[gull] Free licences

Daniel Cordey dc at pxcluster.com
Sun Jun 9 20:27:42 CEST 2019


Puisque l'on discute de temps en temps de licences et de leurs portées 
sur cette liste. Voici un mail que j'ai reçu de la FSF (www.fsf.org) au 
sujet de nouvelles licences et de leur classification par la FSF. Je 
vous transmet cette information pour que vous soyez attentif aux 
nouvelles licences qui fleurissent et qui ne sont pas forcément "libres" 
! Maintenant, chacun fait le choix qu'il veut, mais on ne peut pas 
prétendre que l'on be savait pas

dc

Dear Daniel Cordey,

We recently added two new licenses to our list of Various Licenses and 
Comments about Them and we updated our comments on Creative Commons 0 
(CC0). We cleaned up the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Licensing & 
Compliance Team page and refreshed the materials on it. What follows is 
a brief rundown on those changes, and how you can learn more about free 
software licensing.

Personal Public License Version 3a (PPL)
The PPL is a nonfree license based on the GNU General Public License 
version 3 (GPL). The PPL takes the language of the GPL, but redefines 
who is a licensee to exclude "Organizations." That means that non 
profits, governments, and other organizations are not able to enjoy the 
four freedoms in any software licensed under the PPL.

Free software does not discriminate based on who the user is, or how the 
user intends to use the software. The PPL falls into the same trap of 
those who would restrict military or "commercial" use of software. Such 
restrictions are antithetical to software freedom, so any license with 
such a term is necessarily a proprietary software license.

Anti-996 License
We added the Anti-996 License to the nonfree list. The "996" in the name 
refers to a common labor practice in China requiring workers to work 
from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm, six days a week. The license attempts to ban 
use of the software by organizations or users that fail to comply with 
local labor laws or international labor standards. Like the PPL, this 
restriction on who may use the software renders the license nonfree. 
Free software never limits the freedom to run the program.

CC0
CC0 is a public domain dedication. If for any reason such dedication is 
not possible, it has a fallback license meant to ensure virtually the 
same conditions. But CC0 explicitly does not grant a patent license, 
making it problematic for use on software. Our entry previously didn't 
cover this last aspect of the license. We've updated our comments to 
explain how the patent situation with CC0 works, and to warn users about 
the issues involved in using software available under the license.

Licensing team updates
As part of our spring cleaning, we made some updates to the overview of 
our available licensing materials. We welcomed some new team members 
over the past year, and finally have them included on the FSF Compliance 
Lab Team page. We made a number of other minor updates, as we're always 
looking to improve the resources we offer. But if we missed something, 
or if you would like to see more resources added, let us know by sending 
us an email at licensing at fsf.org. Here's what else you can do to help:

Help your colleagues stay informed by letting them know about the FSF's 
licensing updates mailing list.

Want to know more? Check out our previous licensing updates blogpost.

Thank you to all the FSF associate members and donors who make this 
important work possible.

Sincerely,

Donald Robertson, III
Licensing & Compliance Manager


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