notion-general

[Notion-general] LICENSE file in contrib

[Philipp H. <ph...@ph...>]

Hi,

the LICENSE file in contrib seems to have been created when importing the 
script collection into [1], compare for example [2] which does not have such a 
file.

The LICENSE file states that scripts without explicit license header are under 
the GPL3. The Debian copyright file of the ion3-scripts package[3] however 
indicates that those scripts are in the public domain instead. 

Of course one can take public domain code and put it under the GPL3, but would 
we want to do this? My opinion is that in particular for small
things like most scripts, the less we have to worry about any license 
questions, the better. And at the very least this default license should be 
compatible with the Notion license, so that we can take script logic and use 
it internally, if we ever think that would be worthwhile.

So my suggestion would be to drop the LICENSE file, provided the people who 
contributed to [1] since the import of [2] agree. 

This seem to be Arnout, Etan and Juri (and Voker57, who explicitly put his 
work in the public domain). What do you think?

I would then also think about adding explicit public domain notices to the 
header of those scripts that don't have any copyright notice.

If the public domain seems like a bad concept, we could alternatively choose 
some very permissive open source license as the default license. The MIT 
license[4] comes to mind. We probably would need to add copyright notices, say 
for "The Notion Team", to the script headers.
 
Other suggestions?

Cheers,
Philipp

[1] https://github.com/jhamb/NotionScriptsCollection
[2] http://archlinux-stuff.googlecode.com/files/ion-3-scripts.tar.bz2
[3] http://snapshot.debian.org/package/ion3-scripts/20070515.debian-1/
[4] http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

Re: [Notion-general] LICENSE file in contrib

[Philipp H. <ph...@ph...>]

Hi,

I propose to replace the current contrib/LICENSE file by the following 
statement:

    This directory contains a collection of user-contributed scripts for Notion.
    
    Each script starts with an "Authors" header, indicating the respective
    copyright holders, followed by a "License" header, indicating the software
    license the script is released under.
    
    For a script with an "Authors" header of "Unknown", it is assumed in good faith 
    that the script is in the public domain.
    
    For a script with a known copyright holder but with a "License" header of
    "Unknown", it is assumed in good faith that the script has been contributed to
    the Ion/Notion script collection for other people to unconditionally use and
    modify. This intention is very well reflected by the MIT license, see
    http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php . We therefore assume that such 
    a script can be distributed under the terms of the MIT license.

Let me note that these assumptions are backed by the copyright file of the
ion3-scripts Debian package, see [1], which even states that a script with a
"License" header of "Unknown" is in the public domain. 

Also our own website[2] includes a "public domain" notice, which at least
backs the assumption on scripts with an "Authors" header of "Unknown".

So in both cases, people would have had years to complain in case they disagreed
with the above assumptions.

Opinions? Objections? :)

Best,
Philipp

[1] http://snapshot.debian.org/package/ion3-scripts/20070515.debian-1/
[2] http://notion.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=notion/contrib;a=blob_plain;f=index_git.html;hb=HEAD

Re: [Notion-general] LICENSE file in contrib

[Juri H. <ju...@fa...>]

On 11/01/12 at 03:20pm, Philipp Hartwig wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I propose to replace the current contrib/LICENSE file by the following 
> statement:
> 
>     This directory contains a collection of user-contributed scripts for Notion.
>     
>     Each script starts with an "Authors" header, indicating the respective
>     copyright holders, followed by a "License" header, indicating the software
>     license the script is released under.
>     
>     For a script with an "Authors" header of "Unknown", it is assumed in good faith 
>     that the script is in the public domain.
>     
>     For a script with a known copyright holder but with a "License" header of
>     "Unknown", it is assumed in good faith that the script has been contributed to
>     the Ion/Notion script collection for other people to unconditionally use and
>     modify. This intention is very well reflected by the MIT license, see
>     http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php . We therefore assume that such 
>     a script can be distributed under the terms of the MIT license.
> 
> Let me note that these assumptions are backed by the copyright file of the
> ion3-scripts Debian package, see [1], which even states that a script with a
> "License" header of "Unknown" is in the public domain. 
> 
> Also our own website[2] includes a "public domain" notice, which at least
> backs the assumption on scripts with an "Authors" header of "Unknown".
> 
> So in both cases, people would have had years to complain in case they disagreed
> with the above assumptions.
> 
> Opinions? Objections? :)

Hello Philipp.

Normally I would prefer MIT license over public domain, because the
latter is no license at all and might be even more confusing than any
other "real" license.

However, after some deliberation, I have a queasy feeling about just
taking some script without knowing author's
initial intention and terms of distribution/usage of the script and
say: "now it's MIT". 
If we consider such scripts public domain it would
be like "we found it laying here, it's not ours, but looks like we may
use it and so do you unless the owner appears and disallows this". So we
wouldn't insult anyone in any way, since we didn't take the liberty to
change any conditions of something we don't own.

In other words - as much as legally and ethically OK should be licensed
under MIT. The rest should be handled as neutral as possible. Probably
public domain is something that would suit in that cases.


Greetings
Juri

> 
> Best,
> Philipp
> 
> [1] http://snapshot.debian.org/package/ion3-scripts/20070515.debian-1/
> [2] http://notion.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=notion/contrib;a=blob_plain;f=index_git.html;hb=HEAD

-- 
Juri Hamburg
GnuPG Key-ID: 0x67206E72

Re: [Notion-general] LICENSE file in contrib

[Philipp H. <ph...@ph...>]

Hi Juri,

thank you for your input and sorry for the long delay.

> Normally I would prefer MIT license over public domain, because the
> latter is no license at all and might be even more confusing than any
> other "real" license.
>
> However, after some deliberation, I have a queasy feeling about just
> taking some script without knowing author's initial intention and terms
> of distribution/usage of the script and say: "now it's MIT".

Yes, you are right, after thinking about it some more I share the bad feeling. 
So please forget the LICENSE text I've proposed.

> If we consider such scripts public domain it would be like "we found
> it laying here, it's not ours, but looks like we may use it and so
> do you unless the owner appears and disallows this". So we wouldn't
> insult anyone in any way, since we didn't take the liberty to change
> any conditions of something we don't own.
>
> In other words - as much as legally and ethically OK should be licensed
> under MIT. The rest should be handled as neutral as possible. Probably
> public domain is something that would suit in that cases.

Hm, but making the assumption that the scripts of unknown license are in the 
public domain is a much stronger assumption than assuming that they can be 
distributed under the terms of MIT license. If we say "we assume that this 
script is in the public domain", it means that we assume that the original 
author completely forfeited his rights on the script. I have an even worse 
feeling about that.

I'm afraid there is no proper way out of this other than dropping the scripts 
of unknown license ...

Let me send out another e-mail with a suggestion concerning the future of the 
script collection.

Best,
Philipp