[HN Gopher] [Fedora-legal-list] Change in classification of CC0
___________________________________________________________________
[Fedora-legal-list] Change in classification of CC0
Author : em-bee
Score : 128 points
Date : 2022-07-25 16:42 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lwn.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (lwn.net)
| maxk42 wrote:
| Sounds like Fedora is sacrificing good code for ideological
| purity.
| COGlory wrote:
| They aren't mutually exclusive.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| >> The reason for the change: Over a long period of time a
| consensus has been building in FOSS that licenses that preclude
| any form of patent licensing or patent forbearance cannot be
| considered FOSS. CC0 has a clause that says: "No trademark or
| patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned,
| surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this document."
|
| > Part of the background story is that on patents, we've fought
| the scenario that a patent holder could offer some FOSS library
| implementing their patented method, and then come chase you for
| patent infringement. What are the boundaries for me, FOSS user,
| to not be ensnared by a submarine license?
| tux1968 wrote:
| > and then come chase you for patent infringement.
|
| Honest question: How could they claim damages from someone to
| whom they've granted permission? It just doesn't seem like a
| likely problem. So i'm trying to understand what the actual
| threat is.
| AlanYx wrote:
| >Honest question: How could they claim damages from someone
| to whom they've granted permission?
|
| That's actually the underlying rationale here, although it
| isn't explained well in the linked page. There is the
| possibility of an implied patent license grant (or waiver)
| from the licensor in a license that is silent about patent
| rights, for exactly the reason you state.
|
| But CC0 is different, in that it grants permission to use
| while simultaneously being explicit that there is no
| implied patent license (or waiver) granted.
| macintux wrote:
| > How could they claim damages from someone to whom they've
| granted permission?
|
| I think that's the key: technically they _haven 't_ granted
| permission, not explicitly, absent a patent waiver.
| (Disclaimer: not a lawyer, barely paying attention to
| this.)
| limpbizkitfan wrote:
| Nothing wrong with 1. Having principles 2. Having a sane legal
| framework in place for when the parent trolls come
| yc202207253987 wrote:
| Unfortunately it sounds like they are doing this to protect
| themselves from patent trolls, not some kind of ideological
| purity testing.
| untitaker_ wrote:
| Many Linux distros have been limiting their repos to FOSS from
| the start. Much of it is ideology, some of it is minimization
| of legal exposure.
| mixedCase wrote:
| Sounds stupid. If they want to be legally consistent they'd have
| to ban all FOSS licenses that don't waive patent rights. By
| default, patent rights aren't waived so explicitly retaining them
| is just literally stating the obvious.
|
| Any lawyer trying to sneak out of patent claims by saying "oh but
| the FOSS license didn't state they were retaining patent
| rights..." is just regular legal bullshitting and would not stand
| long in any half-working justice system.
| btown wrote:
| Not a lawyer but: is there _any_ case law in which the act of
| open-source licensing in a not-explicitly-retaining-patent-
| rights way was found to be a de facto, or implied, waiver of
| patent rights? https://patentdefenses.klarquist.com/waiver/
| points out some situations in which one could implicitly waive
| patent rights, but specifically in the context of lying to
| standards-setting organizations, it would seem?
|
| If a license has never been considered an implicit waiver, it
| seems overkill to say that "a license that says nothing about
| rights is materially better than a license that explicitly does
| not waive rights," no?
| msbarnett wrote:
| > If a license has never been considered an implicit waiver,
| it seems overkill to say that "a license that says nothing
| about rights is materially better than a license that
| explicitly does not waive rights," no?
|
| Yes, and I suspect a lawyer for a sufficiently-malicious
| GPLv2 dev looking to submarine an org could probably even
| take it further - because the FSF felt it was necessary to
| create GPLv3 in order to explicitly grant patent rights to
| GPLv3 licensors of the code, choosing to continue to use
| GPLv2 like my client the malicious-submarine-dev did, instead
| of relicensing in GPLv3, was done precisely in order to
| signal that they are _expressly_ choosing to grant a
| copyright license _but not_ a patent license to users.
|
| Singling out CC0 seems arbitrary - if Fedora wants patent
| certainty, they should be sticking to things like GPLv3 and
| Apache
| kazinator wrote:
| I almost agree with you. Except that many FOSS developers who
| stick a license onto something do not hold any patents, or if
| they do, not necessarily anything relevant to that code.
