copyleft-next April 2013

copyleft-next@lists.fedorahosted.org

6 participants
3 discussions

HBR cure (2013-04-17)
by Richard Fontana 06 May '13

06 May '13

This is a Harvey Birdman Rule violation cure. On or about Wednesday, 17 April 2013, in San Francisco, in the late afternoon, I had a short conversation with Mike Linksvayer concerning copyleft-next that I believe triggered HBR. As I recall: Mike asked me if I was still planning on drafting an Affero-ish variant of copyleft-next. I said I was, and that I had recently wondered whether my previous assumption (start with a non-Affero copyleft-next and work on the Affero variant afterwards) may have had things backwards. The substantive obstacle I have been facing with copyleft-next (as I think I explained on this list a couple of weeks ago) relates to the 'rule vs. standard' dichotomy; I believe a simpler alternative to the GPL ought to (ideally) require greater ease of application and interpretation. I do not know how to achieve this, and perhaps it is not achievable. That is to say, the best we can hope for wrt making copyleft-next "easier" (beyond the kind of structural and textual clarity and simplicity already present in existing versions) is to improve in small ways on some of the basic definitions in copyleft-next and rely on the development of useful authoritative interpretation. However, I'm still not ready to concede that. Anyway, as I recall, I said to Mike that perhaps drafting an Affero-ish variant of copyleft-next might produce insights into how to draft what I've previously been thinking of as the vanilla version. I have also previously and separately wondered whether an Affero-ish copyleft-next ought to be MPL-like in its approach to the copyleft boundary issue. This is all related to suggestions, made at times by Michael Meeks and by Bradley Kuhn, that a "Lesser AGPL" may be useful. - RF

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copyleft-next patent commons?
by Gervase Markham 10 Apr '13

10 Apr '13

Again, forgive me if this has been discussed before... Has the group considered the pros and cons of changing section 10), para b), to cover all copyleft-nexted works? So: 10. Termination Your license grants under section 1 are automatically terminated if You ... b) initiate a patent infringement litigation claim (excluding declaratory judgment actions, counterclaims, and cross-claims) alleging that any work under this License directly or indirectly infringes any patent. In other words, if you sue someone over a patent in a copyleft-nexted work, you lose rights to use all copyleft-nexted works. As copyleft-nexted works become more common and more useful (say e.g. a copyleft-nexted work was incorporated into Android) it would become more and more of a bad idea to sue anyone for patent infringement relating to such work. After all, in that case, the first thing you'd have to do is replace all the company Android phones with iPhones... The potential disadvantage of this, presumably, is the risk that organizations will be less interested in writing or using copyleft-nexted works. Gerv

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quick notes on the current draft
by Luis Villa 02 Apr '13

02 Apr '13

Was reviewing this for other reasons, and: 1. Sec. 2 should really not be section 2. Sections should be ordered by importance/likelihood of use; current Sec. 2 is likely to be rarely invoked or applicable, whereas Sec. 3 will likely feature in every attempt at license interpretation. I'd probably move Sec. 2 to Sec. 8, as the current Sec. 8 will eventually apply to all publications under the license. 2. The "cease to apply" language is vague to the untutored reader. Does that mean you can no longer Distribute? (Sec. 3 begins: "You may Distribute...") I know what you're trying to do, but I don't see that the language of Sec. 2 actually achieves your purpose. As a very rough cut at a solution, I might go with "then the license granted in Sec. 1 is no longer subject to the conditions of Sec. 3-6", which is not elegant but more effective than the current language. 3. Is it your opinion that the last sentence of Sec. 5 is actually necessary? Or is it mere clarification? 4. Is "network" in "network location" (Sec. 6) redundant, given that this is always a location for "providing network access" and hence always a network location? (Two fewer words!) 5. Sec. 8: why do these conditions no longer apply only to Me? Isn't this the case for everyone? Also, the conditions might better be said to apply to the license grant, not to a person (though I can't think of any way to say that that leaves the resulting language clear to non-lawyers). 6. "Termination disqualifies You from receiving new licenses covering My Work," I see your purpose here but would urge another look at the language when you have a chance - this is much less elegantly worded than most of the license. Unfortunately I have no good suggestions. 7. Definition of "Corresponding Source"- in (ii), should "the Covered Work" be "the Object Code form" or "the Covered Work in Object Code form"? As it currently stands I'm not clear that it is clear which Covered Work is being referred to here. Also, in (iii), seems like the version number should somehow be included in the actual requirement, not just the example. Finally, also in (iii), the "and installing" is vague - whose installation are we referring to here? Mine? Yours? Some abstract default installation? Might be more clear if (ii) also included a reference to installation, but that might not be sufficient to fully clarify the issue. Thanks- Luis

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copyleft-next April 2013