[License-discuss] What should fit in a FOSS license?

[Russell McOrmond]

On Mon, Mar 9, 2020 at 4:44 PM Christopher Lemmer Webber <
cwebber at dustycloud.org> wrote:

> Here is my answer: the role of FOSS licenses is to undo the damage that
> copyright, patents, and related intellectual-restriction laws have done
> when applied to software.  That is what should be in the scope of our
> *licenses*.


I've articulated similar elsewhere, so can say I'm in agreement.  Software
is unlike most other literary works, except possibly other forms of policy
(government legislation, legal precedent, etc).  While I didn't know to
articulate it that way in the early 1990's when I joined, I have since
taken inspiration from Lawrence Lessig's "Code and other laws of
cyberspace".

Movements which seek to empower software copyright/patent holders through
licensing are IMO counterproductive as they
perpetuate/promote/exemplify/etc the very problem we should be all trying
to work against.


>   There are other problems we need to solve too if we truly
> care about user freedom and human rights, but for those we will need to
> take a multi-layered approach.
>


I spent a significant percentage of my life involved in the policy debate
about legal protection for technological measures in Canada starting from
the summer of 2001 when the first consultation happened until a bill was
finally passed in 2012 (goverment changed a few times, and multiple related
bills were tabled).  I had a headstart as I had been following the DMCA
debates in the USA (the TPM component) starting from the 1995 tabling of
Bruce Lehman's Copyright and the NII report.

When I was doing that policy work I was pretty much alone from the FLOSS
community, and was often asked by policy makers and politicians "where was
my group".   The general lack of political engagement by this community has
continuously been disheartening.   The community is large, and FLOSS
advocates in my home town even hosted the "Ottawa Linux Symposium".  My BOF
at OLS had more attendents than were actually pushing to be witnesses at
the committee of parliamentarians trying to study this.  (An archive of
much of what I wrote during that period, including my review of each
committee meeting -- I attended every one in person -- is at
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/  ).

That was a time when I was trying to represent the FLOSS community in a
human rights protecting manner, and was given the title of Policy
Coordinator for CLUE (Canadian Linux Users Exchange -- linux.ca at the
time), but was otherwise given very little community support.

I also co-founded GOSLING (Getting Open Source Logic INto Government)
http://www.goslingcommunity.org  , but was also one of the few that was
concerned with how the government regulated software and software
authors/owners.  Most of the other participants were concerned with
procurement issues, which I consider to be a less critical concern.


When I am working on environmental issues, Laïcité/secularism (a
prerequisite for many other policy areas including reproductive choice and
LGBTQ+),  I do not do so as a software author as my being a software author
was irrelevant to the discussion.  Creating a separate Green Software
Developers or Software Secularism group would have been counterproductive.

The same is true of my ongoing work on parliamentary/electoral reform.
While I make use of my software knowledge in explaining that we have many
choices for how to determanistally count ranked ballots in multi-member
districts, I am not involved in this reform strictly as a software author
and wouldn't consider creating a Software Authors for PR-STV group (I
support PR-STV. I'm opposed to party representation, and granting parties
unearned seats).

I would never consider creating a software license that was opposed to
single member districts or party lists, even though I strongly believe
these policies deliberately restrict the effectiveness of UN UDHR article
21 rights.



Essentially, while I have always been an extremely strong advocate for
software authors becomming politically involved, I believe that software
license agreements are exactly the wrong place to become political.

While I'm happy to see more people realising the special role that software
authors play in society, I'm very saddened to see that empowering software
copyright/patent holders is being seen by some as having a positive impact
on society.  We should be encouraging authors to waive this control, and
trying to minimise the control enforcable under the law to hold the entire
software sector more transparent and accountable.


Back in the 1980's in my highschool law class I wrote a short review on
whether I thought software should be covered by copyright law, something
that had not yet been clarified under Canadian law at the time.  I don't
have a copy handy, but I seem to remember being skeptical then as I felt
software was different.  The question of software patentability couldn't
have come up as software was clearly not patentable at that time.   Time
has moved on and I'm no longer skeptical -- I strongly believe that
software should be held to a level of accountability and transparency not
expected of traditional literary works, and should not have the same type
of copyright.  And I am a strong opponent to software patents.


-- 
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>

"The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware
manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or portable
media player from my cold dead hands!" http://c11.ca/own
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