[copyleft-next] Comments on 0.1.1

Luis Villa luis at tieguy.org
Sat Feb 16 02:53:51 UTC 2013


On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 6:36 PM, Richard Fontana
<fontana at sharpeleven.org> wrote:
>> >  I liked "This License does not exclude
>> > or limit any rights You have under applicable law" because it
>> > expresses that we're not trying to take away anything with the
>> > license, just grant some rights.
>>
>> Sure, I completely see and agree with all of that, which is why my
>> suggestion also dropped "copyright" and makes the specifically
>> enumerated rights (from CC and MPL) into merely a list of examples of
>> "applicable law." I'm just saying that without some "such as" examples
>> the language would be completely opaque and useless to a non-lawyer.
>
> The problem with the earlier version (which I think I took directly
> from MPL 2.0 but there's a similar clause in GPLv3)

Yes, it is from MPL, and I believe MPL's language is from CC (which
was the first license, AFAIK, to include a fair use clause of this
sort).

> is that it
> suggests to me that it only covers "fair use or whatever the local law
> counterpart to it is". Referencing both 'fair use' and 'fair dealing'
> but nothing else specifically, and the use of "equivalents", compels
> this interpretation, to me.

That was not the intent, but it having been pointed out, I see the
possible confusion, which is why I suggested the alternate language.

I have always thought of the audience for this clause as non-lawyers,
since (at least in theory) lawyers would know about the various
statutory protections, and that they would apply regardless.

Luis


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