Re: For reviewing a new free license. People who have read and understand the GPL

From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
To: Valentino Giudice <valentino.giudice96@gmail.com>
Cc: Julian Daich <julian.daich@freecomputerlabs.org>,
	LibrePlanet-discuss <libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org>
Subject: Re: For reviewing a new free license. People who have read and understand the GPL
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2022 18:33:16 +0300	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <YiYlvMaujaWKELsJ@protected.localdomain> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CANC0hWgW6sr+5sZaC9nneUD0Zhv-T0goZSAsYC8dkHjSQ984Jg@mail.gmail.com>

I fully support and agree to advices given by Valentino.

* Valentino Giudice <valentino.giudice96@gmail.com> [2022-03-06 18:35]:
> This is the most advisable path for writing a new free license:
> - DON'T. Actually, I don't. Really really don't. We have enough
> license proliferation already.
> 
> If you decide that there is an absolute need for a new free license,
> which outweighs the cost (which is unlikely), then:
> - Make sure you have a good understanding of copyright and patent law,
> and that which you are trying to achieve is legally possible, and that
> you fully understand what the side effects are.
> - Make sure you have read and understood, in full (not summaries), all
> existing free licenses (well, at least the known ones).
> - Make sure you fully understand what "free software" means to
> adjacent communities (the GNU/FSF and Debian, the latter being a bit
> stricter). Also make sure you fully understand what "open source"
> means (to OSI and to Debian, which uses the two terms as synonyms):
> this is to avoid splitting the free software community, since
> disagreements about what licenses are "FLOSS" currently only lie on
> the very boundary of software freedom, and belong to licenses which
> are rarely used.
> - Make sure that you truly know what you are trying to achieve would
> be uncontroversially considered "free" and that there is no existing
> free license that can achieve that already.
> - Wonder whether the thing you are trying to achieve is one we need at all.
> - Write the license **with legal council**. Don't assume you can write
> a good license without the help from lawyers: you probably can't even
> if you are a lawyer yourself.
> - Consult with the community, get feedback and truly learn from it,
> then repeat until you have a stable text. Make sure that the literal
> text of the license, its intention and how a developer and a court of
> law are likely to parse it align.
> 
> Anything else would lead to a license which is useless.
> 
> > We( me and other developers involved) are using the term Free Acces
> > Technology to refer to works released under this license.
> 
> That's a very weird definition.
> It's very weird to define a class of *things* by the fact that they
> are all released under one specific license.
> There is a misconception (which I don't know where it comes from) that
> free software is software under the GPL.
> This is false: free software can be released under any free software
> licenses, the GPL is just one of them. The vast majority of free
> software licenses are non-copyleft, too.
> I'm not saying you have this misconception, to be clear. But why would
> you define "Free Acces Technology" not based on abstract ideas and
> principles, but rather based on one very specific license?

Jean

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