peddrenth asks:
"Software licenses are, we keep saying, difficult to read. The public clicks OK without reading, either implicitly trusting or mistrusting us the software authors. There have been calls recently for companies to clean-up the license, to bullet, section, and colour their licenses, to remove THE UPPERCASE
and to draw charts and graphs to explain the license. Anyone who's had to read a 3-page document in a 3"x1" textbox knows how useful this would be. The GPL is one of the most important licenses in the world, and appears on thousands of products. Everything from windows programs to operating systems to people's artwork requires understanding and acceptance of the GNU GPL. Should we, the free software community, take the first step in this effort, and show the world what an easy-to-read license looks like? Would it be useful if long textual software licenses stood out like a sore thumb amongst the cool, pretty, and clear free licenses?" Many may think the GPL Preamble to be clear enough, and this may be true. However there are a lot of people out there that would like to read the
entire license so that they know exactly what they may be getting into,
before they agree to it. This usually implies being able reading the actual license, and not just the preamble.
"Should we use such a comparison to show the public how they're being manipulated by terms in a EULA they don't read or understand, and encourage other license-writers to include the graphs and tables themselves, showing the public what a license really means?
What would be your ideal license, what poster would you draw to explain the GPL to a child, a PHB, or an artist? Would you stick with the text, or can you think of anything better?"
jamie interjects: The root of the problem is that "intellectual property" is a kludge of a natural human understanding of property rights. Useful, but a kludge. You have to invent many
oddball concepts
to keep up the pretense that ideas are property. The GPL is a kludge (strict and precise licensing terms) implemented on top of a kludge (copyright law) and, in English or in code, there is no short and simple way to describe complex things.
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What was my stuff is now our stuff.
In return for this gift, I ask that if you improve our stuff it remains our stuff.
Should we, the free software community, take the first step in this effort, and show the world what an easy-to-read license looks like?
Licenses are lengthy, wordy, and hard to read for a reason. They try to ensure that no "loophole" can be made. The simpler you make the license, the more likely lawyers can "see multiple meanings in words", and avoid the license entirely.
IMHO, the free-software licenses SHOULD be wordy, because companies like Microsoft have lawyers constantly looking for a loophole...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
One of the things that's nice about the GPL, and that I've just come to understand recently, is that it doesn't really matter if you 'accept' it, in the sense that you accept a EULA from MS. Since accepting the GPL actually gives you MORE freedoms than the normal copyright laws, if you don't accept the GPL on a program you get, you are actually more limited in what you can do with it. You can't distribute it, and surely can't distribute a modified version.. Whereas the other EULAs restrict you in addition to copyright restrictions, the GPL actually reduces the restrictions put upon you by copyright law.
Most of what the majority of non-lawyers need to know about the GPL can be summed up in one line:
The GPL does not impact users of the software, only distributors.
That's it. For that simple reason, the premise of this question is flawed. Most of the world simply uses software and doesn't redistribute it, therefore understanding and acceptance of the GNU GPL is not an issue.
Anyone who is distributing software (GPL or otherwise) really needs to take the time to understand the details of their redistribution agreement. As redistribution licenses are concerned, the GPL is very easy to understand and truly does stand out as a marvel of simplicity. The only simpler things are BSD and public domain :-)
.sig: file not found
Sure, I'd love to read a license and understand it. But what if I don't like it?
How many retailers are going to accept an opened copy of Office because someone actually read the print and found out that they were selling their soul to Microsoft?
I don't see it happening.
-techwolf
I don't do this for karma, I do it for cash. It's much better.
Before the preamble, state:
Or is that too simplistic?
Note that this does not accomplish one important end, in that it does not clearly distinguish itself from other EULAe, except that it devotes the first few sentences to "freedoms" rather than "limitations".
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
Sure, you could try to simplify the GPL, but the fact of the matter is that what the GPL is attempting to do is very complicated. I challenge you to propose a simplified GPL which accomplishes the same goals as the GPL. I'm not even sure if the GPL itself accomplishes the goals of the GPL, this hasn't been tested in court at all yet.
I have a simple license, called the QingPL, but it is quite different from the GPL. Most significantly, it does not require that source code be released when a derivitive work is released.
Where you need to worry about the implications of the GPL are if you're a) a developer or b) a loudmouth who complains about alleged GPL violations. Come to think of it, you don't need to know anything to be a loudmouth who complains about alleged GPL violations.
By the way, Jamie and Michael, if you have something to say, please post it instead of giving yourselves an automatic (Score: 6, Editor).
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Unless you're an expert, it's hard to get the recipe (the source) from the food (the binary). The GPL is saying "Here's the recipe, and here's some food someone else has made with that recipe, all free for the taking. But if you make and give away or sell food based on the recipe I just gave you, you've got to give away your recipe for free as well."
