Gentoo Archives: gentoo-portage-dev

From: tvali <qtvali@×××××.com>
To: licensing@×××.org, gentoo-portage-dev@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-portage-dev] few licences, which should exist
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 07:11:37
Message-Id: cea53e3c0603301334x5a436932kb88c3684d80d6678@mail.gmail.com
1 (portage list is maybe the best place to send this, but still, maybe usable
2 as i dont know lists with such specific purpose -- so sending it to gentoo
3 list and gnu)
4
5 I have thought about such things:
6
7 1. Formats like mp3 are put together in such way that basically noone can
8 use them with a free application. There should be licence, which grants some
9 file formats an opposite -- that no application, which supports any
10 commercial file format, must not support them. Then people who want, may put
11 all their free music up in that format -- or even licence their music in
12 such way that it's only free as long as it is used together with it. Goal of
13 such licence would be to give gnu people the same ways to take their market
14 position, as corporations do -- this may not seem "nice" to those
15 corporations, but it targets the problem, i think.
16
17 1a. Licence, which protects a format against being used in any app, which
18 supports any poorly documented format like MS word document and by any
19 product by any company, which owns any such format.
20
21 2. In many countries there are software patents. I think that there should
22 be licence against them similar to previous licence -- so that i may patent
23 my free software in such way that any company, which uses any commercial
24 patent in it's production, must not use that software [or, as alternative
25 licence, must pay for it to gnu, licence owner or anyone that patenter sees
26 as deserving it]. So, not "if used in commercial products", but "if used by
27 commercial company". Patents may be also used in different ways -- for
28 example, there may be long list of things a company *must not do* or *must
29 not be*, if they want to use the patent.
30
31 I think that there are several kinds of people using gnu licences:
32 * Those, who actually fight against certain types of licences, corporative
33 policies etc. and want to protect their work against to be used in any such
34 project -- maybe even in marketing campain of a corporation, who is
35 "supporting free software" by taking it's code into use or just supporting
36 it, like IBM with Red Hat. Those people may, therefore, even want it to be
37 not given away freely with $40 CD and book.
38 * Those, who just dont want their code to be used with any direct commercial
39 purpose and want it to be open, but dont go too far in philosophy and let
40 their programming language, for example, be used in making commercial
41 product.
42 * Those, who want their code to be free and open and any development to be
43 free and open, but may say something like "wow our soft is used even in
44 commercial products".
45 * Those, who just give it for free to students and schools, for example.
46 * Those nasty people who make those "free lite versions", which almost work
47 and spam all search engines ;)
48
49 Ok, my additions here are -- gnu should think more about those people, who
50 are actually wanting their code to be propagated only by freeware-makers and
51 run only in environments, which contain no commercial products and are not
52 used for any commercial purposes. Ok, they still contain commercial hardware
53 and people may write their commercial e-mails in them, but anyway, to have a
54 music format, which licence does it's best to make it so that you have to
55 *choose between mp3 and mpfree*, not choose between having both or only free
56 one, would be good. Freeware builders should have at least one "market",
57 which uses all nasty microsoft-intel trusted corporate policies to protect
58 itself against everyone other who use them ;) Such "corporation" could be
59 nice macintosh to other free products, which are not so radical in their way
60 (ok, what we would eat, when going too radical, but still -- Microsoft
61 actually *fights* openoffice, so what having alternative openoffice format,
62 which is, for example, illegal to be used on commercial OS or,
63 alternatively, illegal to be used in any application supporting word doc's).
64
65 --
66 tvali
67
68 http://www.friesian.com/types.htm

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-portage-dev] few licences, which should exist Patrick Lauer <patrick@g.o>