Hi there! In the debian-legal thread discussing the Hacking License (see https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2018/12/msg00000.html ), Bradley M. Kuhn invited me to join this mailing list.
Maybe you could provide interesting feedbacks about this new license and get interesting insights for copyleft-next.
The canonical url of the license is http://www.tesio.it/documents/HACK.txt but it is included for your convenience after the signature.
Giacomo
Hacking License ===============
Our Curiosity serves Humanity through Freedom, Candor and Communion.
This license grants you the right to hack with us, to learn what we ignore and to challenge our assumptions by teaching us what you will learn.
1. Definitions --------------
For the purpose of this License:
- "License" refers to this License. - "Copyright" means copyright-like laws that apply to other literary works. - "Hack" refers to the software, the documentation and the contents distributed under this License. - "Hacker" refers to any Copyright holder of the Hack. - "Human" is every live being with humans among its genetic ancestors. - "Application" refers to a set of software exchanging data. - "Runtime" refers to any runtime system, any operating system, any virtual machine and/or any interpreter that is required to run the Hack. - "Source" refers to the human-readable form of a software which is the most convenient for people to study and modify, and that can be used to generate a new identical copy of the software itself. - "User" refers to any human receiving a copy of the Hack or its source and/or performing any action permitted by this License. - To "study" a software means to perform any activity that could help the User to deeply understand it, to understand how to modify it or to explain its usage and inner working to other Users. - To "copy" means to create an new exact copy of a software, for any purpose and on any medium, even after applying one or more lossless transformations to the software, including, but not limited to, compression or encryption. - To "distribute" means any action that enable a human or organization to perform any of the activities permitted by this License. - To "use" a software means to generate a new copy of the software from its source, to run it for any purpose, to install it, to interact with it through any medium or proxy (even asynchronously), to provide data for its input or to consume its output (or any part of it), and/or to store and use a Derived Work in place of the software itself. - To "wrap" a software means to integrate it into an Application. The programs that collect, store, transform and/or transfer data for the User or between the User and the Hack are called "Wrappers". Wrappers do not include any program or library that Users can find in off-the-shelf distributions of the required Runtime, but include any modified version of such programs, libraries, Runtime that are required to run the Application. The license of a Wrapper is compatible with this License if it grants to the Users access to its source and the right to study, copy, use, wrap, modify and/or distribute the Wrapper and/or the Application and/or any modified version of them, in any form. - To "modify" a software means to perform any action that would require Copyright permission, except for studying, copying, using, wrapping and distributing the software, including, but not limited to, to adapt all or part of the software, to translate all or part of it to a different language or form, to create or modify its documentation, to refactor its source, or to combine the software or parts of it with other works. The resulting work is called a "Derived Work", whereas "Inspiring Hack" is the original work modified to create it.
2. Grants ---------
Permission is hereby granted to any User of the Hack to study, copy, use, wrap, modify and/or distribute the Hack, and to distribute any Derived Work under this License but with a different name and logo.
Furthermore, if the Hack is a Derived Work, the Hackers grant to the copyright holders of the Inspiring Hack all rights, title and interests in any copyright the Hackers have in the Hack.
Finally, a patent License to perform any of the actions permitted above is granted to any User under the Hackers' essential patent claims.
These grants are free of charge, non-exclusive, valid everywhere in the Universe, irrevocable (provided the stated conditions are met), royalty-free and can be transferred to third parties with the Hack, its source or any Derived Work but for no charge.
This License does not grant any rights in the names, trade names, trademarks, service marks, or logos of the Hackers, except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Hack and reproducing the content of the copyright notice.