|
| If you choose a license which explicitly says you're not
| waiving your patents, it insinuates that you are holding some,
| and they are used in the project.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| It insinuates nothing of the sort. It just suggests that
| you're using a form license that mentions that. In the
| specific context of CC0, it's _not a license_ but rather a
| public domain dedication (with fallback license) and so
| anything about patents is _by definition_ out of scope--the
| document is strictly focused on elements of _copyright_ law.
| The sentence in question here is just reminding you of that
| fact.
| kazinator wrote:
| I'm just trying to guess the reason why CC0 was singled
| out. Why would Fedora not want to expunge all licenses that
| doesn't mention patents at the same time?
|
| Probably the reasoning is that most licenses that don't
| mention patents don't actually have any patents behind
| them.
|
| Most CC0 probably don't either, but since CC0 explicitly
| says patents are not waived, that's where Fedora decided to
| start cleaning house.
|
| As a free software developer, I just want to know whether
| this is the way the wind is blowing? Do I have to re-
| license everything with a different BSD license that
| incorporates a patent waiver?
|
| I see this whole thing as pointless, because even if you
| don't hold any patents, it's almost impossible to write any
| significant piece of code without infringing on multiple
| ridiculous software patents that someone filed somewhere.
|
| Just because I add a sentence saying I won't enforce any
| patents against the users of my code doesn't mean that some
| third party in the world will not do that. That's probably
| one reason licenses are mum about patents; patents are a
| threat coming from someone else which your own waiver
| doesn't dispel.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Why would Fedora not want to expunge all licenses that
| doesn't mention patents at the same time?
|
| The idea is that a generic grant of usage rights will
| cover multiple forms of IP, so it's fine.
|
| But if it says "this is copyright only" that's a problem.
|
| The issue isn't directly about whether it _mentions_
| patents or not.
| msbarnett wrote:
| > If you choose a license which explicitly says you're not
| waiving your patents, it insinuates that you are holding
| some, and they are used in the project.
|
| Not anymore than the BSD-no-nuclear clause insinuates that
| there's a version somewhere that _is_ suitable for being run
| in the control system of nuclear power plants, it doesn 't.
|
| CC0 just makes it clear what is in-scope for the license -
| copyright, not patents, because it's intended as a
| formalization of public domain and that is not something that
| can be formalized re: patents - unlike BSD or GPLv2, which
| implicitly are about copyright but never actually come out
| and say so (and if you were looking to screw someone over
| with some patent you hold, you're better off with something
| that doesn't even mention it, like GPLv2, rather than
| prompting the lawyers to explicitly ask about patents because
| the license reminds them that they're not covered)
| [deleted]
| SeanLuke wrote:
| It would seem that complaint would also implicate MIT/X, BSD, and
| GPL 2.0, would it not?
| nonfamous wrote:
| The issue is that CC0 explicitly reserves trademark and patent
| rights. Those OSS licenses do not have this issue.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Not so much _reserves_ as _declares out of scope_.
|
| CC0 is a public domain dedication, with fallback license for
| jurisdictions where public domain dedication is not possible.
| The public domain dedication part is not a license (this was
| a large part of the legal criticism of the awfully-named
| Unlicense: that it tried to be both a public domain
| dedication and a license, despite the two being
| incompatible), and so _cannot_ do anything with trademark or
| patent rights.
|
| If you want to cover trademark or patent rights, you'll have
| to use a public-domain-equivalent license instead of a public
| domain dedication. This is where things like 0BSD come in.
| (With this latest thing, I think I'm going to change my
| primary recommendation in
| https://chrismorgan.info/blog/unlicense/ to 0BSD rather than
| CC0.)
| mcherm wrote:
| What is the legal difference between a license with this
| clause:
|
| > No trademark or patent rights held by Affirmer are waived,
| abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by
| this document.
|
| and a license with no clause at all addressing trademark or
| patent rights? Wouldn't both of those documents leave
| trademark and patent rights unaffected?
| mlinksva wrote:
| One analysis https://opensource.com/article/18/3/patent-
| grant-mit-license
| [deleted]
| slavik81 wrote:
| I particularly like this bit:
|
| > The MIT License unquestionably has an express [patent]
| license. That license is not limited to the granting of
| any particular flavor of intellectual property rights.
| The statement of license does not use the word "patent"
| or the word "copyright." When was the last time you heard
| someone expressing concern that the MIT License merely
| had an implied copyright license?
| SeanLuke wrote:
| I do not think this is true. CC0 neither _reserves_ nor
| _waives_ these rights: instead it just says that the CC0
| license (when it says "this document" it's referring to the
| license, not the licensed material) does not surrender any of
| these rights. This doesn't introduce anything new at all: it
| is effectively a reminder to the licensee.
