Conflict between software freedom and trademark restrictions
Howdy all, A perennial issue in free software is: what to do about trademark restrictions? Recently on the ‘debian-legal’ forum, someone working at an organisation that produces free software made a very reasonable request. Paraphrased, the request was: Here is our GPL-licensed software, which also has a trademark; Here are the trademark terms, which we've modified to allow OS packagers to patch and redistribute it. Is that good enough to satisfy software freedom, and if not, what more do I need to ask from our lawyers to modify the terms? It rarely gets as friendly as that: someone has done a lot of work to advance the freedom of this work, and has even got trademark restrictions altered to try to reconcile them with software freedom. Here is an excerpt from my response, as a way of raising the topic for general discussion aside from that specific example. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts. =====
[…] my ideal response to this mail is "looks good, awesome!". My second ideal response is "tweak the language this way" and our lawyers are happy with that.
Trademark is a tricky area for software freedom. The software freedom of the recipient of a work includes the freedom to modify the work to any degree, for any purpose, and redistribute the result as free software. Trademark, on the other had, has a laudable but largely opposite purpose: to ensure the public can know the provenance of a product, by means of *restricting* what recipients may do with its associated mark. A trademark license author that seeks to maintain the integrity of the mark has very little scope to restrict the recipient's modifications of the work before violating the recipient's software freedoms as above. So there are few – if any – examples of generally-applicable trademark licenses that simultaneously maintain the integrity of the mark and preserve the full DFSG freedoms of the recipient. The Debian project has wrangled with this issue for the Debian trademark <URL:http://www.debian.org/trademark>, which also provides some guidance on the purpose of the license, what is and is not permitted, and how to use the mark. The openSUSE project also has a Trademark Guidelines document <URL:http://en.opensuse.org/File:OpenSUSE_Trademark_Guidelines.pdf> (is that a trademark license?) for the openSUSE mark. But notice that these still require that, for anything but a narrow class of modifications, the recipient must remove the mark if they wish to redistribute the result. If the same were true for a work being considered for inclusion in Debian, IMO it would not pass the DFSG without removing the mark. This has been done with, for example, the works from the Mozilla Foundation (Firefox is free software only in the absence of its trademark restrictions, so we have re-named and re-branded it Iceweasel; and so on for the other products under the same trademark restrictions). So these are still not examples of trademark terms in harmony with the DFSG: the only way to satisfy both, in these cases, is to remove the mark and redistribute the free-software work without the original brand. I hope that helps. Others may be able to give you a different angle, but I believe the incompatibility is still not resolved between the intent of trademark and the intent of software freedom. ===== The archived copy (Message-id: <7wehawbsfz.fsf@benfinney.id.au>) is at <URL:https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2013/07/msg00057.html>. -- \ “Even if the voices in my head are not real, they have pretty | `\ good ideas.” —anonymous | _o__) | Ben Finney
On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 12:23:08PM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
Here is an excerpt from my response
Just an excerpt? :)
as a way of raising the topic for general discussion aside from that specific example. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts.
Here's my opinion: It depends on what compromises the trademark owner is able/prepared to make. My gut feeling is that if the trademarks do not permit modification and redistribution in such a way that there is no longer any clear association with the original trademark, they belong in non-free - if anywhere. Perhaps it is possible to split the trademarks into a separate non-free Suggests/Depends package, and have the main project in main (or contrib for Depends if no placeholder graphics - assuming the trademarks are graphics - are available at the time of packaging). However, I believe some trademarks only allow permission to be applied when an application has not been patched or modified in any way. This could have the effect of compromising the four freedoms! Any trademark that makes its way into a package, where the trademark restricts how the four freedoms (and DFSG) apply to the program - should also be rejected from the main repository outright. If splitting the program up into separate packages is not permitted, throw the whole thing in non-free - until it can be repackaged with free replacements. As you might have guessed, I'm not a fan of trademarks in free software, for the reasons you have already pointed out. Given that the Debian project rejects the GNU Free Documentation License from main - a stance which I strongly disagree with - I'm surprised they consider trademarks at all for the same kind of reasoning. -Adam
Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com> writes:
On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 12:23:08PM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
Here is an excerpt from my response
Just an excerpt? :)
Yes, I excerpted only the part of general software-freedom interest (beyond the specific query that started the thread at the ‘debian-legal’ forum). I linked to the complete post if you'd like to see the rest of it.
It depends on what compromises the trademark owner is able/prepared to make. My gut feeling is that if the trademarks do not permit modification and redistribution in such a way that there is no longer any clear association with the original trademark, they belong in non-free - if anywhere.
Right. The conflict, of course, is that this completely undermines the purpose of trademark. Specifically, the purpose of preventing uses of the mark that would mislead consumers about the provenance of a product. That purpose of trademark is, in my view, of benefit to society. Yet full software freedom of the recipient is *also* of benefit to society.
However, I believe some trademarks only allow permission to be applied when an application has not been patched or modified in any way.
Some allow a limited set of modifications: only modifications necessary to incorporate the work into a larger project, for example. These still forbid modifications that alter the functionality of a program.
This could have the effect of compromising the four freedoms!
That is, on the face of it, a contradiction of two opposing purposes. I hope that it can be resolved without too much compromise of either purpose.
Any trademark that makes its way into a package, where the trademark restricts how the four freedoms (and DFSG) apply to the program - should also be rejected from the main repository outright.
Right, that's clearly what Debian needs to do. But that doesn't solve the problem, it just makes the problem someone else's — and I think it is germane to society's freedom that the problem be resolved, not merely punted.
As you might have guessed, I'm not a fan of trademarks in free software, for the reasons you have already pointed out.
I think that trademark has a significant benefit to society, which is to limit the tendencies of vendors to misrepresent their modified works as though being whatever the customer is looking for — even if that vendor has made incompatible or undesirable changes which are contradictory to what the customer would expect from the brand. Some copyright licenses attempt to clumsily use copyright law to do this, e.g. the 3-clause BSD license has as a condition that no-one may use the name of the copyright holder to “endorse or promote” the redistributed work. Other copyright licenses have explicit permission to combine the copyright license's terms with trademark terms that restrict the use of marks, e.g. the GPLv3. But those either ignore or punt the issue to trademark. The question still remains: what restrictions on the freedom of any recipient are acceptable in exchange for preventing the societal harms trademark law is designed to address? -- \ “If [a technology company] has confidence in their future | `\ ability to innovate, the importance they place on protecting | _o__) their past innovations really should decline.” —Gary Barnett | Ben Finney
On 21/07/13 13:02, Ben Finney wrote:
Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com> writes:
On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 12:23:08PM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
It depends on what compromises the trademark owner is able/prepared to make. My gut feeling is that if the trademarks do not permit modification and redistribution in such a way that there is no longer any clear association with the original trademark, they belong in non-free - if anywhere.
Right. The conflict, of course, is that this completely undermines the purpose of trademark. Specifically, the purpose of preventing uses of the mark that would mislead consumers about the provenance of a product.
That purpose of trademark is, in my view, of benefit to society. Yet full software freedom of the recipient is *also* of benefit to society.
I think that trademark has a significant benefit to society, which is to limit the tendencies of vendors to misrepresent their modified works as though being whatever the customer is looking for — even if that vendor has made incompatible or undesirable changes which are contradictory to what the customer would expect from the brand.
Some copyright licenses attempt to clumsily use copyright law to do this, e.g. the 3-clause BSD license has as a condition that no-one may use the name of the copyright holder to “endorse or promote” the redistributed work.
Other copyright licenses have explicit permission to combine the copyright license's terms with trademark terms that restrict the use of marks, e.g. the GPLv3.
The usefulness of trademarks is pointed out here, and I did not see this clearly earlier. The problem with trademarks is that it assumes that I would trust the application brand more than the people distributing the software. I would always put more trust in my distribution than any application, and if I didn't I would get the build directly from the application's official website, or grab the distribution source package and inspect the list of patches. Seems that's probably just me. :) So to summarise the benefits of trademark for a second, they might be as follows. To the company: * increased brand recognition * some clear association of a product with a company For the end user: * recognisable name (easier to discover) * brand that the user trusts All the concern seems to be on that last point - the company with the trademark wants to ensure that a quality software build is associated with the brand, but not necessarily a bad build with unsupported patches, etc. This goes against free software, hence the problem. What if there were a way in GNU/Linux distributions to easily identify unofficial builds of trademarked software to the user? Maybe have an included system that simply prompts the user to accept execution of unofficial builds on first program execution, and puts a symbol next to the application launcher to remind the user as such. Regardless of how it would be implemented, if there were some standard for trademarks in free software that required unofficial builds to set a flag that would somehow make it obvious to the user, would that solve all concerns, and enable the trademark holders to relax their restrictions for distributions which enable it? The Mozilla Corporation could then just dictate that unofficial builds that wish to use our trademarks must make it clear that the build is unofficial to the end user by doing such-and-such (which the aforementioned program would take care of automatically). I think that would probably satisfy the DFSG too.
But those either ignore or punt the issue to trademark. The question still remains: what restrictions on the freedom of any recipient are acceptable in exchange for preventing the societal harms trademark law is designed to address?
I don't know what the maximum acceptable restrictions would be, but I agree that it would be great to have some guidelines to clearly define it.
On 21/07/13 13:02, Ben Finney wrote:
I think that trademark has a significant benefit to society, which is to limit the tendencies of vendors to misrepresent their modified works as though being whatever the customer is looking for — even if that vendor has made incompatible or undesirable changes which are contradictory to what the customer would expect from the brand.
Ben, I'd be interested in your (and others) opinion on the way Trisquel have given "guidelines" for the use of their trademark (http://trisquel.info/en/wiki/trademark-guidelines). Though I'm not sure what the legal status of such guidelines are. Glenn -- sks-keyservers.net 0x6d656d65
Glenn McIntosh <neonsignal@memepress.org> writes:
Ben, I'd be interested in your (and others) opinion on the way Trisquel have given "guidelines" for the use of their trademark (http://trisquel.info/en/wiki/trademark-guidelines). Though I'm not sure what the legal status of such guidelines are.
