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  • Advice on licenses with "funny" amendments

    From Dominik George@21:1/5 to All on Fri Oct 8 00:00:02 2021
    Hi,

    some times, we (the AlekSIS team) stumble upon upstream maintainers
    who consider it funny to add amendments to licenses, or make up fun
    licenses on their own. Here are two examples:

    https://github.com/codeedu/select2-materialize

    This project is MIT-licensed, but has a note saying:

    "BUT if you become a millionaire using this code, please bought
    me a new brand luxury sailboat."

    Probably meant as a joke, a lawyer might see that
    differently. Actually, I am somewhat curious if by adding this package
    to Debian, and with that forcing it into Ubuntu, we could see Mark
    Shuttleworth buy a luxury sailboat for that guy i nexchange for their
    30 lines of CSS ;).

    https://github.com/iconify/collections-json/issues/12

    Not pointing directly to the project in question, but to this
    elaborate thread on the issue.

    License here: https://icons8.com/good-boy-license

    "Please do whatever your mom would approve of. No tattoos,
    No touching food with unwashed hands, No exchanging for drugs"

    Taken literally, that is a restriction on use, and as such non-free.


    Now, it seems that the intention of these upstreams is not to really
    prohibit use. In fact, for the second example, upstream provided a
    nexpress statement that they dual-license under MIT license as
    well. In the first case, I could not successfully contact the authors
    yet.

    What does debian-legal say? Could I package the first example for
    Debian, and trust that the amendment is a joke?

    Thanks,
    Nik

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  • From Francesco Poli@21:1/5 to All on Fri Oct 8 00:50:01 2021
    On Thu, 7 Oct 2021 23:56:57 +0200 Dominik George wrote:

    Hi,

    Hello!


    some times, we (the AlekSIS team) stumble upon upstream maintainers
    who consider it funny to add amendments to licenses, or make up fun
    licenses on their own.

    Personally, I think licenses and jokes are best left distinct.
    Inserting the latter into the former is often a bad idea...

    [...]
    "BUT if you become a millionaire using this code, please bought
    me a new brand luxury sailboat."
    [...]
    "Please do whatever your mom would approve of. No tattoos,
    No touching food with unwashed hands, No exchanging for drugs"
    [...]

    However, these two examples look more like kind requests, rather than
    legally binding requirements.

    The first one says "please bought me" [I think it should be "please buy
    me"]: you are not forced to do so.
    The second starts with "Please do". I think the continuation "No ...
    No ... No ..." is just an enumeration of what your mom would disapprove
    of.

    What do other debian-legal participants think?


    --
    http://www.inventati.org/frx/
    There's not a second to spare! To the laboratory! ..................................................... Francesco Poli .
    GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE

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  • From Walter Landry@21:1/5 to Dominik George on Fri Oct 8 01:40:01 2021
    Hi Nik,

    JSON has a license with similar problems. It has the addendum

    The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.

    Debian takes the author at their word, and so it goes into non-free.

    https://wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/jsonevil

    I think that would have to be the case here as well.

    Cheers,
    Walter Landry

    Dominik George writes:
    Hi,

    some times, we (the AlekSIS team) stumble upon upstream maintainers
    who consider it funny to add amendments to licenses, or make up fun
    licenses on their own. Here are two examples:

    https://github.com/codeedu/select2-materialize

    This project is MIT-licensed, but has a note saying:

    "BUT if you become a millionaire using this code, please bought
    me a new brand luxury sailboat."

    Probably meant as a joke, a lawyer might see that
    differently. Actually, I am somewhat curious if by adding this package
    to Debian, and with that forcing it into Ubuntu, we could see Mark Shuttleworth buy a luxury sailboat for that guy i nexchange for their
    30 lines of CSS ;).

    https://github.com/iconify/collections-json/issues/12

    Not pointing directly to the project in question, but to this
    elaborate thread on the issue.

    License here: https://icons8.com/good-boy-license

    "Please do whatever your mom would approve of. No tattoos,
    No touching food with unwashed hands, No exchanging for drugs"

    Taken literally, that is a restriction on use, and as such non-free.


    Now, it seems that the intention of these upstreams is not to really
    prohibit use. In fact, for the second example, upstream provided a
    nexpress statement that they dual-license under MIT license as
    well. In the first case, I could not successfully contact the authors
    yet.

    What does debian-legal say? Could I package the first example for
    Debian, and trust that the amendment is a joke?

    Thanks,
    Nik

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  • From Paul Wise@21:1/5 to All on Fri Oct 8 02:00:02 2021
    On Thu, Oct 7, 2021 at 10:48 PM Francesco Poli wrote:

    What do other debian-legal participants think?

    While they are fairly obviously worded in plain English like an
    optional request, since they are part of a legal document, they are
    supposed to use legal language, and IANAL, so I don't know how a
    lawyer or the courts would interpret them. As such they are ambiguous
    to me, and I would personally avoid relying on legal ambiguity.

    --
    bye,
    pabs

    https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

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  • From John Scott@21:1/5 to Dominik George on Fri Oct 8 02:00:02 2021
    On Thu, 2021-10-07 at 23:56 +0200, Dominik George wrote:
    What does debian-legal say? Could I package the first example for
    Debian, and trust that the amendment is a joke?

    This project is MIT-licensed, but has a note saying:
    "BUT if you become a millionaire using this code, please bought
    me a new brand luxury sailboat."
    It is not a requirement that you buy the author a sailboat, only a
    request, so in my opinion the license is free and I see no problem with packaging the software for Debian.

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  • From Daniel Leidert@21:1/5 to All on Thu Nov 4 11:30:02 2021
    Am Donnerstag, dem 07.10.2021 um 15:35 -0700 schrieb Walter Landry:

    JSON has a license with similar problems.  It has the addendum

      The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.

    Well, the word "shall" can implicate "may", "will", or "must" and has therefor legal implications (similar in German law, where the translation "soll" can have serious legal implications). But I think this needs to be separated from the cases brought up in this thread: These are requests which I believe are not legally binding. Still they might cause legal trouble if the authors later claim that their request was meant as an obligation. I'd expect the first one ("BUT ..." - a clear exception) to be more troublesome than the latter ("Please do..."). In the latter case one could ask the authors if it is ok to ship the copy without this sentence.

    Regards, Daniel
    --
    Regards,
    Daniel Leidert <[email protected]> | https://www.wgdd.de/
    GPG-Key RSA4096 / BEED4DED5544A4C03E283DC74BCD0567C296D05D
    GPG-Key ED25519 / BD3C132D8B3805D1808123AB7ACE00941E338C78

    https://www.fiverr.com/dleidert
    https://www.patreon.com/join/dleidert

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  • From =?UTF-8?B?5YeMIOm1rOe/lA==?=@21:1/5 to All on Wed Nov 24 07:20:03 2021
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