[License-review] Approval request for GG License 1.0

[Engel Nyst]

Hello Valentino,

Just one point on your license.

On 12/30/2014 01:39 PM, Valentino Giudice wrote:
>
>
> You must therefore delete any copy of this work and on any derivative
> work you have.

I don't think the deletion of any copy of the work should be a result of
termination of the copyright license.

Copyright covers actions like copying, distributing copies, modifying
the work.

It doesn't cover executing the software, or "using" it.

In Europe it doesn't even cover giving to someone else the physical
copy legally in your possession, now or in twenty years. If you acquire
a cd with the software from a store, the copyright owner of the work on
your cd cannot make you throw it to the trash. It's your cd. And since
such actions, executing the software you got, or keeping your physical
copy, or giving it to someone else are supposed to be beyond the reach
of copyright, they are supposed to be beyond the reach of a copyright
license.

Similarly, you can think of a book. Once you bought it, it's your book.
You may get no right to copy or distribute publicly copies of it (by
default), but you always own that physical book. Distributing other
copies and reading your own copy are two different and unrelated things.
The publisher's "license" doesn't force you to burn your book.

(unless you didn't acquire physical ownership, that is, you borrowed or
rented it. Open source software - and in fact a lot of proprietary
software as well - are not borrowed nor rented, though.)

It may be more muddy in some part of the law, but not in open source
licensing. There is no open source license that attempts to force you to
delete your copy. There is no open source license that attempts to limit
ANY private use (in colloquial parlance) for any purpose.

I suggest to consider it carefully and remove the requirement to delete
the copy from your license. The violators of your terms will no longer
have rights like distribute/copy/modify. However, once they get the
work, they can use it indefinitely.

If you change your license on this point, you may note that it implies
more changes all throughout the text. For example "owning a copy"
doesn't require you to accept the license (in the preamble). "Using"
doesn't either.

> It is inspired to the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

CC-BY 3.0 doesn't require you to delete your copy.

The grants in section 3 are those that may terminate in section 7a. That
enumeration doesn't contain 'reading' or 'listening' or otherwise making
use of the copy in your possession, it contains only particular actions:
reproduce, distribute, publicly perform or create and reproduce
adaptations.


-- 
Oracle corollary to Hanlon's razor:
Never attribute to stupidity what can be adequately explained by malice.
(~ adapted from Adam Borowski)