[License-discuss] Shortest copyleft licence

[Tim Makarios]

On Wed, 2015-04-01 at 09:58 -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> Software has special problems that CC's classes of licences don't need
> to address.  I have no problem reverse-engineering the construction of a
> novel to determine how to write my own.  (There cannot be a proprietary 
> secret sauce, no unavailable or obscured source code.)

But if you wanted to write a look-alike parody, or make an adaptation
that adds something completely new to the existing text (like Pride and
Prejudice and Zombies, for example), or even just print your own copies
in a larger font, it might be useful for you to have the .tex source
that was used to typeset the novel.  This is just an example, by way of
introducing the question:  How much extra effort is it reasonable for a
free culture or free software licence to demand people go to, on top of
merely demanding that they don't sue people who re-use their work?

Reasonable people will give different answers to this question, I'm
sure, but I don't think it's consistent for the sub-culture that
advocates copyright abolition to demand anything other than a promise
not to sue (but I do think it's reasonable for them to demand a promise
not to sue in exchange for a promise not to sue).  What licence should
this sub-culture use?

I might be wrong, but I'd anticipate that if there was a copyleft
software licence that didn't demand the publication of the source code
of derivative works, such source code would almost always be available
on public git repositories, anyway.  Why would you try to hide source
code from people you're allowing to reverse-engineer your binaries?  As
it stands, what proportion of derivatives of permissively-licensed
software are not also open source?  And derivative works for which the
source code was not available clearly couldn't be called "open source",
just as closed-source derivatives of permissively-licensed software
would not be called "open source", even if an OSI-approved licence was
applied to the binaries.

I began with an example, and I'll end with another, inspired by a
discussion about electronic device freedom [1].  If you were designing a
copyleft free culture licence for hardware designs, and if someone
wanted to make and sell slightly different hardware based on hardware
that was covered by such a licence, how much detail would you require
them to publish about the design of the hardware they're selling?  In
what way should they publish it, and how long should they make sure such
a publication remains available?

Tim
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[1] https://singpolyma.net/2015/01/electronic-device-freedom/