[License-discuss] Copyright on APIs

Mon Jul 8 00:38:50 UTC 2019

Bruce Perens wrote:

> My opinion has been that gift-style licensing makes you an unpaid, and unappreciated, employee of big companies.... Having had my software installed in literally all lines of network-connected consumer devices, I feel that compliance with those [GPL] terms is a fair exchange. It goes in Billion-dollar television lines, etc.

I agree with Bruce that Busybox is a valuable "Swiss Army knife" software tool, and that he and his colleagues have earned compensation through "copyleft" for its use. However, I personally can appreciate both copyleft and "gift-style" licensing alternatives, depending upon licensor preference, as my own licenses implement.

Bruce also wrote:

> Being able to use the GPL and AGPL provisions has a lot of advantages.

But I don't agree with Bruce's statement about those "strong copyleft" licenses. The licenses that are needed for copyleft are the LGPL and a new ALGPL. In that, I agree with Russell McOrmand that "we should internationally be pushing copyright forward from what was articulated in the 1991 EU directive on software which suggested interfaces are not restricted subject matter."

I can report on the fears of some of my clients, who believed that they would be sued by SFLC if their independent software merely touched Busybox. It would be much safer for all users – and equally profitable for Bruce – if Busybox modifications themselves had to be disclosed by copyleft upon their physical distribution (or, with an ALGPL alternative, upon network distribution), without the fear of infection based on the "strong copyleft" theories about linking promoted by the GPL and AGPL.

Best, /Larry

From: License-discuss <license-discuss-bounces at lists.opensource.org> On Behalf Of Bruce Perens via License-discuss
Sent: Sunday, July 7, 2019 3:44 PM
To: license-discuss at lists.opensource.org
Cc: Bruce Perens <bruce at perens.com>
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Copyright on APIs

My opinion has been that gift-style licensing makes you an unpaid, and unappreciated, employee of big companies. The GPL and AGPL terms are hardly an unfair expectation of those folks. Having had my software installed in literally all lines of network-connected consumer devices, I feel that compliance with those terms is a fair exchange. It goes in Billion-dollar television lines, etc.

Being able to use the GPL and AGPL provisions has a lot of advantages. Just a few days ago, I purchased an outdoor 4G modem for my remote ham site, which will allow me to operate the radio by remote control. It's 5 hours drive away, so the software has to work reliably. Unfortunately, the modem manufacturer had done an imperfect implementation of OpenWRT. Because I was copyright holder of some of the software, I really just had to drop a note to convince them to put all of their source online, and that it was desirable to have this modem supported in the OpenWRT mainline. LGPL terms alone would not have provided the same incentive.

Similarly, in creating Busybox I used GPL, which was the right decision, except today I would use AGPL. Many companies adopted the software in order to save themselves time-to-market, and the requirement to publish source code meant they each did not have to duplicate effort, and we all got the work of multiple person-years by various embedded companies. Busybox has also been very important in getting companies everywhere to understand their obligations to share source code. It also helped me to establish and continue my license compliance business, which was worth about a Million dollars and allowed me to continue to devote most of my time to Open Source.

    Thanks

    Bruce

On Sun, Jul 7, 2019 at 3:29 PM Russell McOrmond <russellmcormond at gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Jun 30, 2019 at 6:44 PM Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com <mailto:lrosen at rosenlaw.com> > wrote:

Thank you again Patrice-Emanuel, and thanks also to the EU for a much clearer explanation of functional software interfaces ("APIs") than the brief but equally relevant provision in 17 USC 102(b). I hope the US Supreme Court is as clear in its decision in the Oracle v. Google case. 

OSI should let "strong copyleft" die peacefully among the mistaken theories of open source in any future licenses it approves. It is not a positive feature of "software freedom."

  I've been reading this thread with interest, and want to add in my own thoughts as a participant in the movement since the early 1990's. The FSF has made several mistakes in this time when it comes to protecting software freedom.   

  I strongly believe we should internationally be pushing copyright forward from what was articulated in the 1991 EU directive on software which suggested interfaces are not restricted subject matter.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31991L0250:EN:HTML

  The 1991 directive was a good start, but we should be going further to not allow contracts or technical measures which seek to circumvent these limits on exclusive rights.  Unfortunately as a community we have been embracing opposing concepts.

  Far worse than the concept of "strong copyleft" is the concept of the Affero clauses which trigger on private modification of software.  The Free/Libee and Open Source Software movements should be strongly rejecting these concepts in order to protect software freedom, not providing examples of allegedly positive "uses" of these harmful concepts.

  Those who are trying to protect software freedom should be trying to turn the GPL and AGPL into only being able to be the equivalent of LGPL, as the clauses which differentiate the GPL and AGPL from the LGPL should not be enforceable under any law in any country.

-- 

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

Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property rights as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition! http://l.c11.ca/ict/

"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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Bruce Perens - Partner, OSS.Capital <http://OSS.Capital> .

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