On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 11:47:37AM +0100, Alexander Pánek wrote:
> This library is available licensed under BSD, which basically means you can do whatever you please with it, as long as you don???t remove the copyright of the original authors.

I think that's an unreasonable demand in a standard library. Incorporating
BSD code into phobos, any amount of it, requires that every D program
that is ever written to include their copyright notice, since phobos
is redistributed in binary form with every D program.

That's a pain to hobbyists and might be a roadblock to use the language professionally.

As far as I know, the entire phobos library is currently public domain or zlib license, which is basically just public domain written out explicitly. That's the way it should remain.


-- 
Adam D. Ruppe
http://arsdnet.net

Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 11:47:37AM +0100, Alexander Pánek wrote:
>> This library is available licensed under BSD, which basically means you can do whatever you please with it, as long as you don???t remove the copyright of the original authors.
> 
> I think that's an unreasonable demand in a standard library. Incorporating
> BSD code into phobos, any amount of it, requires that every D program
> that is ever written to include their copyright notice, since phobos
> is redistributed in binary form with every D program.

I agree, requiring to include copyright with every binary distribution is unacceptable for a standard library. But...

Tango is also available under the Academic Free License. Which I don't understand, despite having read through the ten page explanation of it.
Specifically, you're allow to change it to "any license of your choice that does not contradict the terms and conditions, including Licensor's reserved rights and remedies, in this Academic Free License;"

But what does that mean? Which licenses does it include? Does it include the zlib license? I presume not.
In which case Andrei and Walter's position is entirely justified. If that is correct, I will cease contributing to Tango.

Someone, _please_ tell me I'm wrong.

> That's a pain to hobbyists and might be a roadblock to use the
> language professionally.
> 
> As far as I know, the entire phobos library is currently public domain
> or zlib license, which is basically just public domain written out
> explicitly. That's the way it should remain.

On Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:23:44 -0400, Don <nospam@nospam.com> wrote:
> I agree, requiring to include copyright with every binary distribution is unacceptable for a standard library. But...
>Tango is also available under the Academic Free License. Which I don't  
> understand, despite having read through the ten page explanation of it.
> Specifically, you're allow to change it to "any license of your choice that does not contradict the terms and conditions, including Licensor's reserved rights and remedies, in this Academic Free > License;"
>But what does that mean? Which licenses does it include? Does it include  
> the zlib license? I presume not.
> In which case Andrei and Walter's position is entirely justified. If that is correct, I will cease contributing to Tango.
>Someone, _please_ tell me I'm wrong.

No, sadly you're right. According to wikipedia, the AFL is not GPL compatible. If AFL could be converted to zlib then you could convert ALF source to zlib and it would then be GPL compatible. Q.E.D. Hence, ALF can not be convert to zlib.

So far the only other licence I saw without the binary-licence distribution problem is the Boost Software License (BSL1.0) (And of course the WTFYW licence) And I'm guessing this issue is why they wrote a new licence instead of reusing an old one.

Actually, some of the BSD/MIT like licences might be valid if you included the licence string as a constant in the binary distribution (although this is definitely not in the spirit of the licence)

Robert Jacques wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:23:44 -0400, Don <nospam@nospam.com> wrote:
>> I agree, requiring to include copyright with every binary distribution is unacceptable for a standard library. But...
>> Tango is also available under the Academic Free License. Which I don't understand, despite having read through the ten page explanation of it.
>> Specifically, you're allow to change it to "any license of your choice that does not contradict the terms and conditions, including Licensor's reserved rights and remedies, in this Academic Free > License;"
>> But what does that mean? Which licenses does it include? Does it include the zlib license? I presume not.
>> In which case Andrei and Walter's position is entirely justified. If that is correct, I will cease contributing to Tango.
>> Someone, _please_ tell me I'm wrong.
> 
> No, sadly you're right. According to wikipedia, the AFL is not GPL compatible. If AFL could be converted to zlib then you could convert ALF source to zlib and it would then be GPL compatible. Q.E.D. Hence, ALF can not be convert to zlib.
> 
> So far the only other licence I saw without the binary-licence distribution problem is the Boost Software License (BSL1.0) (And of course the WTFYW licence) And I'm guessing this issue is why they wrote a new licence instead of reusing an old one.

The zlib license also doesn't have the binary distribution problem.

The Boost license looks pretty good to me, and they seem to have used better legal consultation than the zlib license. I also like the fact that it only occupies 3 lines of source code -- that's much better than zlib.

Boost, zlib, WTFYW, and public domain, seem to be the only ones which are suitable for a standard library.

> Actually, some of the BSD/MIT like licences might be valid if you included the licence string as a constant in the binary distribution (although this is definitely not in the spirit of the licence)

On 2009-03-20 05:46:08 +0100, "Robert Jacques" <sandford@jhu.edu> said:

> On Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:23:44 -0400, Don <nospam@nospam.com> wrote:
>> I agree, requiring to include copyright with every binary distribution  is unacceptable for a standard library. But...
>> Tango is also available under the Academic Free License. Which I don't  understand, despite having read through the ten page explanation of it.
>> Specifically, you're allow to change it to "any license of your choice  that does not contradict the terms and conditions, including Licensor's  reserved rights and remedies, in this Academic Free > License;"
>> But what does that mean? Which licenses does it include? Does it include  the zlib license? I presume not.
>> In which case Andrei and Walter's position is entirely justified. If  that is correct, I will cease contributing to Tango.
>> Someone, _please_ tell me I'm wrong.
> 
> No, sadly you're right. According to wikipedia, the AFL is not GPL  compatible. If AFL could be converted to zlib then you could convert ALF  source to zlib and it would then be GPL compatible. Q.E.D. Hence, ALF can  not be convert to zlib.

yes as far as I understand the problem with AFL is that it has a kind of viral component like GPL, in that derivative work need to have a compatible license, and redistribution should ensure that the license is preserved, zlib does not have that.