As I wrote in the article which started these threads, I question the legal status of these also (my example was the openSUSE “trademark guidelines”). I don't have an answer there. I do note that the Trisquel “trademark guidelines” includes the trademark license terms itself, set off in a distinct section. This is thereby acknowledging that the guidelines are not coterminus with the license. -- \ “There's a certain part of the contented majority who love | `\ anybody who is worth a billion dollars.” —John Kenneth | _o__) Galbraith, 1992-05-23 | Ben Finney
Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com> writes:
Given that the Debian project rejects the GNU Free Documentation License from main - a stance which I strongly disagree with
I'm surprised by that. Both because that gets the facts wrong, and because you support the non-free FDL. The FDL is not a free license: it contains restrictions on modification and redistribution that violate the four freedoms. So any software work (using the full meaning of “software”, i.e. any digitally-encoded information) licensed under the FDL is not a free work. The name “Free Documentation License” is thereby a misnomer. The FSF's official position is that the four freedoms only apply to programs, despite the fact that this is dictating how a work will be used by the recipient and choosing what freedoms they deserve. But the way a software work is used doesn't change what freedoms the recipient deserves. A PDF is a program *and* a document; a font is a program *and* a data file; many programs contain documentation, and vice versa. Moreover, there's no justification for the copyright holder to dictate how any recipient will interpret the data stream, in order to deny some freedoms on that basis. The Debian project had a long debate on this in the first half of the previous decade. The resolution of the project in 2006-03 <URL:http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060316> is that works are free under the FDL *only* if the license grant doesn't exercise the restrictions on modification. So there are many FDL-licensed works in Debian. I happen to disagree with the Debian project on this; I think there are other clauses (e.g. the restriction on distributing a work without a copy of the license, the restrictions nominally to prevent DRM-enabled distribution) that make any FDL-licensed work non-free. -- \ “There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily | `\ escaped the chronicler's mind.” —Douglas Adams | _o__) | Ben Finney
On 21/07/13 13:22, Ben Finney wrote:
Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com> writes:
Given that the Debian project rejects the GNU Free Documentation License from main - a stance which I strongly disagree with
I'm surprised by that. Both because that gets the facts wrong, and because you support the non-free FDL.
What facts are those? I'm simply implying that analogies can be drawn?
The FDL is not a free license: it contains restrictions on modification and redistribution that violate the four freedoms.
"The four freedoms" relate to software. The 'D' in FDL is "Documentation". If I had not spelt this out already in my previous post, I would have thought you were confused with something else. There is no "need to have freedom to study how the documentation works" for a plain text file, for example. I have no problems with reading books where copyright prevents me from redistributed modified copies, etc - which is the case with the vast majority of books that can be purchased from stores and online. Documentation for a free software program is clearly a bit different - software often requires good documentation to be useful. If you modify a program that changes user behaviour (for example), it makes sense that you will also want to change the end user documentation. This freedom is clearly provided for within the FDL. There are optional non-variant secondary sections, but it is explicitly stated in the licence that a non-variant section must not cover the content matter. (Also note that it is the Debian Free Software Guidelines that are generally used as the reason to reject it from the Debian distribution - even though documentation is not software!) Having free software has logical reasoning behind it. I don't see any logic to demanding the removal of non-variant sections when these don't pose any practical problems or challenges to utilising software associated with it. There is no hindrance in anything I could imagine wanting to use documentation for if licensed under FDL - where there might be for other licenses.
So any software work (using the full meaning of “software”, i.e. any digitally-encoded information) licensed under the FDL is not a free work. The name “Free Documentation License” is thereby a misnomer.
Your definition of software is wrong, and so explains the reasoning of your objections. From Wikipedia, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software): "Computer software, or just software, is any set of machine-readable instructions (most often in the form of a computer program) that directs a computer's processor to perform specific operations." I wouldn't define music or video as software either, for the same reasons - even though these are commonly distributed on CD or DVD.
The FSF's official position is that the four freedoms only apply to programs, despite the fact that this is dictating how a work will be used by the recipient and choosing what freedoms they deserve.
Assuming by "work" you mean "software", you will have to give me an example of an actual problem (or inconvenience, even) that has been caused by documentation using invariant sections as defined in the FDL as a demonstration of why this is a problem. I don't care for the whole "I want all rights to do anything I want to anything and everything on my hard drive just for the sake of it" attitude some people have - I need to see logical arguments behind the motivation. Free software has a clear argument - I think back to the printer problem RMS had at MIT, and consider all the things that could stand in the way of RMS writing a driver to operate the device the way that he wanted. Secondary non-variant sections of software documentation just doesn't make the list. Perhaps now you also understand more clearly the analogy I was making to trademarks. Trademarks are being considered by the Debian project, even though by your own reasoning (that Wikipedia and I disagree with) they must be considered as software to be included in the Debian distribution. If they are software, then it has to adhere to the DFSG, yes? Clearly trademarks do not - they fail "no discrimination against fields of endeavor, like commercial use" for example - but yet the DFSG is happy to turn a blind eye to that. It is a clear contradiction.
But the way a software work is used doesn't change what freedoms the recipient deserves. A PDF is a program *and* a document; a font is a program *and* a data file; many programs contain documentation, and vice versa. Moreover, there's no justification for the copyright holder to dictate how any recipient will interpret the data stream, in order to deny some freedoms on that basis.
Firstly, I disagree with your assessments here. Modern PDFs can include JavaScript, although it's probably a stretch to call a PDF a software program in general. Fonts are definitely not a software program, although some software and document files such as PDFs may optionally include them. Secondly, different fonts generally provide an aesthetic (rather than functional) purpose, and do not limit the ability to read text. I can not see how not having a specific font hinders my ability to use a free software computer program. One can use Liberation fonts instead of Microsoft's Core Fonts without any practical impact, for example. Thirdly, the FDL covers documentation, as in the text - not the way the file is presented (except going so far as to ensure the text will be distributed in a readable "transparent" format). I consider this restriction to be a good thing (see below).
The Debian project had a long debate on this in the first half of the previous decade. The resolution of the project in 2006-03 <URL:http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060316> is that works are free under the FDL *only* if the license grant doesn't exercise the restrictions on modification. So there are many FDL-licensed works in Debian.
Yes, because the Debian project started to apply the DFSG to *everything* in the distribution around that time - not just software.
I happen to disagree with the Debian project on this; I think there are other clauses (e.g. the restriction on distributing a work without a copy of the license, the restrictions nominally to prevent DRM-enabled distribution) that make any FDL-licensed work non-free.
Quite surprised to hear it. The GPL3 appears to require the same thing (the license must be included), and I would have expected you to consider GPL'ed software as free software. Equally surprised about your objection to the DRM clause. I would have hoped that it was redundant due to the FDL's definition of "Transparent", but I like it - for the same kinds of reasons I like the GPL3 more than the GPL2 (which prevents tivoization - yes, more restrictions!). It ensures that you are not free to restrict somebody's freedom. This is akin to certain laws that ensure morality is enforced. In an ideal world they should not be necessary and certainly they all restrict our freedom, but clearly there are many laws which are important to have - and more will likely be added over time as new kinds of immoral behaviour is identified.
On 22/07/13 03:15, Adam Bolte wrote:
I wouldn't define music or video as software either, for the same reasons - even though these are commonly distributed on CD or DVD.
People do define music and video as "software", though: "Software means /computer instructions or data/. Anything that can be stored electronically is software, in contrast to storage devices and display devices which are called hardware." http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/software.html "soft.ware noun 2.anything that is not hardware but is used with hardware, especially audiovisual materials, as film, tapes, records, etc.: a studio fully equipped but lacking software. 3.Television Slang. prepackaged materials, as movies or reruns, used to fill out the major part of a station's program schedule." http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/software?s=t "software n 2. (Electronics) video cassettes and discs for use with a particular video system (Collins English Dictionary) software n 2. any material requiring the use of mechanical or electrical equipment, esp. audiovisual material such as film, tapes, or records. (Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary)" http://www.thefreedictionary.com/software "Definition of SOFTWARE b: materials for use with audiovisual equipment" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/software
Fonts are definitely not a software program, although some software and document files such as PDFs may optionally include them.
That depends on the format. Some fonts are instructions to a font renderer, and therefore definitely are a software program in a defined font language. Regards, Andrew -- Andrew Pam <andrew@sericyb.com.au> Manager, Serious Cybernetics http://sericyb.com.au/
Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com> writes:
On 21/07/13 13:22, Ben Finney wrote:
Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com> writes:
Given that the Debian project rejects the GNU Free Documentation License from main - a stance which I strongly disagree with
I'm surprised by that. Both because that gets the facts wrong, and because you support the non-free FDL.
What facts are those?
The Debian project does not “reject the FDL from Debian”. Some works use the FDL with a license grant that forbids modification to some parts of the work, and it is those works only which are rejected from Debian. Examples of software works under the FDL in Debian (because the Debian project considers them meeting the DFSG) include: the ‘coreutils’ documentation, the ‘aspell’ documentation, the ‘gnash’ documentation, etc. I don't consider those works free (the FDL always has restrictions that I consider violate the four freedoms). But it's factually incorrect to say that the Debian project rejects the FDL from Debian; the General Resolution 2006_01 does virtually the opposite.
The FDL is not a free license: it contains restrictions on modification and redistribution that violate the four freedoms.
"The four freedoms" relate to software.
(I assume you mean “programs” here; all digital information is software, and programs are a non-exclusive subset of that, determined by how a stream of bits happens to be interpreted.) Yes, the FSF has later made it clear they intend only programs to have those four freedoms. But I've argued that they have poor justification for doing so, and are in effect trying to determine who gets what freedoms by how the *copyright holder* dictates a work is to be used. That's quite contrary to software freedom.
I have no problems with reading books where copyright prevents me from redistributed modified copies, etc - which is the case with the vast majority of books that can be purchased from stores and online.
Good for you. I object to claims that such works are free. They are not.
(Also note that it is the Debian Free Software Guidelines that are generally used as the reason to reject it from the Debian distribution - even though documentation is not [programs]!)
Wrong. The Debian Free Software Guidelines apply to *all* works in Debian (since all digital information is software). The same freedoms are to be guaranteed to every recipient of all the works, without regard for how those works happen to be interpreted at any point in time.
Having free [programs] has logical reasoning behind it. I don't see any logic to demanding the removal of non-variant sections when these don't pose any practical problems or challenges to utilising software associated with it. There is no hindrance in anything I could imagine wanting to use documentation for if licensed under FDL - where there might be for other licenses.
So any software work (using the full meaning of “software”, i.e. any digitally-encoded information) licensed under the FDL is not a free work. The name “Free Documentation License” is thereby a misnomer.
Your definition of software is wrong
You're a language prescriptivist, then? I'm using a common definition; I acknowledge that the FSF's definition is also common, but it's far from universal. My definition, as well as being common, has the advantage that it is not dependent on how the work happens to be used at any point in time.
The FSF's official position is that the four freedoms only apply to programs, despite the fact that this is dictating how a work will be used by the recipient and choosing what freedoms they deserve.
Assuming by "work" you mean "software"
By “work” I mean a creative work: a manifestation of creative effort in some fixed form <URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_works>.
you will have to give me an example of an actual problem (or inconvenience, even) that has been caused by documentation using invariant sections as defined in the FDL as a demonstration of why this is a problem.
<URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License#Criticism> Start with the above, which has succinct explanations of the problems with the invariant sections, the DRM clause, the GPL-incompatibility, and the burdens when printing.
I don't care for the whole "I want all rights to do anything I want to anything and everything on my hard drive just for the sake of it"
I demand the four software freedoms for all published works of software (i.e. all published creative expression encoded digitally). It's why I'm in this group.
attitude some people have - I need to see logical arguments behind the motivation. Free software has a clear argument - I think back to the printer problem RMS had at MIT, and consider all the things that could stand in the way of RMS writing a driver to operate the device the way that he wanted. Secondary non-variant sections of software documentation just doesn't make the list.
