Another pass at redrafting the Artistic License

[Ben Tilly]

David Johnson wrote:
>
>On Sat, 16 Sep 2000, Ben Tilly wrote:
>
> > >My view of "proper" OSS and FS licenses is that they grant additional
> > >permissions to the user beyond those offered by copyright, but take
> > >away none of the rights of the user that copyright allows. You can give
> > >but you can't take away.
> >
> > Then this clearly is not a "proper" FS license.  Basically it
> > says, "If you want to play in our sandbox, you have to follow
> > Larry's rules.  If you just want to play with our toys, go
> > ahead as long as you don't mess with our sandbox."
>
>Perhaps I didn't clarify myself. I find it perfectly acceptable for a
>permission to have conditions. IANAL though, and I could be
>completely off base here. Basically, one can say "you have permission to
>play in our sandbox so long as you follow our rules, but if you don't
>follow our rules then the law says that you can't play in other people's
>sandboxes anyway."

I have been told by lawyers that you can say it, but you cannot
necessarily enforce the rules.  For instance I was just told (and
find believable) that statements about, "You cannot represent this
as your own unless it is, and cannot the copyright holders and
contributer's names for endorsement without express written
permission" cannot be enforced as part of a copyright.  It can be
as part of a contract.

>A license along the lines of "you can do x, y and x provided
>that you also do 1, 2 and 3" may technically be a contract, but it
>doesn't require contract law for enforcement.

It may.  If you require stuff not covered in copyright law you
are SOL if someone doesn't do them.

Or at least so I have been told.

>One problem with contract/agreement "based" licenses is what happens
>if someone doesn't agree? If you are unable to protect the software
>with copyright, then you have no recourse if someone disagrees with the
>contract. I think the GPL got it right when it said "These actions are
>prohibited by law [copyright] if you do not accept this License".

Which makes the GPL a contract.  Enforcable under contract law,
in addition to copyright law.  As I understand it for roughly
the same reasons I am trying to do that.

> > There are two items that do not fall under copyright law in
> > there.  The first is that you really want something somewhere
> > saying that, "Yes, all developers really agreed to our
> > ground-rules."  Doesn't have to be here, I just think it is
> > a convenient place to put it and avoid paperwork.
>
>Okay, fair enough...

One note.  To quote Tom Christiansen: "I take it as an article of
faith that Larry Wall would never actually sue anyone."  So if you
do not like something in the draft, remember that that is the kind
of person on the other end. :-)

Cheers,
Ben
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