[License-review] Request for approval of the Non-Coercive Copyleft Licence (NCCL) 1.0

[Tim Makarios]

On Fri, 2015-07-31 at 17:49 -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
> The NCCL is the first proposed license I've ever seen which *encourages*
> distributors to distribute the code without the license attached.

In what way does it do that?  I agree that it *allows* such
distribution, but that's not the same as *encouraging* it.  If you like,
I could add a non-binding preamble to make it clear that what the
licence merely allows is not necessarily encouraged.  Perhaps something
along the lines of "I'm allowed to do anything!  But not everything is
good" [1].

> While
> other licenses exist which are liberal about how the license text is to
> be distributed,

Can you give some examples, please?  I'd be interested to see how
they're worded.

> you are proposing a radical new thing.  And you have
> yet, as far as I've seen, to state any real need for it.

I'm not the first person to want a copyleft version of something like
CC0 or WTFPL [2], and I probably won't be the last.  I don't claim that
everyone will suddenly want to switch to NCCL, but I do think there will
be some people who will at least sometimes prefer it either for reasons
of principle or merely for the sake of simplicity.

> > The GPL (or any other free software licence) allows people to charge a
> > fee in exchange for copies of the software, but people very rarely do,
> > because others are always free to distribute the same software free of
> > charge.  Likewise, the NCCL allows people to distribute copies of the
> > software without the licence attached, but I suspect that people very
> > rarely would, because if there's demand for explicitly and accurately
> > licensed copies of the software (which there will be among people who
> > aren't copyright-naive, if the software is popular), then others are
> > always free to supply such copies.
> 
> Useful code not infrequently survives the original author, and not
> infrequently becomes more popular in a fork or derivative than it did in
> the original release.

I'm not sure I understand your point here.  Can you please clarify?

> >> Based on Tim's explanation of the NCCL, I would neither use it for my
> >> own code, nor would I be willing to use any code licensed under it.
> > 
> > Just to be clear, do you mean you wouldn't even use software licensed
> > under the NCCL?  Or that you wouldn't contribute code to NCCL-licensed
> > projects?  Or just that you wouldn't incorporate NCCL-covered code into
> > other projects?
> 
> I wouldn't contribute to it,

Why not?  I mean, if you found an NCCL-licensed piece of software
useful, and you were annoyed by a bug that you found easy to fix, why
wouldn't you contribute that bug-fix back to the project that built the
software?  What are you worried might happen?

> nor use its code in any project I have.
> And I would actively reject any contribution which I knew to contain
> NCCL-licensed code.

Well, that's ok.  I wouldn't expect you to accept GPL-licensed code into
incompatibly licensed projects, either.

> *Assuming I knew*, which is the whole problem with
> your license.  For example, let me revise my original scenario:
> 
> 1. Tim releases widgetX under the NCCL.
> 
> 2. Mary releases WidgetX.1.  As is her right, she removes all references
> to the NCCL from the code.
> 
> 3. George picks up WidgetX.1 and incorporates it into FrameworkQ. The
> rest of FrameworkQ is MIT-licensed.  No license violations have occurred
> at this point.

Are you sure?  It seems at this point (at least in the context of what
follows) that the entirety of FrameworkQ is ostensibly MIT-licensed.
But maybe you're right; maybe a court would determine that although the
MIT licence does not, in fact, apply to the NCCL-licensed code, it's not
a violation of the NCCL to *purport* to apply the MIT license to such
code.

> 4. Sheila pulls some code from FrameworkQ and sends me a pull request to
> incorporate it into my Framework100 project.  The code she pulls happens
> to be mostly WidgetX.1.
> 
> 5. I accept her pull request and release it under the MPL, AGPL, or
> other more-restrictive license . At this point, I'm in voliation of the
> NCCL, even though I would have no reasonable way to know this.

But if it's not a violation of the NCCL to purport to apply an
incompatible licence to the code, then you're not in violation of the
NCCL here.  And if it is a violation of the NCCL to do that, then George
was in violation of the NCCL, too.  Why was he incorporating code he
didn't know to be MIT-licensed into an MIT-licensed project?

Whichever way you turn it, I can't see how NCCL-licensed code can enter
an incompatibly licensed project without someone either deliberately
contributing code in violation of the NCCL, or at least being naively
unaware that they lack the permission necessary to contribute that code.
But either of these can happen just as well with GPL-licensed code as
they can with NCCL-licensed code.

> Again, encouraging derivative creators to strip the license from
> distributions is one of the dumber ideas I've heard on this forum,

Again, I don't see how the licence *encourages* people to strip licence
notices from derivative works.  If it does encourage this (rather than
merely allowing it) I'm perfectly willing to alter the wording.

> and I
> really don't see why we should discuss it any further than we already have.

Well, you don't have to continue this discussion, I guess, but if you do
choose to do so, I hope the discussion (and possible changes to the
licence or an added preamble or whatever) will resolve your worries
about the licence.

Tim
<><

[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/1%20Corinthians%206:12
[2] http://questioncopyright.org/CC-branding-confusion