I don't think it is wrong, but I would be happy also with zlib...

Fawzi

> So far the only other licence I saw without the binary-licence  distribution problem is the Boost Software License (BSL1.0) (And of course  the WTFYW licence) And I'm guessing this issue is why they wrote a new  licence instead of reusing an old one.
> 
> Actually, some of the BSD/MIT like licences might be valid if you included  the licence string as a constant in the binary distribution (although this  is definitely not in the spirit of the licence)

On 2009-03-20 13:28:06 +0100, Don <nospam@nospam.com> said:

> Robert Jacques wrote:
>> On Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:23:44 -0400, Don <nospam@nospam.com> wrote:
>>> I agree, requiring to include copyright with every binary distribution is unacceptable for a standard library. But...
>>> Tango is also available under the Academic Free License. Which I don't understand, despite having read through the ten page explanation of it.
>>> Specifically, you're allow to change it to "any license of your choice that does not contradict the terms and conditions, including Licensor's reserved rights and remedies, in this Academic Free > License;"
>>> But what does that mean? Which licenses does it include? Does it include the zlib license? I presume not.

I read more carefully and tried to understand it better,  I had not understood the problem that makes it incompatible with GPL, the thing is that it puts extra restrictions that limit the responsibility of the licenser, in particular has provisions for revoking the patent granted to the licensee should he choose to make a patent claim about the original work.

Which is reasonable, but an extra restriction, and thus incompatible with GPL

>>> In which case Andrei and Walter's position is entirely justified. If that is correct, I will cease contributing to Tango.
>>> Someone, _please_ tell me I'm wrong.
>> 
>> No, sadly you're right. According to wikipedia, the AFL is not GPL compatible. If AFL could be converted to zlib then you could convert ALF source to zlib and it would then be GPL compatible. Q.E.D. Hence, ALF can not be convert to zlib.
>> 
>> So far the only other licence I saw without the binary-licence distribution problem is the Boost Software License (BSL1.0) (And of course the WTFYW licence) And I'm guessing this issue is why they wrote a new licence instead of reusing an old one.
> 
> The zlib license also doesn't have the binary distribution problem.
> The Boost license looks pretty good to me, and they seem to have used better legal consultation than the zlib license. I also like the fact that it only occupies 3 lines of source code -- that's much better than zlib.
> 
> Boost, zlib, WTFYW, and public domain, seem to be the only ones which are suitable for a standard library.

I agree that these a good licenses for a standard library.

after some extra digging

tango licensing:

BSD (and this is the revised 3 clause BSD)
- is compatible with GPL
- copyright need to be advertised also in the documentation and binary

a commonly used permissive license (which probably you are using when linking for example network code in almost any operating system).
It does *not* include the original fourth statement of BSD

APL
- similar to BSD, but with some extra protections against the liability of the licenser, in particular with respect to patents
- these extra restrictions make it incompatible with GPLv2
- it should be equivalent to apache 2.0 ( http://www.opensource.org/proliferation-report )
and so it might be compatible with GPLv3 but I am not 100% sure on this.

In any case the double licensing of tango allows one to use it also with GPL code

Fawzi

Fawzi Mohamed wrote:
> after some extra digging
> 
> tango licensing:
> 
> BSD (and this is the revised 3 clause BSD)
> - is compatible with GPL
> - copyright need to be advertised also in the documentation and binary
> 
> a commonly used permissive license (which probably you are using when
> linking for example network code in almost any operating system).
> It does *not* include the original fourth statement of BSD
> 
> APL
> - similar to BSD, but with some extra protections against the liability
> of the licenser, in particular with respect to patents
> - these extra restrictions make it incompatible with GPLv2
> - it should be equivalent to apache 2.0 (
> http://www.opensource.org/proliferation-report )
> and so it might be compatible with GPLv3 but I am not 100% sure on this.
> 
> In any case the double licensing of tango allows one to use it also with GPL code
> 
> Fawzi
> 

When was the last time you had to put this in your GCC-compiled programs?

"Portions of this program Copyright (C) Free Software Foundation.  Uses
glibc."

For a regular library, binary attribution clauses are OK.  For a standard library, it's distasteful [1].  I shouldn't HAVE to worry about legal issues from compiling Hello World.

  -- Daniel

[1] I've contributed code to Tango under BSD.  If I'd have known about this issue, I would have made it Public Domain or a license without the binary attribution clause.

Daniel Keep wrote:
> When was the last time you had to put this in your GCC-compiled programs?
> 
> "Portions of this program Copyright (C) Free Software Foundation.  Uses
> glibc."

Executable code resulting from compilation is not a work derived from GCC.

glibc is extremely difficult to link statically and is distributed under the LGPL, so no copyright notice is necessary.

If dmd had good support for dynamic linking, this wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue. Sadly, ddl seems to be on hiatus, and at any rate, it can't be applied to the runtime.

On Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:28:06 -0400, Don <nospam@nospam.com> wrote:
> Boost, zlib, WTFYW, and public domain, seem to be the only ones which are suitable for a standard library.

Actually, due to some interesting aspects of international copyright law public domain isn't suitable for a standard library. In some countries it is not possible to put a work into the public domain; a work may only enter it once the copyright has expired.