|
| MIT, BSD, and GPL 2.0 also do not surrender those rights.
| They just don't helpfully remind the licensee of this fact in
| the body of the license itself. The net result is, so far as
| I can tell, the same.
|
| It would seem to me that the complaint is with a license
| which doesn't surrender rights, particularly patent rights. I
| think this is proper: MIT, BSD, and GPL 2.0 are awful
| licenses for exactly this reason.
|
| * _Edit*_ A quick mention of MIT. There are people who argue
| that MIT 's "without restriction" clause sort of acts as a
| patent release. As if that was good. MIT is a bad license
| because a critical feature of a modern license -- a patent
| release -- hinges on a strained interpretation of a vague,
| easily misconstrued statement, and one which was clearly not
| the intention of the original license authors. A _good_
| license would have explicitly spelled things out. It takes
| just one judge to grind the MIT license into dirt.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Patent grants don't seem like they're worth much anyway.
| They don't stop a third party from coming along and suing
| you _and_ the original developer for supposedly violating
| some patent neither of you knew ever existed. And isn 't
| that how all patent trolling plays out? I've never heard of
| a patent troll that starts out with the troll giving you
| CC0 licensed code and waiting for you to trip over the
| patents they neglected to mention earlier.
| slavik81 wrote:
| The MIT license plainly says I am allowed to use the
| software without restriction. The portion of the license
| that grants permission is:
|
| > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any
| person obtaining a copy of this software and associated
| documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the
| Software without restriction, including without limitation
| the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
| distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software
|
| It doesn't say anything about copyright or patents. It
| merely provides a list of things that I am allowed to do.
| To decide that they haven't granted all rights required to
| use the software would seem to contradict what was written
| in the license.
| kevin_b_er wrote:
| BSD:
|
| "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or
| without modification, are permitted provided that the following
| conditions are met:"
|
| Can you use and redistribute it or not?
|
| "Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
| obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
| files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
| restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
| copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or
| sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
| Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
| conditions"
|
| Are you free to deal in, redistribute, sublicense and sell the
| software, or are you not?
| josephcsible wrote:
| No. Those licenses don't say anything about patents. This one
| explicitly says it doesn't give licensees any patent rights.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| How, in your mind, is the legal effect different between
| those two cases?
| amluto wrote:
| The MIT license says:
|
| > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any
| person obtaining a copy of this software and associated
| documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the
| Software without restriction, including without limitation
| the rights to use ...
|
| It would be interesting to argue that, yes, I gave you the
| right to "use" this software but you actually had to pay me
| extra for a patent license.
| eropple wrote:
| There's an argument (and while I an pretty up on IP law in
| the United States, I am not a lawyer, etc. etc.) that, by
| providing code via an open-source license, you're handing
| anyone who uses it a defense (again IANAL but I believe the
| magic word is "estoppel" here) with regards to suing them
| for acts downstream of using it. In normal-person terms,
| it'd be along the lines of "you used an open-source license
| intended to permit, if not incentivize, the use of this
| thing; the only reasonable way anyone _could_ use it is by
| violating your IP; therefore, you are implicitly granting
| permission to use it regardless of the status of your IP. "
|
| This has not AFAIK been tested in any court, but (to my
| mind) it's not an unreasonable point to accept.
|
| CC0 actively _does not_ provide any protections with
| regards to patents, which would make the above defense
| inapplicable.
| yc202207253987 wrote:
| Time to relicense to WTFPL I guess? Not American and used CC0 for
| everything. And don't say public domain because a LICENSE.txt
| file that just says "this is public domain" isn't a valid
| license, I think.
| MatthiasPortzel wrote:
| The Unlicense is designed to waive all rights while addressing
| as many of these nitpicks as possible.
|
| => https://Unlicense.org
|
| It's what I use for a public-domain-equivalent.
| burntsushi wrote:
| Please _do_ use the Unlicense. I 've published dozens of
| projects that are widely used in production under the
| Unlicense. In my experience, it works just fine. Granted, I
| do dual license with the MIT to ease folks' worries, but
| there have been plenty of contributions to my projects
| without any fuss. It's my hope that one day the dual
| licensing will no longer be a necessary hedge, however, for
| the folks that want to use my work under the Unlicense, they
| can. The way to make the Unlicense more broadly acceptable,
| IMO, is for more people to use it.
|
| The only issue that has cropped up from this is that Google
| employees can use but not contribute to these projects.