Hopefully you can see the problems described and reconsider.
Perhaps now you also understand more clearly the analogy I was making to trademarks. Trademarks are being considered by the Debian project, even though by your own reasoning (that Wikipedia and I disagree with) they must be considered as software to be included in the Debian distribution.
The DFSG apply to all works in Debian, so I don't see how your analogy holds.
But the way a software work is used doesn't change what freedoms the recipient deserves. A PDF is a program *and* a document; a font is a program *and* a data file; many programs contain documentation, and vice versa. Moreover, there's no justification for the copyright holder to dictate how any recipient will interpret the data stream, in order to deny some freedoms on that basis.
Firstly, I disagree with your assessments here. Modern PDFs can include JavaScript, although it's probably a stretch to call a PDF a software program in general.
A PDF *is* executable code, an executable program for rendering a document. The entire thing is a program, and a document, simultaneously. In this, a PDF is unlike a Markdown document, which is not a program.
Fonts are definitely not a software program
This is not true at least in the USA for scalable computer fonts like TrueType fonts. They are executable, they are programs instructing the computer how to scale the type, as well as being a data file. <URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Systems,_Inc._v._Southern_Software,_Inc.>
Secondly, different fonts generally provide an aesthetic (rather than functional) purpose
Why the insistence on hard, exclusive distinctions, where these are not real? Fonts serve both aesthetic *and* functional purposes. The purpose of a bitstream is in part up to the recipient, and the recipient can (and commonly does) apply multiple purposes simultaneously.
Thirdly, the FDL covers documentation, as in the text - not the way the file is presented (except going so far as to ensure the text will be distributed in a readable "transparent" format). I consider this restriction to be a good thing (see below).
The requirement to include the FDL in printed forms of the work is a practical restriction on the freedom to produce, say, one-page brochures from a FDL-licensed work.
The Debian project had a long debate on this in the first half of the previous decade. The resolution of the project in 2006-03 <URL:http://www.debian.org/News/2006/20060316> is that works are free under the FDL *only* if the license grant doesn't exercise the restrictions on modification. So there are many FDL-licensed works in Debian.
Yes, because the Debian project started to apply the DFSG to *everything* in the distribution around that time - not just software.
Not around that time. The authors of the DFSG have made clear that it was always intended to apply to all works in Debian, because they're all software <URL:http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html>.
I happen to disagree with the Debian project on this; I think there are other clauses (e.g. the restriction on distributing a work without a copy of the license, the restrictions nominally to prevent DRM-enabled distribution) that make any FDL-licensed work non-free.
Quite surprised to hear it. The GPL3 appears to require the same thing (the license must be included), and I would have expected you to consider GPL'ed software as free software.
The GPL doesn't need to be printed along with the program when I print the program; I only need to make the terms clear to the recipient. So I'm free to print any part of a GPL-licensed work, and inform the recipient of the license terms in an out-of-band communication. This is a freedom I don't have with an FDL-licensed work.
Equally surprised about your objection to the DRM clause. I would have hoped that it was redundant due to the FDL's definition of "Transparent", but I like it - for the same kinds of reasons I like the GPL3 more than the GPL2 (which prevents tivoization - yes, more restrictions!). It ensures that you are not free to restrict somebody's freedom.
See the Wikipedia page on the FDL and criticisms of the DRM clause. It's not the intent (using the tools we have to prevent DRM is good!), it's the implementation which catches too much in its net.
This is akin to certain laws that ensure morality is enforced.
I'm learning a lot about morality and psychology, recently. We could have a long and hopefully interesting discussion on the pros and cons of legislating morality! -- \ “… 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
On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 10:41:18AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com> writes:
On 21/07/13 13:22, Ben Finney wrote: What facts are those?
The Debian project does not “reject the FDL from Debian”. Some works use the FDL with a license grant that forbids modification to some parts of the work, and it is those works only which are rejected from Debian.
I'm aware that there are exceptions. I should have clarified "rejects the FDL from main when invariant sections are used" to avoid confusion.
The FDL is not a free license: it contains restrictions on modification and redistribution that violate the four freedoms.
"The four freedoms" relate to software.
(I assume you mean “programs” here; all digital information is software, and programs are a non-exclusive subset of that, determined by how a stream of bits happens to be interpreted.)
Nope. Once again, we have a fundamental difference of opinion of what constitutes "software". I'm ignoring the sections of your e-mail that stem from this difference of opinion, since I can see no progress coming from it.
Yes, the FSF has later made it clear they intend only programs to have those four freedoms. But I've argued that they have poor justification for doing so, and are in effect trying to determine who gets what freedoms by how the *copyright holder* dictates a work is to be used.
That's quite contrary to software freedom.
I can understand the point of view that different types of works need to be protected from different kinds of attacks, and thus require different licenses, and hence different freedoms. Your concern that, say, by attaching the FDL to documentation with invariant sections might make those works inconvenient to be used in certain situations - such as printed news articles - is valid. I do not consider the restrictions to be non-free - only that there could be inconveniences when used in unexpected ways. There are reasons why FDL is not general-purpose, and these stem from offering the maximum amount of protection for freedom for the kinds of works it was designed for. There is a trade-off here, but ultimately, I expect more good than harm from the FDL.
I have no problems with reading books where copyright prevents me from redistributed modified copies, etc - which is the case with the vast majority of books that can be purchased from stores and online.
Good for you. I object to claims that such works are free. They are not.
I never made such a claim, so please don't put words in my mouth. I was clearly (so I thought) indicating that my concerns with software being free do not necessarily extend to other works.
So any software work (using the full meaning of “software”, i.e. any digitally-encoded information) licensed under the FDL is not a free work. The name “Free Documentation License” is thereby a misnomer.
Your definition of software is wrong
You're a language prescriptivist, then? I'm using a common definition; I acknowledge that the FSF's definition is also common, but it's far from universal.
When a term as important as 'software' is not clearly agreed upon, I feel that it is cause for concern. If having an authoritative definition is required to rectify the situation, so be it. I was honestly not aware of your "common definition" until this thread was brought up. I've also asked a few people around my office, and have yet to ask somebody who responds that the term 'software' includes documentation (even in digital form), audio CDs, DVDs, etc - only strong objections to this viewpoint. As Andrew pointed out, some dictionary sites suggest that the definition of software could encapsulate everything beyond computer instructions. Perhaps the most authoritative answer would be a legal definition? Have a look: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Software Alternatively, you could consider that the FSF would be an authority on the subject, since they coined the name "free software" to begin with? According to gnu.org, software manuals are not considered software and are treated differently. This is obvious anyway, given that the existence of the FDL. They also mention the term "free cultural works" which seems to more accurately describe some of what you are referring to. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
My definition, as well as being common, has the advantage that it is not dependent on how the work happens to be used at any point in time.
Your definition also has the disadvantages of being seemingly uncommon comparatively, and could be considered dangerous to important issues since it bundles together very different things.
I don't care for the whole "I want all rights to do anything I want to anything and everything on my hard drive just for the sake of it"
I demand the four software freedoms for all published works of software (i.e. all published creative expression encoded digitally). It's why I'm in this group.
It sounds to me like you should start a Free Culture group, if your demands exceed what is meant by the most commonly accepted definition of software.
attitude some people have - I need to see logical arguments behind the motivation. Free software has a clear argument - I think back to the printer problem RMS had at MIT, and consider all the things that could stand in the way of RMS writing a driver to operate the device the way that he wanted. Secondary non-variant sections of software documentation just doesn't make the list.
Hopefully you can see the problems described and reconsider.
I see there is a hindrance in certain possible edge-cases, but I remain unconvinced that the disadvantages of the FDL outweigh its advantages.
Perhaps now you also understand more clearly the analogy I was making to trademarks. Trademarks are being considered by the Debian project, even though by your own reasoning (that Wikipedia and I disagree with) they must be considered as software to be included in the Debian distribution.
The DFSG apply to all works in Debian, so I don't see how your analogy holds.
Then they should without question be denied a place in the Debian distribution.
But the way a software work is used doesn't change what freedoms the recipient deserves. A PDF is a program *and* a document; a font is a program *and* a data file; many programs contain documentation, and vice versa. Moreover, there's no justification for the copyright holder to dictate how any recipient will interpret the data stream, in order to deny some freedoms on that basis.
Firstly, I disagree with your assessments here. Modern PDFs can include JavaScript, although it's probably a stretch to call a PDF a software program in general.
A PDF *is* executable code, an executable program for rendering a document. The entire thing is a program, and a document, simultaneously.
Once again, your definition conflicts with what the legal Free Dictionary appears to be (linked above). A PDF is generally a product of a computer program - not a computer program itself. I suppose that next you're going to say that this e-mail is an executable program as well?
In this, a PDF is unlike a Markdown document, which is not a program.
How so? Because (as I said) it can contain executable code like JavaScript? Ignoring the JS issue, it can also contain fonts and compression too, but it still boils down to being a document file format and not a program.
Fonts are definitely not a software program
This is not true at least in the USA for scalable computer fonts like TrueType fonts. They are executable, they are programs instructing the computer how to scale the type, as well as being a data file.
<URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Systems,_Inc._v._Southern_Software,_Inc.>
Yep. Andrew pointed that out that in some cases there is more to them than I had expected.
Secondly, different fonts generally provide an aesthetic (rather than functional) purpose
Why the insistence on hard, exclusive distinctions, where these are not real? Fonts serve both aesthetic *and* functional purposes.
Aesthetics aren't an essential freedom. They're a nice-to-have freedom, but an entirely different kettle of fish.
The purpose of a bitstream is in part up to the recipient, and the recipient can (and commonly does) apply multiple purposes simultaneously.
Another fundamental issue is that I believe the restrictions in the FDL are possible inconveniences in certain edge-cases, that do more good than harm. You believe they render FDL-licensed works completely non-free. It's a difference in opinion that explains the differences in our reactions, so will (as before) only bother addressing the root of the problem
I happen to disagree with the Debian project on this; I think there are other clauses (e.g. the restriction on distributing a work without a copy of the license, the restrictions nominally to prevent DRM-enabled distribution) that make any FDL-licensed work non-free.
Quite surprised to hear it. The GPL3 appears to require the same thing (the license must be included), and I would have expected you to consider GPL'ed software as free software.
The GPL doesn't need to be printed along with the program when I print the program; I only need to make the terms clear to the recipient.
When you redistribute the program as printed source code (ie, text), you don't need to include the GPL license? Are you sure about that? Happy to be proven wrong. Not that it will necessarily change my opinion, mind you.
Equally surprised about your objection to the DRM clause. I would have hoped that it was redundant due to the FDL's definition of "Transparent", but I like it - for the same kinds of reasons I like the GPL3 more than the GPL2 (which prevents tivoization - yes, more restrictions!). It ensures that you are not free to restrict somebody's freedom.
See the Wikipedia page on the FDL and criticisms of the DRM clause. It's not the intent (using the tools we have to prevent DRM is good!), it's the implementation which catches too much in its net.