3. Conditions -------------
The grants provided by this License are subject to the following conditions:
1. The Hackers' copyright notice and this License shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Hack and of any Derived Work. 2. The source of the Hack shall be made available with the Hack and/or by other reasonable means to every User, according to this License and without additional constraints or requirements, such as further agreements, any royalty or other fee. 3. All Wrappers used to integrate the Hack into an Application shall be made available (either with the Hack and/or by other reasonable means) to every User under either this License or compatible ones, so that Users can modify and/or run the whole Application on their own hardware. 4. The tools, dependencies and know-how required to perform any of the activities permitted by this License shall be made available to the User with the source of the Hack (except for those tools and dependencies that are already available to every User either free of charge or in off-the-shelf distributions of the Runtime) and without additional constraints or requirements, such as further agreements, any royalty or other fee. 5. No restriction or impediment, neither technical, legal or otherwise, shall prevent, hinder or inhibit the fruition of the rights provided by this License to any User of both the Hack and any Derived Work. 6. No patent infringement litigation claim (excluding counterclaims and cross-claims) alleging that all or part of the Hack directly or indirectly infringes a patent shall be initialized by the User. 7. The User has never violated any of the previous conditions. 8. All of these conditions shall be valid and enforceable under the jurisdiction of the User.
4. Termination --------------
Failing to comply to the conditions of this License shall automatically terminate the grants provided, without affecting other parties who have received copies or rights from the User under this License.
5. Severability ---------------
The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this License does not affect the validity or enforceability of the remainder of this License. Such provision is to be reformed to the minimum extent necessary to make it valid and enforceable.
6. No Warranty and Limitation of Liability ------------------------------------------
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
7. Use and distribution of the Hacking License ----------------------------------------------
This version of the Hacking License was written on December 01, 2018.
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed.
Copyright (C) 2018 Giacomo Tesio
Hi Giacomo,
Interesting.
I would like to see a copyleft licence which avoided the current "discharge source distribution in private, and then effectively prevent recipients exercising their copyleft rights through side-contracts that attached their own conditions on exercising copyleft rights" abuse that licences like the GPL allow.
Given that distributing source to all is cheap and easy in a way it never way when the GPL was conceived, I would like a licence that required that modifications had to be made public and available to all, full stop - unless the modifier was on a desert island, or a political dissident who would be put in individual danger.
It's not clear to me if 3.2 is intended to do that. Could that language be improved, if it is intended to do that?
regards,
Paul
On Sun, 2 Dec 2018, Giacomo Tesio wrote:
Hi there! In the debian-legal thread discussing the Hacking License (see https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2018/12/msg00000.html ), Bradley M. Kuhn invited me to join this mailing list.
Maybe you could provide interesting feedbacks about this new license and get interesting insights for copyleft-next.
The canonical url of the license is http://www.tesio.it/documents/HACK.txt but it is included for your convenience after the signature.
Giacomo
Hacking License
Our Curiosity serves Humanity through Freedom, Candor and Communion.
This license grants you the right to hack with us, to learn what we ignore and to challenge our assumptions by teaching us what you will learn.
- Definitions
For the purpose of this License:
- "License" refers to this License.
- "Copyright" means copyright-like laws that apply to other literary works.
- "Hack" refers to the software, the documentation and the contents
distributed under this License.
- "Hacker" refers to any Copyright holder of the Hack.
- "Human" is every live being with humans among its genetic ancestors.
- "Application" refers to a set of software exchanging data.
- "Runtime" refers to any runtime system, any operating system, any
virtual machine and/or any interpreter that is required to run the Hack.
- "Source" refers to the human-readable form of a software which is the
most convenient for people to study and modify, and that can be used to generate a new identical copy of the software itself.
- "User" refers to any human receiving a copy of the Hack or its source
and/or performing any action permitted by this License.
- To "study" a software means to perform any activity that could help
the User to deeply understand it, to understand how to modify it or to explain its usage and inner working to other Users.
- To "copy" means to create an new exact copy of a software, for any
purpose and on any medium, even after applying one or more lossless transformations to the software, including, but not limited to, compression or encryption.
- To "distribute" means any action that enable a human or organization
to perform any of the activities permitted by this License.
