Request for Comment http://www.buni.org/mediawiki/index.php/GAP_Against

[Ben Tilly]

On 1/22/07, Andrew C. Oliver <acoliver at buni.org> wrote:
> Ben Tilly wrote:
> >
> > As I mentioned in my discussion with Rick Moen, I believe that many of
> > the UI issues are also potential OSD #6 violations.  For instance a
> > requirement for a logo of a given size prevents developing derivative
> > code for conveying information over mobile telephones or to blind
> > people.
> >
> > Therefore even if one questions whether OSD #10 failed to capture the
> > intent of the Board at that time, those are still issues under OSD #6.
> >
> Can you complete your argument here in a more digestible form?  If not I
> will attempt to go back through the archive again and sort it out, but I
> was having trouble unraveling what subthreads were not based on GAP but
> other attribution licenses and which ones were.

Well it was an offhand comment there, and I explained it about as well
here as I did there.

The argument is that since the license requires displaying a logo, the
code is unable to be used in fields of endeavour where that logo
cannot be displayed.  For instance one could not develop an audio
interface specifically for use by the blind.

This is almost exactly the same as the OSD #10 argument.  The
difference is that instead of directly referring to technologies that
the license prevents reuse in, you produce fields of endeavour where
you need to use those technologies and note that you can't.

> > Similarly for the OSD #3 complaint, I think that argument is weak.
> > Essentially it is, "If code under this license is combined with code
> > from similar ones, the result becomes impractical."  However one gets
> > the same effect from taking any pair of incompatible licenses and
> > joining them together.  The best-known example is the GPL and any
> > other license.  It may be argued that one may expect different
> > licenses to generally be immiscible, here similar licenses are.  But
> > we already have examples of that as well, namely the GPL with clause 8
> > invoked is incompatible with the GPL.
> >
> Do you think it is weak enough that you can't agree with it at all and
> advocate its removal from the main paper?  Does anyone else agree with
> you?  I felt there was a rough enough consensus on OSD 3 to include the
> arguments.  Personally I agree there is less meat here than #10 which is
> why I included it first.

I don't know whether anyone else agrees with me on this item, and my
feeling is that more people think there is an OSD #3 issue than vice
versa.

As for inclusion, that I can't decide.  Rather than seeing two
opposing documents created I'd prefer to see one document that
includes all of the major arguments and counter-arguments in condensed
form.  Ideally this would be easy to read.  However if you're going to
have adversarial documents, then the right way to do it is to include
every possible point, stated as forcefully as possible, and hope that
one of the points sticks.

Cheers,
Ben