|
| I also personally love the name of the Unlicense. Personally,
| I use it because I'm interested in a bit of advocacy against
| monopoly copyright interest.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| (The fact that Andrew insists on using the Unlicense
| despite the problems pointed out by quite a few people and
| the existence of better alternatives like 0BSD is the only
| thing I have against him. His code and leadership in Rust
| circles is excellent and I regard him highly in all other
| technical matters. :-) )
| burntsushi wrote:
| Ditto, I guess? :P (But obviously with the position on
| the Unlicense flipped.)
|
| To address your indictment head-on: you suggesting the
| 0BSD as a better alternative is really missing my point.
| The 0BSD is _not_ an alternative for my use case. The
| Unlicense is one of the very few overt "political" acts
| that I inject into the software I produce. Its purpose is
| to make a statement. The 0BSD doesn't do that IMO, so
| it's not actually an alternative that meets my advocacy
| goal.
|
| You and Rick Moen seem to have the same apparent blind
| spot for this. See my conversation with him that started
| here (which might also clarify some aspects of my own
| position): https://github.com/docopt/docopt.rs/issues/1#i
| ssuecomment-42...
|
| And finally, note that my dual licensing scheme is
| _exactly_ a response to the "problems pointed out by
| quite a few people":
| https://github.com/BurntSushi/byteorder/issues/26
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Hmm... I had indeed forgotten some of those details of
| your reasoning--it's mostly stuff that I read several
| years ago and my memories of it have faded with time.
|
| In suggesting 0BSD, I am indeed talking on legal grounds.
| For Unlicense, the only part of it that would seem to be
| any kind of "statement" is its name, which... well, you
| know my opinion of the misbegotten name. I feel like
| there must _surely_ be some better way of making that
| statement (which I agree with!), but I don't know what.
|
| (I've been having fun using BlueOak-1.0.0, which is
| generally superior to the likes of MIT and Apache-2.0,
| and have been rather tempted to release things under
| _only_ that license, and tough luck to anyone that cares
| about OSI approval, as BlueOak-1.0.0 is not OSI-approved
| largely because the authors are unimpressed with OSI
| process after having been involved with it for years in
| the past, but so far I've been doing silly things like
| trial-licensing BlueOak-1.0.0 /MIT/Apache-2.0 to satisfy
| people's sensibilities. I've also been wondering if I
| should just throw in the towel and go 0BSD, not like I
| care about the attribution anyway, or would ever pursue
| any license violation of any form for reasons of
| conscience. I had thought of going CC0-1.0 or similar,
| but legal limitations of PDD versus licenses decided me
| against it when I was mulling it over. Pity public domain
| dedication is so hard to do properly and so surprisingly
| limited in scope.)
| burntsushi wrote:
| Just to be really clear here, the statement is not just
| in the name. It is also in the first sentence on
| unlicense.org:
|
| > The Unlicense is a template for *disclaiming copyright
| monopoly interest* in software you've written
|
| But yes, the name is a big part of the "statement," I
| agree.
|
| > Pity public domain dedication is so hard to do properly
| and so surprisingly limited in scope.
|
| Indeed. That should change.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I admire your attitude. I wish more people would stop
| letting corporate legal interests dictate their own
| choices.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Please don't use the Unlicense. It's at least as bad as CC0.
| If it works as a public domain dedication (which was its
| purpose, but lawyerly consensus seems to be that it _failed_
| at that and would be interpreted as a license) then it is in
| exactly the same boat as CC0, and if it works as a license, I
| see no scope at all for even an implied patent grant, and it
| explicitly speaks of _copyright_ law as its scope (part of
| the failed PDD parts of the license), so it should still be
| in the same boat as CC0. (The only possible argument for any
| difference is that Unlicense would allow you to slightly more
| credibly plead ignorance, which seems a fairly absurd
| argument to me.) See https://chrismorgan.info/blog/unlicense/
| for some more info and suggestions. (I do need to mull over
| the specific recommendations, as another point rises against
| CC0 specifically, and frankly the concept of public domain
| dedication in general.) As a starting suggestion, go with
| 0BSD, which is at least better-drafted than Unlicense and
| legally unambiguous.
| ronsor wrote:
| > a LICENSE.txt file that just says "this is public domain or
| something" isn't a valid license
|
| It's legal in America, but you'll have trouble in a lot of
| other countries (Germany for one).
