[9fans] inferno licence terms

[9fans] inferno licence terms

[G.David]

This is exciting! We have both Plan 9 and Inferno coming out to play.

>From: Charles Forsyth

Given the only difference I see between a Personal License and a Corporate
(Enterprise?) License is the number of individuals it covers, I will ask my
questions from the point of view of the Licensed Entity.

Is the License Fee one-time or recurring?

>* You can distribute without fee [ie, no run-time royalty to us] binary copies
>of Inferno or binary copies of amended versions of Inferno

Does the Licensed Entity have to pay a royalty to anybody? (You only
excluded Vita Nuova.) If so, does it make any difference if the device
the binary runs on is a toaster or a Cray?

Does an entity that receives a copy of binaries from a Licensed Entity
have commercial use rights?

Does the Licensed Entity have to report to Vita Nuova any of these
distributions?

What is the mechinism for support for the Licensed Entity?

What is the mechinism for support for the entity that receives a
binary only distribution from a Licensed Entity? What if the
Licensed Entity made changes that were not sent back to Vita Nuova?

>* You can distribute without fee [ie, nothing payable to us] Inferno source code to
>other Inferno subscribers

In other words, this is not an Open Source arrangement.


This is great news!

David Butler
gdb@dbSystems.com

[9fans] inferno licence terms

[Richard]

Mr Forsyth,

although the GPL is a complex document enforced by an even more complex
legal system, the social goal that the document (and indeed the FSF as a
whole) strives to achieve can be stated in a few paragraphs.  the fact
that it has a clearly stated goal that has never changed since Stallman
wrote the GNU Manifesto in 1984 is a big reason for the GPL's success.
the standard proprietary licenses have this same property that they are
complex but have a simple summary that most users understand ("dont copy
that floppy"; software is really no different from a novel or a music
recording).

you have evidently decided that a proprietary license or the GPL or
another strictly Open-Source license will not meet your needs.
nevertheless, it would be advantageous to adopt a license that, though
complex, has a short and sweet "story", expressed in terms of social
goals or ethical principles, to tell the average user.  almost more
important than legality is winning the hearts and minds of non-experts
in the law with the "story" behind your license.  for example, the GPL
has never been tested in court, but by this time it has so much hold
over so many hearts and minds that it is a compelling reality that
courts simply must reckon with.

even better would be a "story" that others have already been "telling"
for many years now, so that some people are already familiar with the
story.  Ted Nelson's "transcopyright" idea is one such story.

although Nelson chose an unwise implementation strategy in which it was
not permitted for a user to keep a persistent copy of a
"transcopyrighted" work on his own hard drive and although it was
intented to cover prose, not code, Ted Nelson's "transcopyright" story
seems very suitable to your needs as I understand them so far.

Nelson explains transcopyright here:
http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/transcopyright/transcopy.html

here are the 2 salients points, or principles, to Nelson's "story".  he
actually includes other points --that authors must be credited and that
the original work must be readily available to anyone perusing an
amended version-- that I do not consider necessary for our purposes.

principle 1: it is okay for the owner (copyright holder) of a software
to use the legal system to demmand payment for the right to "enjoy" the
software.  creating multiple tiers of enjoyers/users with different
privileges is expressly okay.

the moral justification for this demmand for payment is that to a
first-order approximation, the person or firm who does not pay and is
consequently coerced by the legal system into not being able to enjoy
the software is no worse off than if the software never existed.  there
are second-order effects, such as when essential documents whose
creation was paid for by taxes are available only in proprietary
formats, or when most employers standardize on the dominant office
suite, but I argue below that most of these second-order effects go away
when what I call "captive" software goes away.  what minor insults to
liberty that remain are outweighed by the benefits that accrue because
creators have a way to recoup the costs of their creative efforts.

principle 2: it is bad for software to have a "captor".  roughly
speaking, a captor has a monopoly on the right to distribute amended
versions of the software.  one way to keep software captive is to keep
its source code a trade secret.  even when the source code is available,
however, the software is captive unless a large number of parties enjoys
the legal right to distribute amended copies of the software to all
legitimate users of the original software.

eg, if users of Microsoft's software were not dependent on Microsoft for
upgrades and bugfixes but rather could get upgraded/bugfixed/amended
versions of the software from a wide range of suppliers, Microsoft could
not abuse its userbase the way they have done.

your proposed license in which every upper-tier user enjoys the right to
distribute amended source code to every other upper-tier user and
binaries thereof to anyone at all qualifies Inferno as non-captive
software.  moreover, all Open-Source software is non-captive software.

let me know if I can clarify any of this or explain why I think software
with this particular "licensing story" behind it will be successful.

