[License-review] For Approval: The Cryptographic Autonomy License

Bruce Perens bruce at perens.com
Fri May 10 04:37:20 UTC 2019


Van,

It seems to me that you have re-defined the Free Software Foundation's
version of Software Freedom, arbitrarily, to encompass data rights. It
doesn't seem that this should be your task alone, or that of your customer.
Perhaps the Free Software Foundation would want to be involved :-)

The problem with the way you have done it is that it provides your
newly-defined* Data Freedom* to people at the expense of someone else, who
loses the Freedom to run the program as they like under the *FSF version of
Freedom* to which the OSI signed on.

I could play this game too, by extending the definition of Freedom in other
arbitrary ways. Perhaps by adding hardware rights. And then when anyone
asked me why having to provide others with hardware wasn't removing their
freedom, I would say  "Obviously I don't have the Freedom to run the
program without hardware".

The point here is that it's an arbitrary re-definition. Each different
arbitrary extension of Freedom probably would be at someone else's expense,
and reducing their Freedom under the classical FSF definition of Freedom.

    Thanks

    Bruce

On Thu, May 9, 2019 at 8:44 PM VanL <van.lindberg at gmail.com> wrote:

> The CAL and the GPL preserve freedom in exactly the same way. You are not
> being precise enough in your reading. The CAL does not prevent anyone from
> running the program as they wish. There are no use restrictions in the CAL,
> except those that, in the words of the GPL:
>
> "To protect your rights, we need to prevent others from denying you these
> rights or asking you to surrender the rights. Therefore, you have certain
> responsibilities if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify
> it: responsibilities to respect the freedom of others."
>
> This statement applies perfectly to the CAL. If I were to update the GPL
> preamble for the CAL, I would only say:
>
> "The CAL is designed to make sure that you have the freedom to use and
> distribute copies of free software (and charge others for services you
> provide or source code if you wish), that you receive your data and the
> source code from those who provide the software to you, or can get those
> things if you want them, that you can change the software or use pieces of
> it in new free programs, that you can run the software to process your data
> in the context of your choice, and that you know you can do these things.
>
> To protect your rights, we need to prevent others from denying you these
> rights or asking you to surrender the rights. Therefore, you have certain
> responsibilities if you provide the software to others, or if you modify
> it: responsibilities to respect the freedom and the autonomy of others."
>
> The CAL doesn't restrict freedom zero. It just curtails the economic
> incentive for others to act in ways that restrict other's freedoms by also
> requiring them to also turn over those things that grant them exclusivity
> and thus, power.
>
>>
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