Re: [Sc2-devel] Candidate for Media License

[<st...@bl...>]

On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 07:04:37AM -0500, Chris Nelson wrote:

Hi Chris.

>    TFB is currently reviewing a license which we believe might fit our
>    criteria:
>=20
>    The Free Art License.

I presume you are refering to http://artlibre.org/licence.php/lalgb.html
(or the original French version at http://artlibre.org/).

I inquired about that license on the debian-legal mailing list, specificly
asking if the terms of that license would allow the evenutal inclusion of
UQM in the Debian distribution (once it's stable).  They pointed out several
problems with the license, though some of them may be due to imprecise
translation to English.  The discussion (starting with my message) is at
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/debian-legal-200212/msg00187.html

The most troubling clause of the license is  #8, which states:

  8. THE LAW APPLICABLE TO THIS CONTRACT
  This license is subject to French law.

To begin with, it is rather unclear if this is an attempt to claim French
jurisdiction for all actions related to the license (ie you would have to
sue me in France if I violate the license) or if it might require non-French
courts to base their findings on French law (something they'd not be too
likely to do).  And even if the intention of the clause were clear, it would
be extremely difficult for non-French citizens to obey the license under
French Law (which they may have access to or be able to understand).

Another problem with the license is that clause #3 seems to forbid the
algamation of art into a larger work not covered by the Free Art License.
This might (under a certain interpretation) prevent us from distributing the
content along with the game proper (which is under the GPL).  It would
certainly rule out it's inclusion in any major software distribution.

I do think that the aims of the lincese are good, in that it attempts to
apply copyleft to works of art.  However it falls a bit short in execution.
Please use a different license.

Perhaps if you describe exactly what freedoms you want to give to the users
of the content, we (the readers of the list) can help find (or write) an
appropriate license (good places to find a vocabulary for describing
freedoms are http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html and
http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines).

--=20
Steven Barker                                      st...@bl...
  Be independent.  Insult a rich relative today.
Get my GnuPG public key at: http://www.blckknght.org/publickey.asc
Fingerprint: 272A 3EC8 52CE F22B F745  775E 5292 F743 EBD5 936B