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Public domain isn't a license of a copyrighted work, it's you
| denying that your copyright exists at all. This isn't legally
| valid in some countries like Germany, but if you _did it
| anyway_ they 're not going to send gestapo to stop you.
|
| Corporations with lawyers up their ass aren't going to like
| something ostensibly put into the public domain by a German who
| _technically_ can 't do that, but lawyers don't like the WTFPL
| either, so it makes little difference.
| kube-system wrote:
| The issue isn't the gestapo coming in, it's that, if a person
| never legally disclaimed copyright, the work is still subject
| to copyright.
|
| > "hey use my stuff it's public domain"
|
| > "ok thanks"
|
| > "Ha! gotcha! Here's your lawsuit, pay up!"
| amyjess wrote:
| Does Germany not have any concept of promissory estoppel?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Technically possible; something lawyers would worry about.
| A problem for corporations that have to listen to lawyers.
|
| For common people? Not a problem. No German has ever been
| sued for using SQLite.
| kube-system wrote:
| Is FOSS merely for hobbyists, or should Fedora be
| something that large organizations can trust?
| josephcsible wrote:
| Keep the Law of Strict Licenses [1] in mind, though:
|
| > Every FOSS license must be interpreted as strictly as
| possible in case the copyright holder is bought by
| Oracle.
|
| [1] https://gavinhoward.com/2022/01/the-law-of-strict-
| licenses/
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| There's nothing stopping Oracle for claiming SQLite
| violates some of their patents and suing the world for
| it. They don't even need to buy SQLite for that.
|
| If you're a billion dollar corporation, then you've
| already lawyered up and prepared for innumerable
| scenarios. If you're Joe Random like most of us, just get
| over it and move on with your life.
| yc202207253987 wrote:
| So then what are the options for a German who can't use CC0
| now? Other distros are sure to follow suit and CC0 was the go
| to license for mostly everyone outside the US.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Germans can still use the CC0. If a linux distro or anybody
| else think that isn't okay, the German developer can laugh
| and say that's the distro's problem, not their own.
| ufo wrote:
| Which packages are potentially affected?
| lmc wrote:
| So what they are worried about is an entity that does the
| following:
|
| 1. Quietly patent sexy new algorithm
|
| 2. Release CC0 implementation of algorithm without mentioning
| they hold a patent.
|
| 3. ? (sue for infringement)
|
| 4. Profit
|
| Anyone that tried this should be laughed out of court. If they're
| not, the law needs an overhaul.
| e40 wrote:
| _> If they 're not, the law needs an overhaul_
|
| How many times have we thought that in the last 10 years?
| lmc wrote:
| Yes, my cliche detector kicked in hard when I wrote it :-)
| sodality2 wrote:
| Is there any license that I can place my code under, that truly
| does not stop anyone from using it, for any reason? What legalese
| would I need to tell bespoke legal systems that I want to revoke
| all rights, in any situation, to anything in that project? Is
| there a license project that fulfills that need? And I don't mean
| the WTFPL: I mean a license that legally stands and does what it
| is intended to do, and that would satisfy even the most
| conservative of lawyers that it's safe to use?
| pravus wrote:
| The license I have been using is this:
|
| > This software is information. It is subject only to local
| laws of physics.
|
| I deliberately use the term "information" here to convey a
| sense of factual truth which is generally not protected under
| copyright. It is meant to be a license that transcends all
| human legal systems since I cannot guarantee any protections
| they would provide.
|
| I have been told this will not stand up in a court of law, but
| the people who told me this don't seem to understand its
| purpose or effects. As long you obey the laws of physics no
| legal intervention is ever required. And the best part is that
| even the people who disagree must always conform to its terms.
| spiffytech wrote:
| The Unlicense is the closest that I know of. It attempts to
| release the software into the public domain. Since not all
| jurisdictions have the notion of public domain, it also
| explicitly waives _copyright_ (though it doesn 't mention
| patents).
| cjbprime wrote:
| I don't have any insight into how effective Unlicense is, but
| to give an idea of how complicated this is: just as many
| jurisdictions don't let you place things into a Public
| Domain, or even have the legal concept of one, some (I think
| France?) also don't let you just waive your authorial rights.
| I think a full copyright license is okay, though.
| tremon wrote:
| It's usually the moral rights (separate but related to the
| economic part of copyright) that can't be waived:
|
| > In most of Europe, it is not possible for authors to
| assign or even waive their moral rights. This is following
| a tradition in European copyright itself, which is regarded
| as an item of property which cannot be sold, but only
| licensed. The author can agree to waive them to a limited
| extent (and such terms are very common in contracts in
| Europe).
|
| (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights#In_Europe)
|
| IIRC, moral rights are also always tied to the individual
| and not to the employer or organization.