- To "use" a software means to generate a new copy of the software from
its source, to run it for any purpose, to install it, to interact with it through any medium or proxy (even asynchronously), to provide data for its input or to consume its output (or any part of it), and/or to store and use a Derived Work in place of the software itself.
- To "wrap" a software means to integrate it into an Application.
The programs that collect, store, transform and/or transfer data for the User or between the User and the Hack are called "Wrappers". Wrappers do not include any program or library that Users can find in off-the-shelf distributions of the required Runtime, but include any modified version of such programs, libraries, Runtime that are required to run the Application. The license of a Wrapper is compatible with this License if it grants to the Users access to its source and the right to study, copy, use, wrap, modify and/or distribute the Wrapper and/or the Application and/or any modified version of them, in any form.
- To "modify" a software means to perform any action that would require
Copyright permission, except for studying, copying, using, wrapping and distributing the software, including, but not limited to, to adapt all or part of the software, to translate all or part of it to a different language or form, to create or modify its documentation, to refactor its source, or to combine the software or parts of it with other works. The resulting work is called a "Derived Work", whereas "Inspiring Hack" is the original work modified to create it.
- Grants
Permission is hereby granted to any User of the Hack to study, copy, use, wrap, modify and/or distribute the Hack, and to distribute any Derived Work under this License but with a different name and logo.
Furthermore, if the Hack is a Derived Work, the Hackers grant to the copyright holders of the Inspiring Hack all rights, title and interests in any copyright the Hackers have in the Hack.
Finally, a patent License to perform any of the actions permitted above is granted to any User under the Hackers' essential patent claims.
These grants are free of charge, non-exclusive, valid everywhere in the Universe, irrevocable (provided the stated conditions are met), royalty-free and can be transferred to third parties with the Hack, its source or any Derived Work but for no charge.
This License does not grant any rights in the names, trade names, trademarks, service marks, or logos of the Hackers, except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Hack and reproducing the content of the copyright notice.
- Conditions
The grants provided by this License are subject to the following conditions:
- The Hackers' copyright notice and this License shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Hack and of any Derived Work. 2. The source of the Hack shall be made available with the Hack and/or by other reasonable means to every User, according to this License and without additional constraints or requirements, such as further agreements, any royalty or other fee. 3. All Wrappers used to integrate the Hack into an Application shall be made available (either with the Hack and/or by other reasonable means) to every User under either this License or compatible ones, so that Users can modify and/or run the whole Application on their own hardware. 4. The tools, dependencies and know-how required to perform any of the activities permitted by this License shall be made available to the User with the source of the Hack (except for those tools and dependencies that are already available to every User either free of charge or in off-the-shelf distributions of the Runtime) and without additional constraints or requirements, such as further agreements, any royalty or other fee. 5. No restriction or impediment, neither technical, legal or otherwise, shall prevent, hinder or inhibit the fruition of the rights provided by this License to any User of both the Hack and any Derived Work. 6. No patent infringement litigation claim (excluding counterclaims and cross-claims) alleging that all or part of the Hack directly or indirectly infringes a patent shall be initialized by the User. 7. The User has never violated any of the previous conditions. 8. All of these conditions shall be valid and enforceable under the jurisdiction of the User.
- Termination
Failing to comply to the conditions of this License shall automatically terminate the grants provided, without affecting other parties who have received copies or rights from the User under this License.
- Severability
The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this License does not affect the validity or enforceability of the remainder of this License. Such provision is to be reformed to the minimum extent necessary to make it valid and enforceable.
- No Warranty and Limitation of Liability
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
- Use and distribution of the Hacking License
This version of the Hacking License was written on December 01, 2018.
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed.
Copyright (C) 2018 Giacomo Tesio _______________________________________________ copyleft-next mailing list -- copyleft-next@lists.fedorahosted.org To unsubscribe send an email to copyleft-next-leave@lists.fedorahosted.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedorahosted.org/archives/list/copyleft-next@lists.fedorahoste...