RMS said he would talk to a lawyer to see if it needed to be changed. It did not get changed, so presumably it is fine as is. I'm not a lawyer, so will leave that with the lawyers.
This is akin to certain laws that ensure morality is enforced.
I'm learning a lot about morality and psychology, recently. We could have a long and hopefully interesting discussion on the pros and cons of legislating morality!
Haha. Sounds fun! :) -Adam
Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com> writes:
I can understand the point of view that different types of works need to be protected from different kinds of attacks, and thus require different licenses, and hence different freedoms.
Where those “types” are determined by the copyright holder's notion of the proper purpose of the work, I fundamentally disagree. It is not just for the copyright holder to decide what freedoms the recipient deserves based on such a criterion as “the limited set of purposes I determine ahead of time are valid for this work”. The recipient is the only person whose opinion matters on what purpose a work has. The purpose to which recipients will be put is not solely in the hands of the copyright holder, and so the copyright holder wields their exclusive power unjustly if they declare that some purposes are invalid and not deserving of the freedoms granted for other purposes.
There is a trade-off here, but ultimately, I expect more good than harm from the FDL.
That represents a considerable weakening from “the FDL is a free license”: they are significantly different positions. I be convinced that it does more good than harm, while maintaining that it makes a work non-free.
When a term as important as 'software' is not clearly agreed upon, I feel that it is cause for concern. If having an authoritative definition is required to rectify the situation, so be it.
Defining the term “software” differently doesn't change the argument. The question is: are copyright holders ethically justified in granting different freedoms based on what they feel are valid or invalid purposes of a work? My definition of “software” merely makes my statements simpler: all software freedoms are deserved by all recipients of all software works, regardless of what the copyright holder thinks. Your definition requires me merely to expand that to substitute a longer phrase for “software”. It also requires dissolving illusory distinctions between “types” of works based on general, but greatly overlapping, categories of “purpose”. That's a phantom, and attempting to divide freedoms based on that criterion is going to be both futile and unjust. Differing over the definition of “software” doesn't change the issue.
It sounds to me like you should start a Free Culture group, if your demands exceed what is meant by the most commonly accepted definition of software.
The Free Culture definition <URL:http://freedomdefined.org/Definition> is a good common ground, I think.
Once again, your definition conflicts with what the legal Free Dictionary appears to be (linked above). A PDF is generally a product of a computer program - not a computer program itself.
You're aware that PDF data is an executable program in (a limited subset of) the PostScript programming language? Every PDF document is rendered by *running the program* in an interpreter. Every PDF is both a document and a program.
I suppose that next you're going to say that this e-mail is an executable program as well?
No, because it is not normally executed in order to render it. A PDF *must* be executed to render it. Every PDF is both a program and a document. PDFs are far from alone in being software that is used commonly as a program and as something else. Programs written in literate programming languages; manuals generated mechanically from code introspection; the list goes on. These are not uncommon cases. So trying to divide the software world into *exclusive* categories, of programs versus other things, is doomed to fail. It is for that reason (and others) a poor criterion on which to choose to limit the recipient's freedoms.
Why the insistence on hard, exclusive distinctions, where these are not real? Fonts serve both aesthetic *and* functional purposes.
Aesthetics aren't an essential freedom. They're a nice-to-have freedom, but an entirely different kettle of fish.
You can dismiss aesthetics, and I might even agree (or not). That misses the point: that the work *also* has a functional purpose, which means it is unjust to decide the recipient doesn't deserve the freedoms for functional works.
The purpose of a bitstream is in part up to the recipient, and the recipient can (and commonly does) apply multiple purposes simultaneously.
Another fundamental issue is that I believe the restrictions in the FDL are possible inconveniences in certain edge-cases, that do more good than harm. You believe they render FDL-licensed works completely non-free.
Not “completely non-free”. But it violates the fundamental software freedoms, and hence enough to reject FDL-licensed works from the free world. -- \ “The shortest distance between two points is under | `\ construction.” —Noelie Alito | _o__) | Ben Finney
On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 3:15 PM, Ben Finney < ben+freesoftware@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com> writes:
Once again, your definition conflicts with what the legal Free Dictionary appears to be (linked above). A PDF is generally a product of a computer program - not a computer program itself.
You're aware that PDF data is an executable program in (a limited subset of) the PostScript programming language? Every PDF document is rendered by *running the program* in an interpreter. Every PDF is both a document and a program.
I suppose that next you're going to say that this e-mail is an executable program as well?
No, because it is not normally executed in order to render it. A PDF *must* be executed to render it. Every PDF is both a program and a document.
Yes, it is. Reading an email (or any text) is conceptually in no way different than reading a PDF. (that is: unless you chose to read it straight from the storage media). Take for instance an "HTML mail" - isn't there need to be an "HTML interpreter" to read the email? (well, of course you call it "renderer" or "formatter", but in essence this is what the "HTML formatter" will do: it will "interpret" the HTML of your email body to render your "human readable" image of the email). Mind you: while PS/PDF is "formatted" as "scripts in an imperative programming language" (a Forth derivative), it doesn't make any "scripts in a descriptive programming language" a "non-program" (that is: data only). I argue that, in essence, the read an ASCII text on the display, there need to be an "ASCII interpreter" to transform the ASCII/ANSI bytes of the text in the groups of lit pixels which make the sense to you (a human) as "readable glyphs". BTW, I argue the same is valid in reverse: the source-code of an application is nothing but data, unless you choose to "launch it into execution" - without he help of the OS (and potentially the "build tools"), the source-code is in no way different than a "piece of literature". For example, if one chooses so, one may write a "C to music-score transpiler<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-to-source_compiler>" and interpret that source code as music (and consider the source code as "interpretative art"). Where does it let the FDL issue at hand? I don't know... but my point is: probably one need to abandon the track of "what you technically need to consume those bytes" and substitute it with (or, at least, supplement it with) considerations based on the "nature of the intended consumption" to deal with the "documentation vs application" differences. Adrian
On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 04:50:51PM +1000, Adrian Colomitchi wrote:
On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 3:15 PM, Ben Finney < ben+freesoftware@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com> writes:
Once again, your definition conflicts with what the legal Free Dictionary appears to be (linked above). A PDF is generally a product of a computer program - not a computer program itself.
You're aware that PDF data is an executable program in (a limited subset of) the PostScript programming language? Every PDF document is rendered by *running the program* in an interpreter. Every PDF is both a document and a program.
I suppose that next you're going to say that this e-mail is an executable program as well?
No, because it is not normally executed in order to render it. A PDF *must* be executed to render it. Every PDF is both a program and a document.
Yes, it is. Reading an email (or any text) is conceptually in no way different than reading a PDF. (that is: unless you chose to read it straight from the storage media). Take for instance an "HTML mail" - isn't there need to be an "HTML interpreter" to read the email? (well, of course you call it "renderer" or "formatter", but in essence this is what the "HTML formatter" will do: it will "interpret" the HTML of your email body to render your "human readable" image of the email).
Mind you: while PS/PDF is "formatted" as "scripts in an imperative programming language" (a Forth derivative), it doesn't make any "scripts in a descriptive programming language" a "non-program" (that is: data only). I argue that, in essence, the read an ASCII text on the display, there need to be an "ASCII interpreter" to transform the ASCII/ANSI bytes of the text in the groups of lit pixels which make the sense to you (a human) as "readable glyphs".
BTW, I argue the same is valid in reverse: the source-code of an application is nothing but data, unless you choose to "launch it into execution" - without he help of the OS (and potentially the "build tools"), the source-code is in no way different than a "piece of literature". For example, if one chooses so, one may write a "C to music-score transpiler<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-to-source_compiler>" and interpret that source code as music (and consider the source code as "interpretative art").
Where does it let the FDL issue at hand? I don't know... but my point is: probably one need to abandon the track of "what you technically need to consume those bytes" and substitute it with (or, at least, supplement it with) considerations based on the "nature of the intended consumption" to deal with the "documentation vs application" differences.
Those are good points, and I feel that your conclusion is quite reasonable. However, making assumptions about the nature of the intended consumption is one of the fundamental disagreements Ben seems to have with the FDL.
Adrian Colomitchi <acolomitchi@gmail.com> writes:
On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 3:15 PM, Ben Finney < ben+freesoftware@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com> writes:
Once again, your definition conflicts with what the legal Free Dictionary appears to be (linked above). A PDF is generally a product of a computer program - not a computer program itself.
You're aware that PDF data is an executable program in (a limited subset of) the PostScript programming language? Every PDF document is rendered by *running the program* in an interpreter. Every PDF is both a document and a program.
I suppose that next you're going to say that this e-mail is an executable program as well?
No, because it is not normally executed in order to render it. A PDF *must* be executed to render it. Every PDF is both a program and a document.
Yes, it is. Reading an email (or any text) is conceptually in no way different than reading a PDF. (that is: unless you chose to read it straight from the storage media).
Rendering a PDF involves executing the program written in the PDF programming language (a PostScript subset). Rendering an email message does not involve executing the message. A PDF embodies a program. An email message does not.
Take for instance an "HTML mail" - isn't there need to be an "HTML interpreter" to read the email?
Yes. HTML is not a programming language (though it can contain and/or reference programs in the ECMAScript language, this is distinct from HTML). Rendering an HTML document does not entail executing the document as a program.
Mind you: while PS/PDF is "formatted" as "scripts in an imperative programming language" (a Forth derivative), it doesn't make any "scripts in a descriptive programming language" a "non-program" (that is: data only).
Righht. A PostScript document or a PDF document is always a data stream *and* a program *and* a document. It's futile to pretend one can say it is exactly one of those and thereby exclude it from the other categories.
I argue that, in essence, the read an ASCII text on the display, there need to be an "ASCII interpreter" to transform the ASCII/ANSI bytes of the text in the groups of lit pixels which make the sense to you (a human) as "readable glyphs".
Not all interpreters are interpreting executable programs as input. Your “ASCII interpreter” is not treating the input document as a program. It is parsing the document's structure and content, but not executing the result as a program. A plain-text email message is data, and is a document, but is not a program. This is distinct from a PDF renderer, which takes the input document and parses its structure and content, but then must go further and execute the result as a program in order to render to output. A PDF data stream is data, and is a document, but is not a program. Your argument attempts to erase the distinction between program and non-program. I don't accept that; “program” has a useful definition, and some data streams are not normally programs while others are.
Where does it let the FDL issue at hand? I don't know... but my point is: probably one need to abandon the track of "what you technically need to consume those bytes" and substitute it with (or, at least, supplement it with) considerations based on the "nature of the intended consumption" to deal with the "documentation vs application" differences.
Whose intention? Does the intent of the recipient count? I argue so. If so, the copyright holder is not justified in unilaterally foreclosing some interpretations of the work. -- \ “Crime is contagious… if the government becomes a lawbreaker, | `\ it breeds contempt for the law.” —Justice Louis Brandeis | _o__) | Ben Finney
On 23/07/13 10:26, Ben Finney wrote:
This is distinct from a PDF renderer, which takes the input document and parses its structure and content, but then must go further and execute the result as a program in order to render to output.