|
| In NL, these moral rights include the following properties:
|
| > even after transferring their copyright, the original
| creator retains the rights to:
|
| > 1a. oppose publication of the work without attribution
|
| > 1b. oppose publication of the work under a different name
| than their own (applies to both the name of the work and
| the name of the creator)
|
| > 1c. oppose modifications of the work
|
| > 1d. oppose any kind of mutilation of disfiguration of the
| work, or modifications that would negatively affect the
| perception of the work or its creator
|
| > Of these rights, 1a can be waived entirely; 1b and 1c can
| be waived only with regards to the name of the work, not
| its creator; right 1d remains the privilege of the creator
| (or any designated heir) for the entire duration of the
| copyright itself.
|
| (from https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0001886/2015-07-01/#Ho
| ofdstuk...)
|
| edit: note that (1c) talks about modifications of the
| original (physical) work; it doesn't necessarily apply in
| the same sense as the GPL, where all extensions/updates to
| the original codebase are also considered modifications of
| the same work.
| gigatexal wrote:
| BSD license?
| doublepg23 wrote:
| Is there anything wrong with MIT or the more succinct ISC
| license? Is the attribution portion a sticking point?
| sodality2 wrote:
| Yeah, I mean a license without any strings attached at all.
| I'm just curious if one exists already.
| mlinksva wrote:
| Yes, 0BSD is ISC with ", provided that the above copyright
| notice and this permission notice appear in all copies"
| removed. MIT-0 is MIT with "subject to the following
| conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission
| notice shall be included in all copies or substantial
| portions of the Software" removed. Unlicense is a more
| ideological statement.
| bawolff wrote:
| Also you have to be careful, because in some countries,
| attribution isnt waived unless you explicitly say. I think
| in some countries you arent even allowed to waive
| attribution.
|
| IANAL
| occamrazor wrote:
| Other comments provide links to licenses similar to what
| you are looking for. But I'd like to argue that the
| MIT/BSD2 licenses are _better_ than a "no strings attached"
| license, even when one wants to give the broadest
| permissions to use and modify a piece of code. The
| obligation to preserve attribution and license is as
| unobtrusive as possible, and at the same time gives
| assurance that the code is actually properly licensed. The
| typical corporate entity will not trust a piece of code
| with no license and would have to track copyright and
| license in some database. Having the same information in
| the source files makes things easier.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Given software patents are unethical, this means as a software
| developer I should start considering CC0 for code as it will
| prevent people/companies that play the software patent game from
| using that software?
| bawolff wrote:
| No...
|
| Its the opposite.
| dang wrote:
| Url changed from https://lwn.net/Articles/902410/, which points
| to this.
| gojomo wrote:
| The stated reason seems self-refuting within its own text. The
| quoted section of CC0 doesn't "preclude any form of patent
| licensing or patent forbearance". It just makes clear that CC0 is
| silent on those issues, allowing other documents/tradtions to
| govern.
|
| If instead the real reason is Fedora wants _all_ licenses to
| include _explicit_ "patent licensing or patent forbearance",
| that's different than the rationale excerpted by LWN here.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think it's reasonable. Other licenses use the traditional
| method of being silent (not saying anything) about patents, so
| if someone had granted the right to run the code without
| mentioning a patent, I bet it'd be hard to find a judge who
| would decide that the right to the patent (or at least to not
| have it enforced) didn't come with the rights given to the
| code.
|
| Whereas with CC0 it's explicit that the same person who granted
| you the code could sue you for running it. There's no room for
| interpretation.
| zerocrates wrote:
| There's a theory/hope that putting out open-source code using a
| license that's silent as to patents acts as an implicit waiver:
| that a court would say, "you knew when you put this out there
| what open-source was, that people would use your code and
| therefore perform the patent; you acted like you were giving
| them permission to do so and they have justifiably relied on
| that, so you're barred from turning around and going after them
| on patent claims." As far as I know, this is totally untested
| but it's at least plausible.
|
| In a situation like this where the license explicitly says
| "this is not a waiver of any patent rights" that argument is
| going to be pretty hard to make fly.
|
| The whole area is interesting for sure. The very presence of
| explicit patent grants/waivers/forbearance in later licenses
| could be argued as evidence that a waiver _isn 't_ commonly
| understood to automatically come with the license where it's
| totally silent. But that's still a different world from the
| "definitely not a waiver" situation set up by CC0.
| kevin_b_er wrote:
| Read the opening license line for BSD: "Redistribution and
| use in source and binary forms, with or without modification,
| are permitted"
|
| This feels incompatible with a spontaneous patent claim,
| because otherwise "use" is not permitted once a patent right
| is asserted.