Il December 2, 2018 9:46:06 AM UTC, Paul Jakma paul@jakma.org ha scritto:
Hi Giacomo,
Interesting.
I would like to see a copyleft licence which avoided the current "discharge source distribution in private, and then effectively prevent recipients exercising their copyleft rights through side-contracts that attached their own conditions on exercising copyleft rights" abuse that licences like the GPL allow.
Given that distributing source to all is cheap and easy in a way it never way when the GPL was conceived, I would like a licence that required that modifications had to be made public and available to all,
full stop - unless the modifier was on a desert island, or a political dissident who would be put in individual danger.
It's not clear to me if 3.2 is intended to do that. Could that language
be improved, if it is intended to do that?
regards,
Paul
On Sun, 2 Dec 2018, Giacomo Tesio wrote:
Hi there! In the debian-legal thread discussing the Hacking License (see https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2018/12/msg00000.html ), Bradley M. Kuhn invited me to join this mailing list.
Maybe you could provide interesting feedbacks about this new license and get interesting insights for copyleft-next.
The canonical url of the license is http://www.tesio.it/documents/HACK.txt but it is included for your convenience after the signature.
Giacomo
Hacking License
Our Curiosity serves Humanity through Freedom, Candor and Communion.
This license grants you the right to hack with us, to learn what we
ignore
and to challenge our assumptions by teaching us what you will learn.
- Definitions
For the purpose of this License:
- "License" refers to this License.
- "Copyright" means copyright-like laws that apply to other literary
works.
- "Hack" refers to the software, the documentation and the contents
distributed under this License.
- "Hacker" refers to any Copyright holder of the Hack.
- "Human" is every live being with humans among its genetic
ancestors.
- "Application" refers to a set of software exchanging data.
- "Runtime" refers to any runtime system, any operating system, any
virtual machine and/or any interpreter that is required to run the
Hack.
- "Source" refers to the human-readable form of a software which is
the
most convenient for people to study and modify, and that can be used to generate a new identical copy of the software itself.
- "User" refers to any human receiving a copy of the Hack or its
source
and/or performing any action permitted by this License.
- To "study" a software means to perform any activity that could help
the User to deeply understand it, to understand how to modify it or
to
explain its usage and inner working to other Users.
- To "copy" means to create an new exact copy of a software, for any
purpose and on any medium, even after applying one or more lossless transformations to the software, including, but not limited to, compression or encryption.
- To "distribute" means any action that enable a human or
organization
to perform any of the activities permitted by this License.
- To "use" a software means to generate a new copy of the software
from
its source, to run it for any purpose, to install it, to interact
with
it through any medium or proxy (even asynchronously), to provide
data
for its input or to consume its output (or any part of it), and/or
to
store and use a Derived Work in place of the software itself.
- To "wrap" a software means to integrate it into an Application.
The programs that collect, store, transform and/or transfer data for the User or between the User and the Hack are called "Wrappers". Wrappers do not include any program or library that Users can find
in
off-the-shelf distributions of the required Runtime, but include any modified version of such programs, libraries, Runtime that are
required
to run the Application. The license of a Wrapper is compatible with this License if it
grants
to the Users access to its source and the right to study, copy, use, wrap, modify and/or distribute the Wrapper and/or the Application and/or any modified version of them, in any form.
- To "modify" a software means to perform any action that would
require
Copyright permission, except for studying, copying, using, wrapping and distributing the software, including, but not limited to, to
adapt
all or part of the software, to translate all or part of it to a different language or form, to create or modify its documentation, to refactor its source, or to combine the software or parts of it
with
other works. The resulting work is called a "Derived Work", whereas "Inspiring Hack" is the original work modified to create it.
- Grants
Permission is hereby granted to any User of the Hack to study, copy, use, wrap, modify and/or distribute the Hack, and to distribute any Derived Work under this License but with a different name and logo.
Furthermore, if the Hack is a Derived Work, the Hackers grant to the copyright holders of the Inspiring Hack all rights, title and
interests
in any copyright the Hackers have in the Hack.