Actually that's not so clear; as I understand it, the subset of Postscript selected for PDF intentionally omits all flow control so that it is no longer Turing-complete and can be parsed and rendered without recourse to "execution" as such. Regards, Andrew -- Andrew Pam <andrew@sericyb.com.au> Manager, Serious Cybernetics http://sericyb.com.au/
Ben Finney <ben+freesoftware@benfinney.id.au> writes:
Not all interpreters are interpreting executable programs as input. Your “ASCII interpreter” is not treating the input document as a program. It is parsing the document's structure and content, but not executing the result as a program. A plain-text email message is data, and is a document, but is not a program.
This is distinct from a PDF renderer, which takes the input document and parses its structure and content, but then must go further and execute the result as a program in order to render to output. A PDF data stream is data, and is a document, but [is a program].
The point above was marred by my typo, negating a phrase. Fixed now.
Your argument attempts to erase the distinction between program and non-program. I don't accept that; “program” has a useful definition, and some data streams are not normally programs while others are.
So my point is not that these distinctions don't exist; clearly there are categories of the purpose to which a work is put, and those categories include programs, audio streams, graphic images, videos, text documents, markup documents, databases, etc. Rather, my point is that these categories are not exclusive. Works commonly inhabit several of these categories simultaneously, and it's clearly false to say that no document is a program, or vice versa.
From that it follows that it's unjust to deny the freedoms that accrue for functional use of a work, merely because the copyright holder doesn't think it has functional use.
But even if the categories were exclusive, so what? Yes, there are some works which are clearly not programs *now*. Why deny a recipient the freedom to derive a program from a non-program? On what basis should the copyright holder wield their power to declare that such-and-such work can never have a functional purpose in any derived form, and thus no recipient deserves the freedoms accruing to functional purposes? With or withough exclusive purpose-based categories, it is unjust to deny the software freedoms to any recipient of any software work merely on the basis of how the copyright holder thinks the work should be used. -- \ “For myself, I am an optimist — it does not seem to be much use | `\ being anything else.” —Winston Churchill, 1954-11-09 | _o__) | Ben Finney
On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 11:30 AM, Ben Finney < ben+freesoftware@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
Ben Finney <ben+freesoftware@benfinney.id.au> writes:
Rather, my point is that these categories are not exclusive. Works commonly inhabit several of these categories simultaneously, and it's clearly false to say that no document is a program, or vice versa.
Glad this point has been cleared between us, so that we don't waste more time in on the specific details of "what HTML or an XSLT script or a LISP<http://xkcd.com/297/>program is"
From that it follows that it's unjust to deny the freedoms that accrue for functional use of a work, merely because the copyright holder doesn't think it has functional use.
My argument is: "since one cannot make a clear distinction between <it's a program> or <it's just data>", then "what the computer does to render/obtain the desired result" should NOT be a criterion in judging the copyrights (or, for the matter at hand, copylefts - still based on copyright laws), or at the very least *should not be the sole or even the main criterion in balancing the rights of the copyright holder and the rights of the consumer*. (mind you: to make the thing seven more interesting, the "copyright holder" and the "consumer" aren't the only parts of the issue. Have a look over the "author's rights"<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors'_rights#Distinction_between_common_law_copyright_and_civil_law_authors.E2.80.99_rights>and tell me what you think Mark Twain would have the right to say and be listened/obeyed about the "sanitization"<http://morallowground.com/2011/01/04/nigger-removed-223-times-from-new-edition-of-mark-twain-classics/>of HuckFinn)
But even if the categories were exclusive, so what? Yes, there are some works which are clearly not programs *now*. Why deny a recipient the freedom to derive a program from a non-program?
On what basis should the
copyright holder wield their power to declare that such-and-such work can never have a functional purpose in any derived form, and thus no recipient deserves the freedoms accruing to functional purposes?
*But nobody can interdict this. Copyright protects just the form of expression, everything goes as long as you don't try to distribute another * *form of expression** too close to the original!* (and, mind you, the format of expression is not the same as the form of expression). Examples: 1. ask Oracle how well it went for it when trying to enforce copyright laws over the Java API? 2. When younger, I took the "RTF streams" containing the "Motif Widget API specification" and "derived" a set of C++ headers to "wrap the widgets" in a form of expression I needed at that time - it is still entirely legal even today. 3. there are a number of (OSS no less) ports of some vintage games which implement the whole game logic but are not playable without the artwork of the original game... if, as a consumer, you have those artworks, the game play is almost indistinguishable from the original. While the above are very clear-cut examples, I argue *that especially in the digital world* nobody can stop anyone to derive* a new piece of documentation* from an already existing one. Letting aside the obvious case of "just write another book about how the program works" (one of many examples here <http://oreilly.com/perl/>), there are other ways that allows the "consumers" to benefit from derived works without breaking any law. Here's an example: the "deriver" publishes her modifications as "a diff over a certain edition/format of the original" together with a "script" that warns the consumer about "you are about to modify an original work. You can consume the derived work by yourself, but by doing so you *don't get additional rights to distribute* the results of the conversion". 1. the "copyright holder" of the original work cannot (or should not be able to) stop the "deriver" to publish her/his own work. It is a different form of expression all together (an exception to this is the DCMA-like laws. Fortunately, there are many jurisdictions in which DCMA-like laws do not apply, are prohibited to be applied against the "end user" or even against competition<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-02/copyright-can-t-block-software-reverse-engineering-court.html> Even so, we were discussing in a context in which DCMA is a moot point, isn't it?) 2. the copyright holder cannot stop the consumer to do what he pleases with her/his own copy of the original work (as long as it is not distributed further outside the original license) In the "physical world", the above is absolutely equivalent with the "deriver" saying "Here's my set of margin/foot/endnotes and errata to the X edition of the Y book published by Z. I give it to you as a set of transparent masks for you to apply over the original pages, they'll black out the modified text and replace it with mine, either in-place or as margin notes with the page space is a constraint". The only difference in the digital world: the graphical space is no longer a constraint, the "derivation" (patching) can be applied directly. Except for the means to do it, the two operations are equivalent.
With or withough exclusive purpose-based categories, it is unjust to deny the software freedoms to any recipient of any software work merely on the basis of how the copyright holder thinks the work should be used.
"Derived works" are not necessarily good (e.g. "better or more appropriate/fit-to-purpose than the original work" or "more or less restrictive against software freedom") - they are just derived works. For instance, I don't agree with the above mentioned "sanitization" of HuckFinn; as a "consumer", I'm glad that I have an old edition (as old as 1932 for that matter. Smells and feels gorgeous on touch - whatever you say, for me nothing beats a printed book). Now, if only the "copyright holder" is allowed to exist (and the author(s) would have nothing to say), who protects my right as a consumer to access the *original* *work of the author*? My point here: there's not clear-cut when the "restrictions" are bad and when they are beneficial. Given the fact that today is possible for other authors to produce derived * expressions* significantly different from the original *without huge costs*, my POV: 1. I* *don't see the ability of an author to specify restrictions on what can be done with the documentation *as a serious attack to the openness of the said documentation*. 2. the "is a program/is just data" criterion carries a low relevance in assessing the *openness of software* and the *openness of a documentation* Adrian
Adrian Colomitchi <acolomitchi@gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 11:30 AM, Ben Finney <ben+freesoftware@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
From that it follows that it's unjust to deny the freedoms that accrue for functional use of a work, merely because the copyright holder doesn't think it has functional use.
My argument is: "since one cannot make a clear distinction between <it's a program> or <it's just data>", then "what the computer does to render/obtain the desired result" should NOT be a criterion in judging the copyrights (or, for the matter at hand, copylefts - still based on copyright laws), or at the very least *should not be the sole or even the main criterion in balancing the rights of the copyright holder and the rights of the consumer*.
This quote from Eben Moglen is relevant: “We can't depend for the long run on distinguishing one bitstream from another in order to figure out which rules apply.” —Eben Moglen, _Anarchism Triumphant_, 1999 I'm arguing, and it appears you agree, that we can't depend on some fixed decision about which purposes are valid for a bitstream in order to determine which freedoms apply indefinitely for future recipients of it. -- \ “Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of | `\ ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort.” | _o__) —Douglas Adams, _The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul_, 1988 | Ben Finney
On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 2:12 PM, Ben Finney < ben+freesoftware@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
Adrian Colomitchi <acolomitchi@gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 11:30 AM, Ben Finney < ben+freesoftware@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
From that it follows that it's unjust to deny the freedoms that accrue for functional use of a work, merely because the copyright holder doesn't think it has functional use.
My argument is: "since one cannot make a clear distinction between <it's a program> or <it's just data>", then "what the computer does to render/obtain the desired result" should NOT be a criterion in judging the copyrights (or, for the matter at hand, copylefts - still based on copyright laws), or at the very least *should not be the sole or even the main criterion in balancing the rights of the copyright holder and the rights of the consumer*.
This quote from Eben Moglen is relevant:
“We can't depend for the long run on distinguishing one bitstream from another in order to figure out which rules apply.” —Eben Moglen, _Anarchism Triumphant_, 1999
I'm arguing, and it appears you agree, that we can't depend on some fixed decision about which purposes are valid for a bitstream in order to determine which freedoms apply indefinitely for future recipients of it.
Yes, I agree. But... as with any "negative proof/theorem", it only says: "It's impossible to use X to guarantee Y". It is not a proof for "But there exists another Z - be it simple or not - that will guarantee Y". Just to make my point clear, I have some subsequent assertions (one may call it "conjectures" to go along with math terminology, I'm not offering a demonstration for them): 1. there is a distinction between documentation and application software, even if the distinction is not located in the "bitstreams". Consequence: I cannot agree with the assertion of "one can treat documentation the same way as one can treat application (source) code; therefore, why does one need FDL when GPL is already there?" 2. due to the dynamic nature of the "copyright vs consumer rights balancing act", there exists no* **fixed/static set of rules* one can use to say: "For any software documentation A, the use GNU FDL hurts the society by denying the maximal freedom of consumers over A" - for some A's FDL will be better, for other A's will be worse. In other words, I see the assertion of "FDL is not as free for documentation as GPL is for application software" as irrelevant - there's already enough freedom inside FDL to make it a solution, even if there's no optimum to reach in in all and every cases. 3. there is *no critical need for a **clear cut, fixed/static set* *of rules * to guarantee the freedom of software documentation (in general, and much less for the one released under FDL); the current set of restrictions is sufficiently lax to always allow *affordable workarounds* around any particular cases (that is: I find the current copyright legislation as *fair enough* for software documentation - with the notable exception of DMCA-like laws, which have limited applicability to documentation anyway). In other words, I can't see a strong reason to search for an "*unified* *free license for everything*" (as a parallel to the "unified theory of everything") that guarantees, under the *same terms*, equal liberties/freedom for documentation and application software alike. Adrian
Adrian Colomitchi <acolomitchi@gmail.com> writes:
1. there is a distinction between documentation and application software, even if the distinction is not located in the "bitstreams". Consequence: I cannot agree with the assertion of "one can treat documentation the same way as one can treat application (source) code; therefore, why does one need FDL when GPL is already there?"