|
| The notion of open source is under threat from patents being
| used by the likes of Facebook, who've released BSD code then
| immediately claimed a special patent license in a parallel
| that disavowed "redistribution and use" unless the patent
| license also applied.
|
| So we can say that a license that explicitly doesn't include
| patent permission doesn't meet the 4 freedoms.
|
| > The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any
| purpose.
|
| A patent overrides this.
|
| > The freedom to study how the program works, and change it
| so it does your computing as you wish.
|
| A patent overrides this, at least the second half.
|
| > The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your
| neighbor.
|
| A patent overrides this.
|
| > The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions
| to others.
|
| A patent overrides this.
|
| Facebook's React library was an example of this. BSD but with
| a non-free patent license that ran against those freedoms. So
| it was not really open source.
| spiffytech wrote:
| The BSD license is clear that it's a _copyright_ license.
| IANAL, but I expect "this isn't a patent license and its
| terms don't cover our patents" would stand up in court.
| Which is how we get to the GP's question of implied
| license.
| kazinator wrote:
| If the plaintiff seeks to stop the defendent from
| engaging in "redistribution and use", by invoking their
| patent, but the plaintiff put a license on the code whose
| wording allows "redistribution and use" in any form
| without any restrictions, I don't see how the court could
| just ignore that.
| kazinator wrote:
| I'm not sure a patent would override all those things if
| it's being asserted by the same entity which put the
| license on the code.
|
| If the patent holder puts a "redistribution and use are
| permitted", that can be deemed as an IP license in every
| relevant way, including patent and trademark grant; it's
| not just copyright.
|
| "Use" means carrying out the patented functionality;
| permission to "use" is tantamount to permission to apply
| the patented algorithm to one's data to reap its benefit.
| gojomo wrote:
| Thanks, that's a theory making Fedora's statements somewhat
| more understandable than they were with just the LWN excerpt.
| Namely, that other licenses, by being silent, might be
| construable as implying patent permissions.
|
| Perhaps the Creative Commons lawyers erred by mentioning
| patents at all, and they should issue a corrected "CC0v2"!
| mlinksva wrote:
| It was intentional and well intended, so that CC0-1.0 use
| (e.g. for research datasets) would not be blocked by
| academic tech transfer offices. But yes, they should issue
| a CC1-1.0 that is not copyright-only.
| hsn915 wrote:
| "Please accept this giant wooden horse! We don't preclude the
| possibility that it's sincere gift given in good faith!".
| josephcsible wrote:
| > The quoted section of CC0 doesn't "preclude any form of
| patent licensing or patent forbearance".
|
| But it does do exactly that.
|
| > It just makes clear that CC0 is silent on those issues
|
| It doesn't do that, because that's impossible to do. Saying
| "I'm not talking about X" is talking about X.
| gojomo wrote:
| It doesn't 'preclude' anything by disclaiming implications
| either way. It leaves all possibilities open, which is the
| opposite of 'precluding'.
|
| Someone can absolutely say "Though some might think my prior
| words endorse or reject X, let me be clear I don't endorse or
| reject X." You can mention X, especially in a aspires-to-be-
| rigorous context like law, without committing to a treatment.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Sure, but that's not what CC0 says. CC0 says "No trademark
| or patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned,
| surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this
| document.", which is more like saying "I reject X."
| gojomo wrote:
| "by this document" limits the effect such that it doesn't
| [emphasis added] "PRECLUDE ANY FORM OF PATENT LICENSING
| or patent forbearance" via other documents/mechanisms.
| (It does preclude one _particular_ implied-permission
| interpretation, as others have helpfully pointed out.)
| josephcsible wrote:
| > (It does preclude one particular implied-permission
| interpretation that others have helpfully pointed out.)
|
| Yes, and this seems to be the entire reason that Fedora
| is revoking approval of the license.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The problem is that you are arguing about something that
| is not the issue. The issue isn't "via other
| documents/mechanisms", the issue is whether it precludes
| patent grants that may be necessary to exercises the
| permissions in the license _from being found to be
| granted by the license_. Anything that grants permissions
| for particular but doesn 't rule a grant of specific
| rights (at issue at the moment, patent, but the same
| would be true of any other specific rights) necessary to
| that use is most naturally read as granting all rights
| the licensor has power to grant necessary to the use
| explicitly licensed (and also as a claim that the
| licensor has a right to grant all rights necessary for
| that use.) If it _specifically excludes_ particular
| rights that may be necessary to that use, then the
| license itself is on its face insufficient for the use it
| appears to grant without a separate license for the other
| rights or independent evidence that no rights which would
| be an obstacle are held anywhere else.