Finally, a patent License to perform any of the actions permitted
above
is granted to any User under the Hackers' essential patent claims.
These grants are free of charge, non-exclusive, valid everywhere in
the
Universe, irrevocable (provided the stated conditions are met), royalty-free and can be transferred to third parties with the Hack, its source or any Derived Work but for no charge.
This License does not grant any rights in the names, trade names, trademarks, service marks, or logos of the Hackers, except as
required
for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Hack and reproducing the content of the copyright notice.
- Conditions
The grants provided by this License are subject to the following
conditions:
- The Hackers' copyright notice and this License shall be included
in
all copies or substantial portions of the Hack and of any Derived
Work.
- The source of the Hack shall be made available with the Hack
and/or
by other reasonable means to every User, according to this License and without additional constraints or requirements, such as further agreements, any royalty or other fee. 3. All Wrappers used to integrate the Hack into an Application shall
be
made available (either with the Hack and/or by other reasonable
means)
to every User under either this License or compatible ones, so that Users can modify and/or run the whole Application on their own
hardware.
- The tools, dependencies and know-how required to perform any of
the
activities permitted by this License shall be made available to the User with the source of the Hack (except for those tools and dependencies that are already available to every User either free
of
charge or in off-the-shelf distributions of the Runtime) and
without
additional constraints or requirements, such as further agreements,
any
royalty or other fee. 5. No restriction or impediment, neither technical, legal or
otherwise,
shall prevent, hinder or inhibit the fruition of the rights
provided
by this License to any User of both the Hack and any Derived Work. 6. No patent infringement litigation claim (excluding counterclaims
and
cross-claims) alleging that all or part of the Hack directly or indirectly infringes a patent shall be initialized by the User. 7. The User has never violated any of the previous conditions. 8. All of these conditions shall be valid and enforceable under the jurisdiction of the User.
- Termination
Failing to comply to the conditions of this License shall
automatically
terminate the grants provided, without affecting other parties who
have
received copies or rights from the User under this License.
- Severability
The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this License
does
not affect the validity or enforceability of the remainder of this
License.
Such provision is to be reformed to the minimum extent necessary to
make
it valid and enforceable.
- No Warranty and Limitation of Liability
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT
SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR
OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE,
ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
- Use and distribution of the Hacking License
This version of the Hacking License was written on December 01, 2018.
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed.
Copyright (C) 2018 Giacomo Tesio _______________________________________________ copyleft-next mailing list -- copyleft-next@lists.fedorahosted.org To unsubscribe send an email to
copyleft-next-leave@lists.fedorahosted.org
Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
List Archives:
https://lists.fedorahosted.org/archives/list/copyleft-next@lists.fedorahoste...
The Hacking License addresses these issues but in a different way:
1) the User is any human who study or interacts with the Hack, even indirectly, providing data or receiving data elaborated from it 2) every User have the right provided by the license 3) condition 3.2 impose to makes sources available to every User 4) condition 3.5 forbids any legal or technical impediment.
A violation of 3.5 (or any other condition) terminates the grants, with no forgive provision.
Yet, people who are not users (as per definition) have no right on the hack.
In an isolated island all users must have access to the modified source but there's no need to send them outside. If the isolation ends, though, all new users have the righr to access the sources.
Same for the dissident: all users have right to access the modified source code they use, but there is no need to send it upstream.
Giacomo
On Sun, 2 Dec 2018, Giacomo wrote:
Il December 2, 2018 9:46:06 AM UTC, Paul Jakma paul@jakma.org ha scritto:
On Sun, 2 Dec 2018, Giacomo Tesio wrote:
Hacking License
Our Curiosity serves Humanity through Freedom, Candor and Communion.
This license grants you the right to hack with us, to learn what we ignore and to challenge our assumptions by teaching us what you will learn.
- Definitions
For the purpose of this License:
- "License" refers to this License.