[9fans] inferno licence terms

[Richard]

Mr Forsyth,

although the GPL is a complex document enforced by an even more complex
legal system, the social goal that the document (and indeed the FSF as a
whole) strives to achieve can be stated in a few paragraphs.  the fact
that it has a clearly stated goal that has never changed since Stallman
wrote the GNU Manifesto in 1984 is a big reason for the GPL's success.
the standard proprietary licenses have this same property that they are
complex but have a simple summary that most users understand ("dont copy
that floppy"; software is really no different from a novel or a music
recording).

you have evidently decided that a proprietary license or the GPL or
another strictly Open-Source license will not meet your needs.
nevertheless, it would be advantageous to adopt a license that, though
complex, has a short and sweet "story", expressed in terms of social
goals or ethical principles, to tell the average user.  almost more
important than legality is winning the hearts and minds of non-experts
in the law with the "story" behind your license.  for example, the GPL
has never been tested in court, but by this time it has so much hold
over so many hearts and minds that it is a compelling reality that
courts simply must reckon with.

even better would be a "story" that others have already been "telling"
for many years now, so that some people are already familiar with the
story.  Ted Nelson's "transcopyright" idea is one such story.

although Nelson chose an unwise implementation strategy in which it was
not permitted for a user to keep a persistent copy of a
"transcopyrighted" work on his own hard drive and although it was
intented to cover prose, not code, Ted Nelson's "transcopyright" story
seems very suitable to your needs as I understand them so far.

Nelson explains transcopyright here:
http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/transcopyright/transcopy.html

here are the 2 salients points, or principles, to Nelson's "story".  he
actually includes other points --that authors must be credited and that
the original work must be readily available to anyone perusing an
amended version-- that I do not consider necessary for our purposes.

principle 1: it is okay for the owner (copyright holder) of a software
to use the legal system to demmand payment for the right to "enjoy" the
software.  creating multiple tiers of enjoyers/users with different
privileges is expressly okay.

the moral justification for this demmand for payment is that to a
first-order approximation, the person or firm who does not pay and is
consequently coerced by the legal system into not being able to enjoy
the software is no worse off than if the software never existed.  there
are second-order effects, such as when essential documents whose
creation was paid for by taxes are available only in proprietary
formats, or when most employers standardize on the dominant office
suite, but I argue below that most of these second-order effects go away
when what I call "captive" software goes away.  what minor insults to
liberty that remain are outweighed by the benefits that accrue because
creators have a way to recoup the costs of their creative efforts.

principle 2: it is bad for software to have a "captor".  roughly
speaking, a captor has a monopoly on the right to distribute amended
versions of the software.  one way to keep software captive is to keep
its source code a trade secret.  even when the source code is available,
however, the software is captive unless a large number of parties enjoys
the legal right to distribute amended copies of the software to all
legitimate users of the original software.

eg, if users of Microsoft's software were not dependent on Microsoft for
upgrades and bugfixes but rather could get upgraded/bugfixed/amended
versions of the software from a wide range of suppliers, Microsoft could
not abuse its userbase the way they have done.

your proposed license in which every upper-tier user enjoys the right to
distribute amended source code to every other upper-tier user and
binaries thereof to anyone at all qualifies Inferno as non-captive
software.  moreover, all Open-Source software is non-captive software.

let me know if I can clarify any of this or explain why I think software
with this particular "licensing story" behind it will be successful.

