Es geschah am Samstag, 28. September 2002 02:01 als Graham Percival schrieb: What about this license: You can use, copy and (re)distribute my work as long as you do not make money out of it. The latter is only permitted by my prior written authorization. Contact me on any ambiguities regarding this license. :) I don't see the need for hundred of sides full license agreements. Leave that for boring lawyers without hobbies. It hink the above should catch all important cases. Regards, Christian

On Saturday 28 Sep 2002 3:42 pm, Frank Barknecht wrote: it is. it is free as in 'freedom' to copy and redistribute. Ian

On Sunday 29 Sep 2002 9:49 am, Frank Barknecht wrote: Not really. He said 'making' money not 'taking' money. Making money implies a profit and if I were a good lawyer I would argue that I could sell copies of his software at cost. Ian

On Sat, 28 Sep 2002 11:43:52 +0200 Christian Schoenebeck <christian.schoenebeck(a)epost.de> wrote: No, the license agreement *is* important. Look at GPL -- the basic idea is "I'll share my stuff with you if you agree to share it with others". But there's a reason why the full text is something like 8k. Give a lawyer a centimeter of wiggle room and he'll take a kilometer. Or something like that. :) I'd like to have a good license agreement, which I'd summarise in one or two lines. What you posted is a good summary, but it wouldn't work as the actual license. Here's a few loopholes in your license: - if I (speaking now as a laywer) don't try to make money off of Graham's music, then I can copy and modify it and claim that _I_ wrote it. - I can copy it, modify it, and then release it with a very restrictive license. - I can copy it and place it in a "members only" portion of my business partner's website. *I'm* not making money out of it. - that license is not Free because it doesn't allow others to modify the work. That's easily fixed by adding `modify' near the beginning: "you can use, modify, copy, and (re)distribute..." My other concern, that many of the Free licenses can't work together, is still valid. For as long as I live, somebody can ask me "is it ok if I use your work in my Design Science-licenesed project" and I can reply "yes, I give you permission for that", but if I die -- and a few contributers to Free software have unfortunately done so already -- then that option is lost. Writing a good Free license that can't be exploited isn't all that easy, which is one reason why it might be good to have one or two "main" free music licenses. Cheers, - Graham

On Sun, 29 Sep 2002 12:02:34 +0200 Christian Schoenebeck <christian.schoenebeck(a)epost.de> wrote: Er... yes, I'm using your work. Let's look at the license again: I think I'd still be allowed to take your work, modify (use) it, then redistribute it under a restrictive license. I'm not making money off of it; I'm just using it to enhance my own reputation, or to send to a small group of people, or something like that. To prohibit that, you'd need some form of a "viral" clause; something like "... use and redistribute my work as long as the extra copies are placed under the same license." (it's worded very poorly, but you get the general idea. It's hard to word it properly) Suppose that it doesn't cost any money, but you have to install some spyware. I collect data about suckers who come to hear your great piece, and then I sell it. You could argue that I'm indirectly making money off your work, but I don't know how much "indirectness" the courts would allow. If you want to prohibit really indirect things, then what about this: In this example I'm an honest musician. I hear your piece, I really like it, and I record a version of that piece with me performing it. I stick that onto the net for people to enjoy and don't try to make any money out of it. Somebody listens to it and thinks that I'm a great musician, and then hires me to play for his wedding. I've just indirectly made money out of using your work, but in a (IMO) pretty honest and fair manner. Is that allowed under your license? I don't see how you can permit the "honest musician" example while not allowing the "dishonest website" example. (although now that I think about it, I don't think that any of the Free licenses would really work against the dishonest website) Releasing material under a Free license can be a big deal. Right now most of the things that are ready for release were one-weekend pieces; not such a big deal. But later on, I'll be releasing things that I worked on for months. I want to make sure I use a good license that prevents exploitation yet allows people to use my material. I _could_ just toss off a short license for my current material and then make/use a better one for my later stuff -- but why not use a good one right now? Then I only need to deal with the "lawyer stuff" once. :) The best reason is that, AFAIK, courts generally follow the technicalities rather than the intent. The intent behind your license is clear, but the technicalities aren't firm. In addition, I don't _want_ to argue this in court. If the license is well-written and fairly tight to begin with, then (hopefully) a dishonest company won't bother trying to argue the technicalities in court. Finally, (this is very much "as far as I know") a court case involving copyright issues (in North America, at least; where I live) generally awards damages based on lost revenue. If I was selling my music for $10 each piece and somebody illegally copied it 100 times, I'd collect $1000 (plus a bit extra). If I'm sharing my music for free, then how does the court decide how much to award me? Yes, it should obviously give me whatever the bad company was selling my work for. But I'm not certain that it would be a simple matter to convince the court to do that. The whole scheme of copyright is based around the notion of selling your intellectual property. Basically, the best defense is a good offense. If I have a good license to begin with, then I won't have to deal with lawyers. I'd rather spend one hour consulting with a lawyer now rather than spend hundreds of hours fighting a court case. :) Cheers, - Graham Percival

Tobias Ulbricht wrote: Doh, I always confuse myself with that. I have a full working version of the alsa site locally and usually I just press "tab" after the al in alsa-doc :) -- Patrick Shirkey - Boost Hardware Ltd. For the discerning hardware connoisseur Http://www.boosthardware.com Http://www.boosthardware.com/LAU/guide/ ======================================== "Um...symbol_get and symbol_put... They're kindof like does anyone remember like get_symbol and put_symbol I think we used to have..." - Rusty Russell in his talk on the module subsystem