| bawolff wrote:
| > which is more like saying "I reject X."
|
| I dont think it is. I really dont see how you could read
| that sentence and get "i reject x" out if it.
| josephcsible wrote:
| It's saying "I'm not giving you any patent licenses", not
| "I'm not saying whether or not I'm giving you any patent
| licenses".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It doesn't 'preclude' anything by disclaiming
| implications either way.
|
| Yes, it does.
|
| A license that gives permission to use software but does
| not enumerate specific rights that the licensor holds which
| may be necessary to use the software will most naturally be
| read as licensing all necessary rights held by the
| licensor.
|
| A license which explicitly disclaims any grant of patent
| rights can only be read as...not granting patent rights
| held by the licensor, even if they may be necessary to use
| the software. Thus, such a grant which would otherwise be
| reasonably included is, instead, explicitly precluded.
| [deleted]
| stefanos82 wrote:
| SQLite is under Public Domain, but not under CC0; I wonder how
| will this going to affect it...
| freemint wrote:
| So we need any american to relicense any CC0 work as 0BSD and
| then it should be all good.
| draw_down wrote:
| I think people are free to license their work as they see fit,
| and whether Fedora likes that or not is their own business and
| their own problem.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| The silly part is that the licensor claims he will not assert
| any patent rights regarding the code. But someone else might
| still do that.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Even if he properly and legally relinquished any and all
| patent rights, there is nothing to stop him from layering up
| and suing everybody anyway in direct contradiction to the
| patent grant. Presumably all the lawsuits would fail, but
| harassing others with flagrantly horseshit lawsuits is an
| industry.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Someone else might do that anyway, don't they? (Barring the
| mutually-assured-destruction clause in Apache-2.0, but even
| that only works if that someone is simultaneously interested
| in using the code in question.)
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Or they could just bequeath their code to the public domain,
| and ignore the quirks of foreign legal systems that make that
| weird in other countries.
|
| List of Germans who've been sued for using SQLite without a
| license: .... [End of list]
| kube-system wrote:
| Just because SQLite project hasn't sued any Germans doesn't
| mean there's not legal risk involved.
|
| Build a billion dollar company on some "public domain"
| software in Germany, and you've given a stranger a gun to
| your head. They might not exercise their copyright, but they
| also _could_.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Or the stranger dies, and whoever inherits the gun decides
| to fire it.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Yes, if I imagine myself to be a billion dollar corporation
| instead of Joe Random, then I have to act differently. But
| I'm not, and so I don't.
| kube-system wrote:
| Billion dollar companies use major Linux distros, so the
| concern seems justified here.
| wongarsu wrote:
| In the sense that CC0 work is just public domain in the US, and
| thus an American can just assign it the 0BSD?
|
| Legally that should work, even for non-Americans: the 0BSD
| doesn't grant anything the CC0 doesn't. But that doesn't work
| if you assume the 0BSD has a patent grant (by arguing that it
| gives you permission to use, modify, etc. the software). Then
| the product of your license reassignment is 0BSD, but doesn't
| grant permission from all authors, thus preventing its use in
| Fedora.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > In the sense that CC0 work is just public domain in the US,
| and thus an American can just assign it the 0BSD?
|
| If I search for CC0, the first hit is
| https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-
| domain/cc... which already starts to answer from the URL, but
| let me just quote it:
|
| > CC0 enables scientists, educators, artists and other
| creators and owners of copyright- or database-protected
| content to waive those interests in their works and thereby
| place them as completely as possible in the public domain, so
| that others may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the
| works for any purposes without restriction under copyright or
| database law.
|
| So yes, IANAL but AFAIK CC0 is just "public domain" but
| spelled out (the rest of that link explains why this might be
| needed).
|
| > and thus an American can just assign it the 0BSD?
|
| The catch, as I understand it, is that yes any American could
| take something under CC0 and re-release it under 0BSD
| (probably, again IANAL) but they can only give away the
| rights they had in the first place so they can't say "and
| _nobody_ can claim a patent infringement on this ", only "and
| _I_ promise you can use this and I won 't sue you for patent
| infringement". The original authors, if they have a patent,
| could (as this argument goes) still sue for patent
| infringement because they never agreed not to (allegedly).
| thrillgore wrote:
| Will this exclude just declaring a work as public domain, like
| some of the Boost libraries?
| gpderetta wrote:
| Boost libs are not public domain; they are licensed under the
| Boost license.
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