[License-review] For approval: The Cryptographic Autonomy License (Beta 4)

[Nigel T]

Van,

What issue do you have with not requiring the downstream user to provide
any user data that the original CAL licensed software doesn't make
available to the non-technical user?

If the original software doesn't provide a user accessible export feature
then there should be no downstream requirement for the user to provide any
user data.  You cannot assume that the user is a developer so the assertion
that they can just do a SQL dump or some other convoluted technical
mechanism is an excessive burden to place on users.

You can make it a requirement that any modification that adds user data
must be accompanied by a user accessible export feature of some kind.

Nigel

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 12:37 PM VanL <van.lindberg at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Nigel,
>
> You are correct that the CAL does not mandate any particular functionality
> or method of compliance. History has shown that mandating a particular
> technical structure is unwise. Instead, the CAL simply describes what is
> required and uses the standard tool of open source licensing - the denial
> or termination of the license - to motivate compliance.
>
> You can argue that the CAL may be difficult to comply with in some cases,
> or that ot would not be well-suited to some types of applications. But
> those are not marks against the CAL. Different licenses address different
> needs.
>
> Thanks,
> Van
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 11, 2019, 9:13 AM Nigel T <nigel.2048 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The bar is being moved here.  CAL does not require that the software be
>> able to import any data to get back to a running state...or (according to
>> Van) even need to export any data so a SQL dump is acceptable in meeting
>> the CAL requirement.
>>
>> So the user's "ability to get back to the place they were" probably
>> requires that they re-enter the data and re-doing any associations by hand
>> anyway. The data doesn't even have to be in any kind of layout to
>> facilitate re-entering the data.  Here you go...a SQL dump of your data,
>> enjoy.  I could even just create a single PNG of all the data and meet CAL
>> requirements.
>>
>> If the objective really is for the user to be able to get back to where
>> they were with a clean copy of the system then CAL should specify that CAL
>> software should support import/export round tripping of user data.
>>
>> In any case, the operation of the software is not dependent on the user's
>> customer data being present or your software is broken.
>>
>> I take it you do not like the suggestion that the downstream software
>> user is under no obligation to provide any customer data that the original
>> code did not provide as export?
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 12:37 AM Henrik Ingo <henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 11 Dec 2019, 03:29 VanL, <van.lindberg at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The use or operation of the software is not dependent on user’s
>>>>> customer provided data being present...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This is not really correct, if you think about it.
>>>>
>>>> I don't think it is debatable to say that some (most?) software works
>>>> differently in the presence of particular data. The subroutines the run are
>>>> different; the displayed interface may be different; the state of the
>>>> software is *different.* Because the accumulated state is different, the
>>>> actual functioning of the software, as experienced by the user, is
>>>> different.
>>>>
>>>> I agree that the user has the ability to get back to the place where
>>>> they were by re-entering the data and re-doing any associations made. But
>>>> the latent potential for the software to work the same way is not the same
>>>> as the software actually functioning the exact same way.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Taking this argument further, the user can also rewrite all the code
>>> from scratch, and therefore all copyleft licenses (and open source) are
>>> unnecessary in general.
>>>
>>> Henrik
>>>
>>>>
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