I know analogies suck, but it's close enough.
Are you sure you're talking about OpenSSH? These were certainly problems with Tatu Ylonen's SSH back in 1995. However, the OpenSSH team has made a significant point of taking patent-encumbered and otherwise problematic code out of the OpenSSH code base. For more information, see the OpenSSH FAQ.
This code is copyrighted. It is not "free to use". You may not copy or use it in any way, including for non-commercial purposes, unless you follow strictly the enclosed license terms. If you do not read or follow the license terms, you will be in breach of copyright, and can and will be prosecuted for theft.
While I appreciate the motivation, I don't like the way this reads. I don't want people to be scared by the GPL, I want them to welcome it.
I'm a GPL author. I want people to use my code, and I want them to read through my code and learn from it. I released the source code for free for a reason: so that people will use it and benefit from it.
What I don't want is for someone to take an entire program I've written, and package it and sell it for a profit (unless they release the code, of course). That's why I use the GPL. But the last thing I want to do is discourage people from using my code in a reasonable way, because they're afraid they might inadvertantly violate the GPL be prosecuted for theft.
Licenses are naturally complex things.
The problem is that we're using licenses to begin with. We don't need licenses. Books don't have licenses. Poems don't have licenses. Music, despite the RIAA's wishes to the contrary, doesn't have licenses.
There are in essense only three sets of rights available to the recipient of any copyrighted work:
1) Rights previously granted under Copyright Law.
2) 1 + additional rights
3) 1 - rights already granted
Only number 3 requires a license, because only number three has to be agreed to by the recipient. This is a EULA.
Number one doesn't need any license at all. Just put the words "Copyright 2002 Joe Schmoe, all rights reserved" at the top, and you're done. 90% of commercial software could be released like this with zero problems for the authors. This is known as simple copyright.
Number two doesn't need a license either. You're granting additional rights, not taking anything away. Even if these additional rights have conditions attached to them, as with copyleft, the recipient does not need to agree to anything, because they cannot excercise those additional rights outside of the context of those conditions. I refer to this as a Permission Statement.
The general public, over the course of three decades of concerted brainwashing by the software industry, has come to believe that you need a license to use software. This is very sad. Instead of perpetuating this myth, we need to be proactive and declare that the user doesn't have to agree to any damn thing to use the software we gave them!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Actually, I think most people (including me) fall into the "Don't give a crap" category. I'll install the software and use it any damn way I want.
Ich werde nie wieder denken
But, if you do not read the license, you are not bound by it, right?
Why is it ok to not abide by a MS EULA, but not ok to not abide by a FSF EULA?
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Simplify licence agreements:
All your IPs and money belongs to us. You are screwed whether or not you click the Accept or the Decline buttons.
Does anyone besides me think that the GNU logo looks like a penis horns? Just a thought to ponder.
You're only partially right. It is a civil offense, not criminal, so there is no prosecution. But it has been upheld in court in a case involving MySQL AB vs Nusoft.
The GNU GPL is largely made up by programmer with no knowledge, whatsoever of law. It violates basic tenets of copyright law, and in some cases doesn't even make sense. I think it's a bit premature to talk about reading the whole thing, understanding it, getting it tattooed on your ass, whatever, considering it's pretty much just a document that somebody has written, without any valid legal merit.
This is all completely wrong. The license was written by a lawyer who happens to work for the FSF, not by random programmers. And if it doesn't make sense to you, try reading it without your adobe colored glasses on.
Just because I write "Nobody owns this building" on a random building doesn't mean that it's true.
Correct but completely irrelevent. Nice troll though.
Use the spatula, Luke
You should go get an MCSE certification yourself, then. In the same way that an MCSE cannot talk about the GPL in a well-informed manner, you are not seen as qualified to speak on things Microsoft. I have certifications in both Microsoft and Linux (among others), so when I advocate the use of Open Source over Microsoft products, people are apt to believe that I know the pros and cons of both, and have made a well-informed analysis.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
If you do not think that this is a fair bargain, you are free to decline and to develop your own code or purchase it from someone else. You will still be allowed to use the software yourself, which is awfully nice of the developers, since you probably didn't pay them a penny for it in the first place. If you feel that this would make you a freeloading communist welfare addict, you may instead opt to purchase similar software from a less generous developer.
Or send the developers a check. Please, let's not leave that one out.
If the GPL is unenforceable, you are no longer
under it the GPL agreement so you revert back to the default. The
default copyright laws gives less rights than you
would have under the GPL.
the gpl to be the most important license in the world? What's so damn important about it? Sure, it lets you use software for free, but so do a dozen others. This is yet another example of a fucking linux zealot thinking he's the best thing out there, when in actuality, there are a number of good oses out there. Enough of all the "gpl/linux/rms/goatse.cx is the best, all others suck" attitude.