management system (CMS) – a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. You can download and use it on any computer you have handy (including webhosts), yet it can scale from a single-teacher site to a 50,000-student University.

    If my own department is too dumb to see the merits of this argument then what hope is there for Free Software? People seem to want to be part of the P. T. Barnum worldview “There’s a sucker born every minute…and two to take ’em.” But why do I have to work with the ones who want to be conned and pay happily for the privilege?

    The misleading title of this post may suggest that I have an answer to this question beyond human stupidity. But I don’t – or maybe I am just tired and cranky?

    Posted on by mklang