- "Copyright" means copyright-like laws that apply to other literary works.
- "Hack" refers to the software, the documentation and the contents distributed under this License.
"the software... distributed under this licence" reads like it could be interpreted/misunderstood as /all/ software under this licence. I guess you mean to refer to a specific work and modifications and other derived works, but that's not clear (to me).
- "Hacker" refers to any Copyright holder of the Hack.
- "Human" is every live being with humans among its genetic ancestors.
Why specify this? This seems like something the courts can handle. And who's to say that one day we will not consider other entities to be capable of holding or infringing copyrights? Also, how does this interact with legal entities that are deemed equivalent to persons, for some things, and can hold or infringe on copyright, like corporations?
- "Application" refers to a set of software exchanging data.
Is this meant to cover software communicating over a network? Or software and firmware communicating by exchanging data?
- "Runtime" refers to any runtime system, any operating system, any virtual machine and/or any interpreter that is required to run the Hack.
AFAICT, you're taking the tack of trying to scope the licence in terms of technical definitions ("Runtime" and operating systems and what not), rather than more abstract legal terms (e.g., "Derived Work").
I wonder about how well that can future-proof this licence, as well as unintended consequences, e.g. through technicalities you havn't thought of.
Have you spoken with legal professionals on that?
- "Source" refers to the human-readable form of a software which is the most convenient for people to study and modify, and that can be used to generate a new identical copy of the software itself.
- "User" refers to any human receiving a copy of the Hack or its source and/or performing any action permitted by this License.
So what about corporate entities?
- To "study" a software means to perform any activity that could help the User to deeply understand it, to understand how to modify it or to explain its usage and inner working to other Users.
- To "copy" means to create an new exact copy of a software, for any purpose and on any medium, even after applying one or more lossless transformations to the software, including, but not limited to, compression or encryption.
- To "distribute" means any action that enable a human or organization to perform any of the activities permitted by this License.
- To "use" a software means to generate a new copy of the software from its source, to run it for any purpose, to install it, to interact with it through any medium or proxy (even asynchronously), to provide data for its input or to consume its output (or any part of it), and/or to store and use a Derived Work in place of the software itself.
- To "wrap" a software means to integrate it into an Application. The programs that collect, store, transform and/or transfer data for the User or between the User and the Hack are called "Wrappers". Wrappers do not include any program or library that Users can find in off-the-shelf distributions of the required Runtime, but include any modified version of such programs, libraries, Runtime that are required to run the Application. The license of a Wrapper is compatible with this License if it grants to the Users access to its source and the right to study, copy, use, wrap, modify and/or distribute the Wrapper and/or the Application and/or any modified version of them, in any form.
- To "modify" a software means to perform any action that would require Copyright permission, except for studying, copying, using, wrapping and distributing the software, including, but not limited to, to adapt all or part of the software, to translate all or part of it to a different language or form, to create or modify its documentation, to refactor its source, or to combine the software or parts of it with other works. The resulting work is called a "Derived Work", whereas "Inspiring Hack" is the original work modified to create it.
- Grants ---------
Permission is hereby granted to any User of the Hack to study, copy, use, wrap, modify and/or distribute the Hack, and to distribute any Derived Work under this License but with a different name and logo.
IANAL, but should the grant section that these grants are conditional upon the terms still to be introduced in the next section, §3?
Furthermore, if the Hack is a Derived Work, the Hackers grant to the copyright holders of the Inspiring Hack all rights, title and interests in any copyright the Hackers have in the Hack.
Finally, a patent License to perform any of the actions permitted above is granted to any User under the Hackers' essential patent claims.
These grants are free of charge, non-exclusive, valid everywhere in the Universe, irrevocable (provided the stated conditions are met), royalty-free and can be transferred to third parties with the Hack, its source or any Derived Work but for no charge.
This License does not grant any rights in the names, trade names, trademarks, service marks, or logos of the Hackers, except as required for reasonable and customary use in describing the origin of the Hack and reproducing the content of the copyright notice.