That's not an assertion, it seems to be phrased as an assertion. Nevertheless, it *is* incumbent on those proposing the FDL to show why a more restrictive license is appropriate. I've shown that “because the copyright holder decrees that this work won't be used as anything but a document” is not a justification for those restrictions.
In other words, I see the assertion of "FDL is not as free for documentation as GPL is for application software" as irrelevant
The point is rather that the *self-same work* can be both program and documentation – either right now, or in some future derived work. And the copyright holder can't decree when that might be the case in some derived work, so shouldn't be making that decision for future recipients in order to restrict their freedoms. -- \ “Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what | `\ mnemonic means, you've got a problem.” —Larry Wall | _o__) | Ben Finney
On Tue, 2013-07-23 at 23:09 +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
Adrian Colomitchi <acolomitchi@gmail.com> writes:
1. there is a distinction between documentation and application software, even if the distinction is not located in the "bitstreams". Consequence: I cannot agree with the assertion of "one can treat documentation the same way as one can treat application (source) code; therefore, why does one need FDL when GPL is already there?"
That's not an assertion, it seems to be phrased as an assertion. Nevertheless, it *is* incumbent on those proposing the FDL to show why a more restrictive license is appropriate.
I've shown that “because the copyright holder decrees that this work won't be used as anything but a document” is not a justification for those restrictions. The way I see the things: the protection of the copyright are supporting the restrictions imposed by the author *only when* the work is used as a document(ation), and not *because* the author decrees it has to be used as a documentation.
In other words, I see the assertion of "FDL is not as free for documentation as GPL is for application software" as irrelevant
The point is rather that the *self-same work* can be both program and documentation – either right now, or in some future derived work. And the copyright holder can't decree when that might be the case in some derived work, so shouldn't be making that decision for future recipients in order to restrict their freedoms.
Still irrelevant in my opinion (as the argumentation hinges on the "format/encoding" and not targeting the "form of expression"). The "form of expression as a documentation" is protected by the copyright law and the copyright law will protect it no matter the *format* (bitmap or PS/PDF or printed or anything). But any other works derived from the said documentation that are used *for other purposes* won't be restricted by copyright law, no matter the license under which the original documentation is published. The copyright law will not protect the original documentation again a whole heap of actions. One can freely: a. use the documentation to write a book about the documented product. Why, you are even allowed to include parts of the original document, as long as it's clear that you cite/quote from the original doc! b. parse the documentation and derive a source code for your needs - note: this assumes the document is indeed *released as a documentation* and not a source code listing; c. print it as Postcript and use the subroutines defined by the documentation in the "Postscript dictionary" to compute the first 1000 digits of PI. Or change the data those subroutines applies on to draw a huge outline of the classical pose of Marilyn Monroe above the subway grate in the "The 7 years itch" movie. The copyright law will *not* protect the Postcript code, only the rendering of that postscript that results in the original documentation. d. use the documentation to "sing it" (make a musical arrangement and transform it in an 10-hours boring opera; or "transpile" the letters or words in the documentation on notes/rhythm/instruments somehow and distribute it as a sheet music) e. print the documentation and use the paper to build a huge origami statue. Now, you may say the above examples are far fetched and quite distant from scenarios in which the freedom of the reader is *unfairly* constrained, and you are likely to be right (except maybe points a. and b.). If so, please feel free to add to this conversation some scenarios in which the freedom of the recipient is seriously and negatively impaired and this gives an *unfair* advantage to the author. I'm not saying such cases don't exist, I simply put out the "conjecture" that such cases are rare and can easily be worked-around inside the current copyright laws; so much so that the issue of finding a better substitute for GNU FDL may not worth the effort for an overreaching crusade. Adrian
On 24 July 2013 08:43, Adrian Colomitchi <acolomitchi@gmail.com> wrote:
d. use the documentation to "sing it" (make a musical arrangement and transform it in an 10-hours boring opera; or "transpile" the letters or words in the documentation on notes/rhythm/instruments somehow and distribute it as a sheet music)
I would like to see an example of somebody doing this! More seriously though, I think we may have lost the point of this discussion. If I change an open source program, chances are the original documentation no longer applies any more. So I really should be updating the documentation too. If however there are barriers to updating the documentation, e.g. for some misconceived reason the copyright owner decided to make that part invariant, then I won't update it. The best I could do is attach an amendment to the documentation, which isn't in the best interests of the end user - they have to read the documentation, and then the amendments just to try and work out how to use my version of the software. The same arguments have been made with RFC documents. I might want to create a new standard that is based on an existing standard - giving it a new name of course, but as most RFCs restrict making changes, I can't legally do that. Another common example given on the Debian mailing lists is if I want to produce a condensed version of the documentation, e.g. one that will fit on a single A5 sheet of paper for example. It may not be possible if I have to include invariant sections. It really doesn't matter if it is software or documentation or some combination of the two. What matters is if it restricts my freedoms to innovate and try new things. I think invariant sections of the FDL does just that. PS. You can start by singing this email.
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 9:12 AM, Brian May <brian@microcomaustralia.com.au>wrote:
On 24 July 2013 08:43, Adrian Colomitchi <acolomitchi@gmail.com> wrote:
d. use the documentation to "sing it" (make a musical arrangement and transform it in an 10-hours boring opera; or "transpile" the letters or words in the documentation on notes/rhythm/instruments somehow and distribute it as a sheet music)
I would like to see an example of somebody doing this!
...
PS. You can start by singing this email.
Not starting from any documentation or this email, but: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21597-us-judge-rules-that-you-cant-cop... I'll come later with answers for the rest of the points Adrian
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 09:12:56AM +1000, Brian May wrote:
On 24 July 2013 08:43, Adrian Colomitchi <acolomitchi@gmail.com> wrote: If I change an open source program, chances are the original documentation no longer applies any more. So I really should be updating the documentation too. If however there are barriers to updating the documentation, e.g. for some misconceived reason the copyright owner decided to make that part invariant, then I won't update it.
As discussed previously, the FDL's optional invariant sections do not apply to the actual documentation. Your examples regarding this problem don't apply.
Another common example given on the Debian mailing lists is if I want to produce a condensed version of the documentation, e.g. one that will fit on a single A5 sheet of paper for example. It may not be possible if I have to include invariant sections.
That's the more practical edge case that Ben (and yourself I suppose) is objecting to, however even that extreme example is unlikely to be a problem. People licensing work under the FDL are not likely thinking about restricting the end user. This is clearly not the intent of the license. I'm sure simply writing to the author requesting permission for that specific use case would likely suffice. There might be reasons why that wouldn't work, but it shouldn't be much of a problem in the realm of IT, where programs are typically outdated and replaced quite fast - the copyright holders are likely to still be contactable, as opposed to copyright holders of a work of fiction or some such where the author could have died some time ago. As has been pointed out, these are exceptional edge cases that are very likely solvable one way or another should they ever actually occur.
Adrian Colomitchi <acolomitchi@gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, 2013-07-23 at 23:09 +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
I've shown that “because the copyright holder decrees that this work won't be used as anything but a document” is not a justification for those restrictions. The way I see the things: the protection of the copyright are supporting the restrictions imposed by the author *only when* the work is used as a document(ation), and not *because* the author decrees it has to be used as a documentation.
Then the FDL is a terrible tool for that, because it applies to the work no matter how the recipient wants to interpret the work. This is support for avoiding such restrictive licenses (such as FDL), and sticking to licenses (such as GPL) that maintain all the software freedoms for the work regardless how the work is interpreted by the recipient.
But any other works derived from the said documentation that are used *for other purposes* won't be restricted by copyright law, no matter the license under which the original documentation is published.
That seems flatly false. Copyright applies (or does not apply) to a work regardless of the purpose the recipient has for it. If you receive a work under the FDL, it applies whether you want to use it as documentation or music or a program or whatever. So if the FDL is too restrictive for some valid interpretations of *any* work, then restricting any work that way is unjust because it's unjust for the copyright holder to rule out otherwise valid interpretations of the work.
The copyright law will not protect the original documentation again a whole heap of actions. One can freely:
All these examples don't seem relevant to the point I was making, so I don't know why you raise them in response.
Now, you may say the above examples are far fetched and quite distant from scenarios in which the freedom of the reader is *unfairly* constrained, and you are likely to be right (except maybe points a. and b.).
In each of your examples, either the action is restricted by copyright law and those restrictions should be considered for software freedom; or they don't and the action is neutral for this consideration. The copyright holders in a work have, under the law, unilateral and superior power to any recipient. What matters for software freedom is whether that power is used to unjustly restrict, through choice of license terms, the freedom of any recipient of the work. If the choice of license terms restricts freedoms based on how the work is to be interpreted, I'm arguing that is an unjust use of the power of the copyright holder. -- \ “Software patents provide one more means of controlling access | `\ to information. They are the tool of choice for the internet | _o__) highwayman.” —Anthony Taylor | Ben Finney
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 09:42:56AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
Adrian Colomitchi <acolomitchi@gmail.com> writes:
But any other works derived from the said documentation that are used *for other purposes* won't be restricted by copyright law, no matter the license under which the original documentation is published.
That seems flatly false. Copyright applies (or does not apply) to a work regardless of the purpose the recipient has for it. If you receive a work under the FDL, it applies whether you want to use it as documentation or music or a program or whatever.
No it's not - or at least it certainly isn't always the case. http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/07/23/0115242/copyright-drama-reaches-... Reading through the discussion there, the general consensus seems to be that the copyright of 3D designs do not extend to the use of 3D-printed objects. Thinking about it logically, it would be quite silly if it were true. Imagine the problems it would impose - may not be able to use my own mug to drink from because I don't comply with the license of the design, etc. I'm sure there would be other examples outside of 3D printing where the original copyright would not apply to works outside of the original scope.
Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com> writes:
Thinking about it logically, it would be quite silly if it were true.
When it comes to copyright law, the sad fact is that it behaves extremely *illogically*. So “that would be illogical if it behaved that way” is, if anything, a hint that it may indeed behave that way :-) We have to deal with the law as it is, and copyright law is not logical. Expecting it to be logical is going to lead to delusion about how the law actually is. -- \ “Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas | `\ are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.” | _o__) —Howard Aiken | Ben Finney
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 04:12:36PM +1000, Ben Finney wrote:
Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com> writes:
Thinking about it logically, it would be quite silly if it were true.
When it comes to copyright law, the sad fact is that it behaves extremely *illogically*. So “that would be illogical if it behaved that way” is, if anything, a hint that it may indeed behave that way :-)
We have to deal with the law as it is, and copyright law is not logical. Expecting it to be logical is going to lead to delusion about how the law actually is.
Fair point. The never ending copyright extensions spring to mind. One cannot underestimate the problems caused by greed. :/
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 2:37 PM, Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com>wrote:
No it's not - or at least it certainly isn't always the case.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/07/23/0115242/copyright-drama-reaches-...
