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

Fri Aug 14 04:47:17 UTC 2015

On Sat, 2015-08-08 at 14:07 -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> Because
> the licence states...
> 
>    The NCCL applies to a work of creativity (this is called the "Creative
>    Work") and comes with any rights that I have in it.
> 
> ...that therefore includes the right to redistribute and create
> derivative works under any terms whatsoever.  The recipient can then
> elect to ignore the remainder of what NCCL 1.0 says, possessing all the
> rights the copyright holder did.  Because the recipient can exercise
> _any rights_, no action can be copyright infringement against the
> stakeholder.  Ergo, as Josh Berkus points out, the sole person with
> standing has no means to enforce his/her the copyright expectation.

Actually, "... comes with any rights that I have in it" is from the
SimPL, too!  (The SimPL explicitly excludes trademarks from that, but
nothing else is excluded in that sentence.)  Given how much that
originates from the SimPL is being criticized on this list, I'm
wondering how it ever got approved in the first place --- especially if,
as you seem to be suggesting here, it might be interpreted as a public
domain dedication, which is so clearly contrary to the author's
intention.

I'm happy to change "comes with" to "relates to" if that makes it
clearer.

> Totally non-coercive or copyleft.  Pick any one.

As non-coercive as possible for all recipients of the work and of its
derivatives.  That implies copyleft, and it implies the lack of any
conditions, *except* that derivatives are governed by the same licence.

> As a minor point, paragraph two defines the term 'Derived Work' as
> meaning the copyright-law concept of derivative work -- apparently just
> so the capitalised phrase 'Derived Work' can be festooned around the
> rest of paragraphs two and three.  Why not just say derivative work?

I'm happy to make that change.

> Moreover, come to think of
> it, NCCL 1.0 lacks any statement of the year of copyright title on which
> the licence grant is based -- a matter I'll elaborate on soon.

> Copyright notice
> ----------------
> 
> I don't know if Tim was omitting the traditional Copyright line
> deliberately or not.  (Quite possibly he merely copied that misfeature,
> too, from SimPL 2.0.)  

Indeed, though I note that the Creative Commons licences (for example)
don't have a copyright line at the top; they rely on licence notices
that refer to them indicating who is granting the licence.

> There is a faction of coders (and I don't wish to
> be unfair to Tim in lumping him in with them) who appear to so dislike
> the global copyright regime that they continually attempt to magick it
> away by making no reference to its structures (e.g., they dislike
> Copyright lines like the MIT License template's) and flock to whatever
> is the ultra-short licence du jour that sounds least lawyerly.  

I have no desire to pretend that copyright law doesn't exist, but if I
have the choice among several equivalent licences, I'll definitely
prefer the one that's shorter or more easily understood by non-lawyers.

> I
> sympathise with their dislikes, but the tactic doesn't work in a Berne
> Convention world:  Copyright notices, licence texts distributed with
> covered works, and very clear, non-morphable licence terms exist for a
> reason.

Actually, now I think about it, I notice that the Creative Commons
licence chooser [1] provides HTML for putting a licence notice on your
web page; but that licence notice mentions neither the word "copyright"
nor the year of first publication, and it only optionally mentions the
name of the person to whom the work should be attributed!  I mention
this mostly out of curiosity as to what your opinion of it is; I have no
objection to having copyright notices on free software (or free culture)
works, if they add clarity and certainty.  (But I don't want to
implicitly threaten coercion against people who omit such notices.)

> Warranty disclaimer
> -------------------
> 
> NCCL 1.0 has:
> 
>   You get NO WARRANTIES. None of any kind;
> 
> Certainly clear and bracingly concise (and I've written things like that
> in ultra-short licences for non-critical works -- but does it work?
> http://www.mslater.com/post/104847-why-are-warranty-disclaimers-in-all
> In short, in USA law jurisdictions, the Uniform Commercial Code requires
> that a warranty disclaimer be 'conspicuous' and gives the example of
> disclaimer sentences being in ALL CAPS as qualifying.
> 
> Further, lawyers tend to take the further precaution of explicitly
> listing all of the types of express and implied warranties that are
> being disclaimed, to ensure that no court could apply.  Thus the hideous
> and verbose paragraph at the bottom of
> http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause .
> 
> Yes, it's hideous.  Yes, it's lawyerly.  Yes, it's verbose.  And all for
> a reason.  Even if you think you as a licence drafter don't deserve the
> protection of legal best practices, you ought not to thrust that risk
> onto downstream re-users and redistributors of covered works.

Point taken.

Thank you for joining this discussion.  As you may have noticed, much of
the previous discussion has been a back-and-forth critique and defence
of the *intended* meaning of the NCCL, which changed nothing
substantial.

Your contribution has persuaded me that the current *text* of the NCCL
leaves a great deal to be desired as far as an *implementation* of that
intention goes.

Since I'm now considering substantial changes to the text of the
licence, I'm willing to concede that it may be more appropriate to
withdraw my request for now, moving discussion of the licence to the
license-discuss list (as Josh Berkus suggested, apparently anticipating
others' criticism necessitating substantial revision of the text [2])
until the text of the licence is stable again.

I'm not very well at the moment, so I'll wait until my head is a bit
clearer before attempting a more robust implementation of my intention
for the NCCL.

Actually, this is probably a good time to point out that I'm not doing
this in order to take credit for having written the licence; I just want
to *use* a licence that is copyleft but otherwise minimally coercive
(and preferably maximally short and clear).  So if anyone else
understands my intention and is able and willing to write a licence that
robustly implements that intention, please do.

Tim
<><

> (Entirely-unserious query:  If OSI ever appoints a non-American to be
> License Review Chair, would he or she be the Licence Review Chair?  ;->  ) 
> http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/?page=misc#english

I did notice that the OSI page entitled "The Licence Review Process"
actually discusses the "License Review Process" [3].

[1] http://creativecommons.org/choose/
[2] http://tinyurl.com/pwaxh9k
[3] http://opensource.org/approval