[9fans] inferno licence terms

[Richard]

C Forsyth proposes this license for Inferno:

>  * You can distribute without fee [ie, no run-time royalty to us] binary copies
>	of Inferno or binary copies of amended versions of Inferno
>  * You can distribute without fee [ie, nothing payable to us] Inferno source code to
>	other Inferno subscribers
>  * You can distribute without fee [ie, nothing payable to us] source code to the
>	tools, drivers and applications [code in /appl]
>  * You can keep modifications you make private - but we
>	encourage you to share.  [ie, you own them, we don't]

let me put this in my own words, to see if I understand.

there are in essense 2 tiers of Inferno users.  the lower tier gets
binaries for the whole thing and source for /appl.  the lower tier
doesnt have to pay anything to Vitanuova.   we can assume that at any
given time, at least one upper-tier user, motivated by idealism or the
desire to grow the Inferno userbase, is making this lower-tier material
available on a Web or FTP server to all comers, so that in practice,
lower-tier users pay zero.

the upper tier has to pay Vitanuova a subscription fee.  they get source
and can distribute that source --verbatim or amended-- to others in the
upper tier.  from this I infer that a subset of the upper tier could
fork the Inferno project.  is that correct?

if the "protestant" fork (the fork that broke with Vitanuova)
incorporates no new code from Vitanuova, do they have to continue their
subscription payments to Vitanuova in order to retain the permission to
use the old Vitanuova code on which their fork is based?

is there anything to prevent an upper-tier user from imposing his own
licensing terms on his distributees?  from charging money for
 a derivative of Inferno that he creates?

GPLed software generates forks only infrequently --when a "protestant"
group has a deep disagreement with the "catholic" group.  the Linux
kernel, for example, has never forked.  software "pirates", however, are
a frequent occurrence.  what is to prevent an upper-tier user from
forking the Inferno project on some minor, trumped-up principle, and
using that fork as a cover to distribute many pirated copies of the
source code?  the pirate could claim that he made a good-faith effort to
verify that the distributees were paid-up upper-tier users without
actually making that effort.

ie, exactly what does a distributor have to do to verify that
distributees are upper-tier users?

eg, most open-source-licensed source code is distributed via Web and ftp
servers.  but even if the server had a big sign out front saying "if you
are not an upper-tier user of Inferno, LEAVE NOW", many people might
download the Inferno source from that server without having paid for an
upper-tier "subscription".

if any upper-tier user can set up as a seller of CDs with the source on
it, what measures does a CD seller have to take to verify that buyers
are paid-up upper-tier users?

besides the right to collect money from every upper-tier user for the
privilege of being in the upper tier, what other rights does Vitanuova
retain that every upper-tier user does not have?

if I understand correctly, this is an excellent license!  it preserves
many of the attractive qualities of open-source licenses (secondary
developers can fork the project if the primary developer becomes abusive
or make bad decisions, casual users do not have to pay money --which
really helps the userbase grow) while giving the software's owner a
chance to recoup his development costs.  much better than eg that
Sun Community Source License.

[9fans] inferno licence terms

[forsyth]

i'm cross-posting this to both Inferno and Plan9 groups,
even though this discussion really only directly concerns Inferno,
because it might be of interest to people on both.

note that this is an unofficial response,
`to the best of my knowledge', and details could anyway change.
it should be reasonably accurate though: i am closely involved
in the decisions, but because we've discussed so many possibilities
i sometimes might well forget which one prevailed.  in any case, i'll
feed both the questions and answers back through the licence
development side so that both the licence and the FAQ can be made clear.

>>Given the only difference I see between a Personal License and a Corporate
>>(Enterprise?) License is the number of individuals it covers, I will ask my
>>questions from the point of view of the Licensed Entity.

  the difference is mainly who has the distribution rights: an individual
  or a company.  an individual can, however, distribute binary to a company,
  and the company will have rights to use that binary; it has, however, no rights to
  the source even if the individual is an employee (a corporate licence
  is needed).  there should be a price advantage to getting
  a corporate licence beyond a certain number of developers, but i don't
  want to discuss pricing here yet.

>>Is the License Fee one-time or recurring?

  it is a subscription scheme, inspired by analogy to a subscription to a journal or a club.
  (that's one reason gdb's earlier article was interesting.)
  it is probably close to what others (eg, Be) have as a `registered developer'.
  consequently, the answer to your question is `a mixture of both'.
  in our case, having paid the annual subscription covering a particular edition of Inferno
  -- as things stand -- we currently think we'll allow distribution of binaries based on that edition
  (or your adaptations to it) in perpetuity, even if you do not renew your subscription.
  you do, however, fall out of the set of people who can receive certain source
  from other subscribers.  we aim to add enough new material each year to keep
  people renewing their subscriptions.