Reading through the discussion there, the general consensus seems to be that the copyright of 3D designs do not extend to the use of 3D-printed objects.
I wouldn't be so sure about it, Adam, it's not like the "crowd wisdom" can't be wrong (it's only 5 years or so since tens of millions on this planet was convinced that "the price of houses never go down"). To give you some examples for my reserved position: 1. the "sheet music" is still music and the *interpretation* of that music still be subject to the copyright laws, especially if played in public 2. there exists things stranger than you think is this words. E.g. the Millau Viaduct was copyrighed *as design* by the architect (Lord Norman Foster) and still is. His lordship chose to grant *the management* of the intellectual property rights to the company that operates/maintains it<http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=26524091>. Now, you either use a browser with the Flash Payer installed, navigate to http://www.leviaducdemillau.com/en_index.php and, bottom of the page pick "Legale notice" to read it yourself, or you believe me when I'm saying that *this company is the sole legal entity that can grant the right for the use of the pictures of that bridge*. Adrian
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 04:14:13PM +1000, Adrian Colomitchi wrote:
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 2:37 PM, Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com>wrote:
No it's not - or at least it certainly isn't always the case.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/07/23/0115242/copyright-drama-reaches-...
Reading through the discussion there, the general consensus seems to be that the copyright of 3D designs do not extend to the use of 3D-printed objects.
I wouldn't be so sure about it, Adam, it's not like the "crowd wisdom" can't be wrong (it's only 5 years or so since tens of millions on this planet was convinced that "the price of houses never go down").
True. At least if the masses disagree, stupid laws will be harder to push through.
To give you some examples for my reserved position: 1. the "sheet music" is still music and the *interpretation* of that music still be subject to the copyright laws, especially if played in public
Speaking of music... as far as the adaption of FDLed works is concerned, I'm not sure the invariant sections apply. The FDL talks about redistributing more than 100 Documents. I performance would arguably not count as redistributing anything. If music on a CD, the FDL wouldn't interfere since CDs could have a data track with text files (or include an insert in the cover) to include the license. Would have to re-read the entire thing in the context of the specific adaptions we can come up with. I also understand that a new version of the FDL is in the works. Perhaps we can write to the FSF to ask them to clarify what happens when FDL works are used in unintended ways, with a list of all the examples we can come up with? Since many FDL documents are likely licensed under "or any later version", this could solve a bunch of the concerns that have been raised - even if we do currently have some disagreement about it being a problem or not.
2. there exists things stranger than you think is this words. E.g. the Millau Viaduct was copyrighed *as design* by the architect (Lord Norman Foster) and still is. His lordship chose to grant *the management* of the intellectual property rights to the company that operates/maintains it<http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=26524091>. Now, you either use a browser with the Flash Payer installed, navigate to http://www.leviaducdemillau.com/en_index.php and, bottom of the page pick "Legale notice" to read it yourself, or you believe me when I'm saying that *this company is the sole legal entity that can grant the right for the use of the pictures of that bridge*.
Different jurisdictions surely have different copyright laws and interpretations too, so I'm not entirely surprised. Oh look - it's on Wikipedia under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license. ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millau_Viaduct
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 4:44 PM, Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com>wrote:
2. there exists things stranger than you think is this words. E.g. the Millau Viaduct was copyrighed *as design* by the architect (Lord Norman Foster) and still is. His lordship chose to grant *the management* of the intellectual property rights to the company that operates/maintains it< http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privc... . Now, you either use a browser with the Flash Payer installed, navigate to http://www.leviaducdemillau.com/en_index.php and, bottom of the page pick "Legale notice" to read it yourself, or you believe me when I'm saying that *this company is the sole legal entity that can grant the right for the use of the pictures of that bridge*.
Different jurisdictions surely have different copyright laws and interpretations too, so I'm not entirely surprised. Oh look - it's on Wikipedia under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license. ;)
:) Think you caught me pants down, are you ? :) No, you are not looking to the picture of Millau Viaduct, but at photo of Creiselles!. If you read the "Description" of the image file<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Creissels_et_Viaduct_de_Millau.jpg>, you'll find that the picture actually depicts: "*Blick auf Creissels* *mit der Autobahnbrücke im Hintergrund*" (translation: "*the **view of Creissels* *with the highway bridge in the background*"). If it would be a picture of the Millau Viaduct itself, you wouldn't be looking to it on Wikipedia, as Wikipedia is very serious about copyright (greed motivated or not). The explanation: if you go the http://www.leviaducdemillau.com/en_index.php and navigate/read the legal notice, you discover that: "no image exists ... of the Millau Viaduct that is "copyright free" (except images of landscapes in which the Viaduct, *shown into background*, *is not the main subject of the image*)" Adrian
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 05:17:44PM +1000, Adrian Colomitchi wrote:
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 4:44 PM, Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com>wrote:
2. there exists things stranger than you think is this words. E.g. the Millau Viaduct was copyrighed *as design* by the architect (Lord Norman Foster) and still is. His lordship chose to grant *the management* of the intellectual property rights to the company that operates/maintains it< http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privc... . Now, you either use a browser with the Flash Payer installed, navigate to http://www.leviaducdemillau.com/en_index.php and, bottom of the page pick "Legale notice" to read it yourself, or you believe me when I'm saying that *this company is the sole legal entity that can grant the right for the use of the pictures of that bridge*.
Different jurisdictions surely have different copyright laws and interpretations too, so I'm not entirely surprised. Oh look - it's on Wikipedia under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license. ;)
:) Think you caught me pants down, are you ? :)
Haha. :)
No, you are not looking to the picture of Millau Viaduct, but at photo of Creiselles!.
Doh!!!! >< Oh well. I tried. ;) I'm really surprised that it is legal to ban photographs of something that takes up such a considerable size of land that is open to the public. Would be especially surprised if such laws were respected outside of France, but I guess secret international trade agreements could make it happen at any time.
If you read the "Description" of the image file<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Creissels_et_Viaduct_de_Millau.jpg>, you'll find that the picture actually depicts: "*Blick auf Creissels* *mit der Autobahnbrücke im Hintergrund*" (translation: "*the **view of Creissels* *with the highway bridge in the background*"). If it would be a picture of the Millau Viaduct itself, you wouldn't be looking to it on Wikipedia, as Wikipedia is very serious about copyright (greed motivated or not).
Hmm. Well... Google Images to the rescue!! http://images.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=843&q=... Although I'd probably not want to be sued for hosting them myself.
The explanation: if you go the http://www.leviaducdemillau.com/en_index.php and navigate/read the legal notice, you discover that: "no image exists ... of the Millau Viaduct that is "copyright free" (except images of landscapes in which the Viaduct, *shown into background*, *is not the main subject of the image*)"
No matter what I do, I always end up being redirected to a page that's not in English. :/ Oh well - I believe you.
Please unsubscribe me from list . Thank you Ameya Sent from my iPhone On Jul 24, 2013, at 5:57 PM, Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com> wrote: On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 05:17:44PM +1000, Adrian Colomitchi wrote:
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 4:44 PM, Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com>wrote:
2. there exists things stranger than you think is this words. E.g. the Millau Viaduct was copyrighed *as design* by the architect (Lord Norman Foster) and still is. His lordship chose to grant *the management* of the intellectual property rights to the company that operates/maintains it< http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privc... . Now, you either use a browser with the Flash Payer installed, navigate to http://www.leviaducdemillau.com/en_index.php and, bottom of the page pick "Legale notice" to read it yourself, or you believe me when I'm saying that *this company is the sole legal entity that can grant the right for the use of the pictures of that bridge*.
Different jurisdictions surely have different copyright laws and interpretations too, so I'm not entirely surprised. Oh look - it's on Wikipedia under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license. ;)
:) Think you caught me pants down, are you ? :)
Haha. :)
No, you are not looking to the picture of Millau Viaduct, but at photo of Creiselles!.
Doh!!!! >< Oh well. I tried. ;) I'm really surprised that it is legal to ban photographs of something that takes up such a considerable size of land that is open to the public. Would be especially surprised if such laws were respected outside of France, but I guess secret international trade agreements could make it happen at any time.
If you read the "Description" of the image file<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Creissels_et_Viaduct_de_Millau.jpg>, you'll find that the picture actually depicts: "*Blick auf Creissels* *mit der Autobahnbrücke im Hintergrund*" (translation: "*the **view of Creissels* *with the highway bridge in the background*"). If it would be a picture of the Millau Viaduct itself, you wouldn't be looking to it on Wikipedia, as Wikipedia is very serious about copyright (greed motivated or not).
Hmm. Well... Google Images to the rescue!! http://images.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=843&q=... Although I'd probably not want to be sued for hosting them myself.
The explanation: if you go the http://www.leviaducdemillau.com/en_index.php and navigate/read the legal notice, you discover that: "no image exists ... of the Millau Viaduct that is "copyright free" (except images of landscapes in which the Viaduct, *shown into background*, *is not the main subject of the image*)"
No matter what I do, I always end up being redirected to a page that's not in English. :/ Oh well - I believe you. _______________________________________________ Free-software-melb mailing list Free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-software-m... Free Software Melbourne home page: http://www.freesoftware.asn.au/melb/
ameyaagashe@yahoo.com writes:
Please unsubscribe me from list .
That's in your power to do: subscriptions to this mailing list are in the control of the subscriber. Every message in this forum has a footer that gives a link to the page <URL:http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb>. There you can control your subscription, including choosing to unsubscribe. Every message also has, in its header, the correct fields giving how to unsubscribe directly; your mail client can (if it is written correctly to the RFC 2369 standard) use those fields to let you unsubscribe directly. -- \ “The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial | `\ television and could not exist in its present form without it.” | _o__) —John Kenneth Galbraith, _The New Industrial State_, 1967 | Ben Finney
(pre-scriptum: I'm still owing Brian some notes on his attempt to bring the discussion on the concrete of "How FDL is hurting open-source". I chose to answer to this one first because I feel that the "recourse to the general principle" that Ben is riding may not be correct) On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 9:42 AM, Ben Finney < ben+freesoftware@benfinney.id.au> wrote:
Adrian Colomitchi <acolomitchi@gmail.com> writes:
But any other works derived from the said documentation that are used *for other purposes* won't be restricted by copyright law, no matter the license under which the original documentation is published.
That seems flatly false. Copyright applies (or does not apply) to a work regardless of the purpose the recipient has for it. If you receive a work under the FDL, it applies whether you want to use it as documentation or music or a program or whatever.