- Conditions
The grants provided by this License are subject to the following conditions:
- The Hackers' copyright notice and this License shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Hack and of any Derived Work.
- The source of the Hack shall be made available with the Hack and/or by other reasonable means to every User, according to this License and without additional constraints or requirements, such as further agreements, any royalty or other fee.
- All Wrappers used to integrate the Hack into an Application shall be made available (either with the Hack and/or by other reasonable means) to every User under either this License or compatible ones, so that Users can modify and/or run the whole Application on their own hardware.
- The tools, dependencies and know-how required to perform any of the activities permitted by this License shall be made available to the User with the source of the Hack (except for those tools and dependencies that are already available to every User either free of charge or in off-the-shelf distributions of the Runtime) and without additional constraints or requirements, such as further agreements, any royalty or other fee.
- No restriction or impediment, neither technical, legal or otherwise, shall prevent, hinder or inhibit the fruition of the rights provided by this License to any User of both the Hack and any Derived Work.
- No patent infringement litigation claim (excluding counterclaims and cross-claims) alleging that all or part of the Hack directly or indirectly infringes a patent shall be initialized by the User.
- The User has never violated any of the previous conditions.
- All of these conditions shall be valid and enforceable under the jurisdiction of the User.
- Termination
Failing to comply to the conditions of this License shall automatically terminate the grants provided, without affecting other parties who have received copies or rights from the User under this License.
- Severability
The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this License does not affect the validity or enforceability of the remainder of this License. Such provision is to be reformed to the minimum extent necessary to make it valid and enforceable.
- No Warranty and Limitation of Liability
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENTSHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
- Use and distribution of the Hacking License
This version of the Hacking License was written on December 01, 2018.
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed.
Copyright (C) 2018 Giacomo Tesio
The Hacking License addresses these issues but in a different way:
- the User is any human who study or interacts with the Hack, even indirectly, providing data or receiving data elaborated from it
- every User have the right provided by the license
- condition 3.2 impose to makes sources available to every User
- condition 3.5 forbids any legal or technical impediment.
A violation of 3.5 (or any other condition) terminates the grants, with no forgive provision.
Well, the GPL doesn't allow other restrictions either.
Yet, there are businesses who offer services around GPL software, where the contracts for the continuation of those services depend on the recipient of the GPL software not exercising their GPL rights.
Is that right or wrong, I don't know. Even if it's wrong, it's very hard to do anything about it: The recipient has no standing to sue. The copyright holder may never receive the specifics from any of the recipients involved, and even if they do none of those recipients may be willing to be involved in any enforcement action - for fear of crossing the entity offering the tied-service (who may be much more powerful than any of the copyright holders, or whose favour may be far more valuable to the recipients than any of the copyright holders).
The only solution I see to that is to require source distribution to all, with minimal conditions (except to meet desert island and dissident tests).
Yet, people who are not users (as per definition) have no right on the hack.
Right, that is an issue, given my experience (as a copyright holder) with parasitical, abusive entities and side-contracts.
In an isolated island all users must have access to the modified source but there's no need to send them outside. If the isolation ends, though, all new users have the righr to access the sources.
No, this licence restricts source distribution to the /recipients/, rooted at those Humans the original distributor chose.
That set is not the same set as the people on the desert island.
Same for the dissident: all users have right to access the modified source code they use, but there is no need to send it upstream.
Maybe, but it doesn't seem to address the practicalities of the restrictive side-contract, and making it harder for abusive entities to get away with that.
regards,
Thanks Paul for your careful read and your objections.
Let me try to explain the resoning and the intended goals inline with them.
- "Hack" refers to the software, the documentation and the contents distributed under this License.
"the software... distributed under this licence" reads like it could be interpreted/misunderstood as /all/ software under this licence. I guess you mean to refer to a specific work and modifications and other derived works, but that's not clear (to me).