>>Does the Licensed Entity have to pay a royalty to anybody? (You only
>>excluded Vita Nuova.) If so, does it make any difference if the device
>>the binary runs on is a toaster or a Cray?

  there are no run-time royalties whatever for Inferno proper.  i need to check
  the current status of royalties for a particular third-party component
  if used commercially but i believe there are no further payments due for that either.

>>Does an entity that receives a copy of binaries from a Licensed Entity
>>have commercial use rights?

  yes, as far as we are concerned. it is subject to the terms of the sub-licence
  the subscriber imposes on the entity that receives the binary.
  we provide a pro-forma sublicence.  could that include rights to distribute (sublicence)
  the binaries?  i'm not certain; i'll need to check the full licence text.

>>Does the Licensed Entity have to report to Vita Nuova any of these distributions?

  no (subject to my confirming of the status the third-party component i mentioned above).
  we're quite interested in knowing what people do with it in general, though.

>>What is the mechinism for support for the Licensed Entity?

  there is limited support included in the basic subscription scheme, but
  full-blown commercial support will be available as a separate package.
  this should make sense once you see the subscription pricing.

>>What is the mechinism for support for the entity that receives a
>>binary only distribution from a Licensed Entity? What if the
>>Licensed Entity made changes that were not sent back to Vita Nuova?

  we're still fussing with the guarantee and warranty sections of the licence,
  and consequential details of the support side.  i suppose the short answer
  is that ultimately you can get what you care to pay for, and the conditions
  would need to be reasonable both ways (ie, providing end-user support for
  something that we can't see might turn out to be unreasonable).  if the modified
  code was unrelated to the area covered by support, there should be no problem.

>* You can distribute without fee [ie, nothing payable to us] Inferno source code to
>other Inferno subscribers
>>In other words, this is not an Open Source arrangement.

  there are distinctions within the source.  some source cannot be freely distributed.
  someone noted in private e-mail that `Inferno subscribers' were mentioned only here.
  that is intentional.  we distinguish `Inferno' source code from other source
  in the same package.  a previous bullet point allowed source distribution of certain
  utilities and other source components but did not mention `Inferno subscribers'.
  that too is intentional: we allow and encourage much of the source,
  including the compiler suites, to be distributed to non-subscribers,
  even for subsequent commercial use.  for legal reasons that might need to be done by
  a sub-licence, but if so, we'll provide a suitably open pro-forma.

  we spent a fairly long time looking at what we might need to do to claim
  (honestly) to be `open source', but even within `open source' there are practical
  and ideological differences between camps.  we talked to a few people.
  in the end, we decided simply to produce `the Inferno licence' that sets out our terms;
  we have gone to some effort to keep the text of the full agreement as straightforward as possible.

Charles Forsyth
Vita Nuova

[9fans] inferno licence terms

[Ben]

>If so, does it make any difference if the device
>the binary runs on is a toaster or a Cray?

What about a Cray being used as a toaster?

[a long-time lurker, excited by these developments.]

[9fans] inferno licence terms

[Dennis]

The following is the essence from a recent draft of the licence we are
preparing for Inferno.  The intent should not change but the wording might be refined
to reflect the intent more accurately.  I have added some clarifying
phrases in brackets.

  * You get all the source code [to native and hosted systems, and tools].
  * You can distribute without fee [ie, no run-time royalty to us] binary copies
	of Inferno or binary copies of amended versions of Inferno
  * You can distribute without fee [ie, nothing payable to us] Inferno source code to
	other Inferno subscribers
  * You can distribute without fee [ie, nothing payable to us] source code to the
	tools, drivers and applications [code in /appl]
  * You can keep modifications you make private - but we
	encourage you to share.  [ie, you own them, we don't]
  * This is a personal licence owned by you and you alone.

One thing that is not obvious is that the licence allows commercial use
by any subscriber: the `without fee' is a restriction on us, not
on a subscriber.

Those are the basic terms for personal licences; the corporate licence
is almost identical but removes the restrictions of the last line.
Though not in the legal licence yet, I have asked that lecturers should be
allowed to share their personal licence benefits with students of a course
or project for the duration of the course or project.  There might be other
similar tweaking of content and scope.

Charles Forsyth
Vita Nuova