IANAL and what I expressed was my perception on the copyright law. Until I'll have time to get a documented answer, I'm pushing some "circumstantial evidence" for the moment: - one would think Disney would be very keen to take down from youtube<http://mashable.com/2009/07/22/alice-in-wonderland-trailer/>anything infringing their copyright, right? Well, please enjoy the "He's a pirate" (Disney copyright) in an arrangement for 40 floppy drives <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs9jiXOKNls>. - maybe George Lucas was scared stiff to lose another copyright<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12910683>suit so this is why he allows this hardcore rendering of "Imperial March" <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAWF-qhh4pQ> on a CNC machine to still live on you tube? - but maybe you like better 007 and be delighted to hear the theme interpreted by a chamber orchestra of 13 floppy and 1 harddisk drives<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEzXjJN1RH0> ? The above examples use "music copyrighted as playable music and actually being played as music", no transformative repurpose of the* original intended use* (the interpretation is unusual, but the original "piece of art" is still recognizable. Yes, formally, these may be infringing, however I don't think someone would fight for such an end). Maybe if I save Brian's email text into afile and issue aplay -c 2 -f S16_LE -r 44100 afile in my command line, I'm liable for copyright infringement? No, after all Brian asked me to do it, so I do have his permission - unfortunately I don't have his permission to publish/distribute the result of it. But... hang on... Brian *cannot* stop me anyway to post instructions on "A way of how to play his email"... unfortunately, neither do I, because it is **a statement of a fact** (and, as such, is *not* protected by copyright). Maybe this could be a trick one can use to adjust a documentation for an adjusted piece of GNU software? (I don't know, at least the "--help" screen). But... you reckon that publicly exposing these<http://mentalfloss.com/article/29202/11-sculptures-made-books> books <http://pinterest.com/lindaslinks/book-sculptures-altered-books/> for all<http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/02/22/sculptures-made-from-books-jodi-harvey-brown_n_2741769.html> to admire is a copyright violation? After all, the "Lathe of Heaven" is still within copyright terms, so this map might be infringing<http://matthewpicton.com/paper-sculptures/portland/> when publicly displayed. Adrian
Adam Bolte <abolte@systemsaviour.com> writes:
Given that the Debian project rejects [some works under] the GNU Free Documentation License from main - a stance which I strongly disagree with - I'm surprised they consider trademarks at all for the same kind of reasoning.
As for the Debian project considering trademark restrictions for software freedom, why does that surprise you? All the works in Debian are software, and all of them must be freely licensed by the Debian project's social contract. It doesn't matter whether the restrictions come from patent, copyright, trademark, contract, trade secret, or any other branch of law that limits the freedom of ideas. They all matter if they would impact the freedom of recipients of Debian. So it seems natural to me that the Debian project would consider a restriction based in any of those laws to be important for the freedom of a work. Why does that surprise you? -- \ “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” | `\ —Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943 | _o__) | Ben Finney
On 21/07/13 13:02, Ben Finney wrote:
But those either ignore or punt the issue to trademark. The question still remains: what restrictions on the freedom of any recipient are acceptable in exchange for preventing the societal harms trademark law is designed to address?
I'm not convinced that trademarks are being used to restrict software freedoms in any significant way. The trademark does not primarily concern the substance of the software, only the branding of it. While it can be inconvenient to change the branding, trademark alone does not prevent either redistribution or modification. I realize it is not entirely black and white, because the trademark will be embedded in the code, not merely a name-change. But for most software, this is more of an inconvenience than it is a substantive restriction of software freedoms. The issue in the Debian branding of Firefox and Thunderbird was not fundamentally the trademark. It was the use of a non-DFSG licence on the logo, which Debian could not use. Mozilla decided that if the logo was not used, then it was not okay to call the software 'Firefox'. I think a better resolution would have been for Mozilla to provide an alternative logo that could have been freely licenced, especially since the logo would still carry trademark protections against misuse. But the issue was not resolved, so Debian was forced to change the name. This did not stop it distributing the Mozilla software, even though it no longer was even able to use the trademark. The DFSG allows for such restrictions, though here it is perhaps talking more about a copyright licence. It does not explicitly mention the trademark issues at all. "The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software. (This is a compromise. The Debian group encourages all authors not to restrict any files, source or binary, from being modified.)" Note that I'm not arguing that trademarks cannot be misused (eg they can have a chilling effect on parodies), and I'm not arguing that trademark licences are unimportant (it can be painful to ensure trademark compliance, and unconstructive to have to change the name for minor changes). But I think it is difficult for companies to misuse them specifically with regard to software freedom, because the trademark can in some abstract sense be separated from the software. Ideally the trademark for free software would be licenced in a way that makes it easier on recipients; but without any licence to use a trademark, we can still distribute and modify the associated software. I feel that patent law in particular is more important issue. Glenn -- sks-keyservers.net 0x6d656d65
(You've replied to a message but quoted content from a different one. I've changed the Subject accordingly.) Glenn McIntosh <neonsignal@memepress.org> writes:
I feel that patent law in particular is more important issue.
Sure. Feel free to start a different thread about that :-)
I'm not convinced that trademarks are being used to restrict software freedoms in any significant way.
The trademark does not primarily concern the substance of the software, only the branding of it. While it can be inconvenient to change the branding, trademark alone does not prevent either redistribution or modification.
That's an equivocation: you've slipped from broad “restrict” to narrow “prevent”, which I don't accept. I'm talking about how trademark restricts software freedom, which entails a much broader spectrum of problems than the binary options of “prevent” or “inconvenience”. To speak to your example: changing the brand to something significantly different from the trademark will, by definition of being a significant change in the brand, make it much more difficult for a community expecting the trademarked brand to find the resulting work. This will *practically* prevent many of them from doing so with the limited time and knowledge we each have to spend on looking.
I realize it is not entirely black and white, because the trademark will be embedded in the code, not merely a name-change. But for most software, this is more of an inconvenience than it is a substantive restriction of software freedoms.
Any change of brand sufficient to satisfy the “don't let consumers confuse your product with ours” threshold is by definition going to cause a significant numer of consumers to *not recognise* the re-branded product as being what they're looking for. Many people looking for “Firefox” are not going to recognise that “Iceweasel” is what they need, and so – to the extent that branding works, which varies a lot across time and across populations – the software branded as “Iceweasel” is, even if in principle available to recipients looking for “Firefox”, effectively unavailable to them. So it's important for the software freedom of distributors to preserve their freedom to be truthful in the branding: e.g. “this is Debian's version of Mozilla Firefox”. If a trademark holder forbids that, as Mozilla Corporation does, I am saying based on the above that it is a substantive restriction of software freedoms. Yet I'm also not sure what alternative policy I would recommend to Mozilla Corporation. It is important to society that distributors not mislead recipients by claiming a program is Firefox when that program does not behave as someone looking for Firefox would expect. That threshold, “mislead”, is going to be pretty difficult to pin down.
The issue in the Debian branding of Firefox and Thunderbird was not fundamentally the trademark.
I disagree; the trademark issue was fundamental to (if not solely fundamental to) the issue. But I won't hash it out yet again here, as it will likely not be of much interest to others what our definitions of “fundamental to” happen to be here. Wikipedia has a decent article describing the events <URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_rebranded_by_the_Debian_project>.
Note that I'm not arguing that trademarks cannot be misused (eg they can have a chilling effect on parodies), and I'm not arguing that trademark licences are unimportant (it can be painful to ensure trademark compliance, and unconstructive to have to change the name for minor changes). But I think it is difficult for companies to misuse them specifically with regard to software freedom, because the trademark can in some abstract sense be separated from the software.
My position is that the freedom to accurately describe a work is important for distributors of modified works, and trademark is commonly wielded to substantively restrict that important freedom. But my position is also that I am quite sympathetic to the trademark holder in many of those instances, since they are working to prevent societal harm. It's a dilemma that I'd like to see discussed and resolved by the free software community. -- \ “Our products just aren't engineered for security.” —Brian | `\ Valentine, senior vice-president of Microsoft Windows | _o__) development, 2002 | Ben Finney
On 21 July 2013 15:17, Glenn McIntosh <neonsignal@memepress.org> wrote:
The issue in the Debian branding of Firefox and Thunderbird was not fundamentally the trademark. It was the use of a non-DFSG licence on the logo, which Debian could not use. Mozilla decided that if the logo was not used, then it was not okay to call the software 'Firefox'. I think a better resolution would have been for Mozilla to provide an alternative logo that could have been freely licenced, especially since the logo would still carry trademark protections against misuse. But the issue was not resolved, so Debian was forced to change the name. This did not stop it distributing the Mozilla software, even though it no longer was even able to use the trademark.
Are you sure of that? The following email says it had nothing to do with the logo, and says it is was trademark issue. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/06/msg00005.html -- Brian May <brian@microcomaustralia.com.au>
On 22/07/13 09:57, Brian May wrote:
The issue in the Debian branding of Firefox and Thunderbird was not fundamentally the trademark. It was the use of a non-DFSG licence on the logo, which Debian could not use.
The following email says it had nothing to do with the logo, and says it is was trademark issue.
My understanding is, from reading the list discussions (please correct me where I am wrong, you've been around this community a lot longer than me): http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/01/msg00757.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/06/msg02145.html http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622 Around mid 2005, the Debian maintainer Eric Dorland raised concerns about the use of the Mozilla trademark. This was because although Debian would be able to use the trademark, users would not have those same privileges, which he felt was not acceptable under the DFSG. After some discussion, it appears that Eric made the decision to ignore the issue. In 2006, Mozilla started to take things more seriously. Mike Connor reported a severe bug regarding the use of Firefox as an application name without official branding. Initially the "key problem" was that the unofficial build excluded the official logos. He thought it had been excluded because the artwork was part of the branding, but Eric Dorland said it was because it had a non-free copyright licence (and Gervase Markham of Mozilla had earlier indicated it was okay to leave the logo out). Mike Connor also clarified that they wished to explicitly handle approvals [which would make sense from a legal perspective, because lax maintenance of a trademark can lead to the trademark being lost]. On further pushing, Mike also communicated that Mozilla had issues with some of the patches [it isn't clear to me if that was initially part of the problem, or an escalation of the conflict; it wasn't raised earlier]. They were not prepared to even allow security patches to go through unvetted. A further complication was that this happened just before Etch going into freeze [which forced a quick resolution during a heated discussion]. I feel that there was a failure of communication at least as early as mid 2005 (including internally within Mozilla). I can't see how it was in Mozilla's interest to have an alternative branding with only minor patches in a significant distro, nor is it necessarily in Debian's interest to have to educate users about name changes in major packages. But by 2006, the Mozilla position had hardened to the point that no resolution was possible in the time frame allowed. However, even if the logo issue had been resolved, perhaps this was only a symptom of a deeper rift; as Ben Finney indicated, my use of the word 'fundamental' rather misses the mark. Even had the logo licence been remedied, the approvals process may have still caused problems. I also notice that both Mozilla and Debian now have split logo systems (ie, both open and restricted logos). The trademark issue itself was 'resolved' - unilaterally by Debian dropping the use of the trademark; they were not prevented from distributing the software. Perhaps that wasn't the best outcome, but I think it was justifiable. Glenn -- sks-keyservers.net 0x6d656d65
participants (7)
-
Adam Bolte -
Adrian Colomitchi -
ameyaagashe＠yahoo.com -
Andrew Pam -
Ben Finney -
Brian May -
Glenn McIntosh