The GPLv3 says ""The Program" refers to any copyrightable work licensed under this License." "Any copyrightable work" seems much more prone to the interpretation you suggest.
The EUPL says" ‘The Original Work’: the work or software distributed or communicated by the Licensor under this Licence, available as Source Code and also as Executable Code as the case may be." Again it's similar to this license.
Obviously I just intend the specific works that adopt the Hacking License separately: otherwise violating one license would terminate them all. Since I've never heard of this interpretation for the GPL, I suppose it's not a valid interpretation.
To be honest, at a first glance, I'm not against such wide interpretation, but if somebody can brough to my attention unintended side effects for the Users or it turns out that it's incompatible with DFSG, I could change the wording to prevent it.
- "Human" is every live being with humans among its genetic ancestors.
Why specify this? This seems like something the courts can handle. And who's to say that one day we will not consider other entities to be capable of holding or infringing copyrights?
Exactly to avoid this: the Hacking License grants rights only to humans. Whatever restriction of "human" the court would take, it has to include the judge, the humans that created the Hack, the people who wrote the applyed laws and so on. BUT thanks to such definition, it cannot exclude other humans, however weak is their position.
As for any non biological or non human entity "capable of holding or infringing copyrights" they would require an additional license.
Also, how does this interact with legal entities that are deemed equivalent to persons, for some things, and can hold or infringe on copyright, like corporations?
This is a great question! :-)
My goal is to give each member of any group of humans that receive or use the software the exact same rights (under the exact same conditions) on my software. A recognised organization can hold or infringe copyright, but cannot use or study the software, only the members of such organization can.
I don't want to prevent members of organizations to use the software, but I don't care much about the organizations themselves.
So maybe it's a good idea add a line to the section §2 to explicitly grants organizations the right to distribute the Hack. Anything else done from an organization (instead of a human) would require an addictional license.
- "Application" refers to a set of software exchanging data.
Is this meant to cover software communicating over a network? Or software and firmware communicating by exchanging data?
Both. This is important to define what wrappers are.
For example it covers all programs in a SaaS that work with the hack Any firmware written to speedup the hack, would be included too.
- "Runtime" refers to any runtime system, any operating system, any virtual machine and/or any interpreter that is required to run the Hack.
AFAICT, you're taking the tack of trying to scope the licence in terms of technical definitions ("Runtime" and operating systems and what not), rather than more abstract legal terms (e.g., "Derived Work").
No. I needed to define Runtime to exclude off-the-shelf operating systems, virtual machines, interpreters and so on that the Hack depends upon. I'm thinking of SaaS software running, say, on Linux: there's no need to distribute Linux with the hack, unless such instance of Linux is modified (see 3.4). As always, suggestions to improve the wording are welcome.
I wonder about how well that can future-proof this licence, as well as unintended consequences, e.g. through technicalities you havn't thought of.
Have you spoken with legal professionals on that?
Yes I did. One of their honest answer puzzled me a bit: "there is no certainty in international Law enforcement".
- "Source" refers to the human-readable form of a software which is the most convenient for people to study and modify, and that can be used to generate a new identical copy of the software itself.
- "User" refers to any human receiving a copy of the Hack or its source and/or performing any action permitted by this License.
So what about corporate entities?
See above. As currently written, the license is for the human members of the corporate entities, not the corporate entities themselves.
Note: even if provisions will be added to clarify the rights and conditions of organizations, no organization will never qualify as User under this license.
- Grants ---------
Permission is hereby granted to any User of the Hack to study, copy, use, wrap, modify and/or distribute the Hack, and to distribute any Derived Work under this License but with a different name and logo.
IANAL, but should the grant section that these grants are conditional upon the terms still to be introduced in the next section, §3?
This is what section §3 states: "The grants provided by this License are subject to the following conditions".
I assume the Judge is in good faith and he would read the whole license before taking any decision.
The Hacking License addresses these issues but in a different way:
- the User is any human who study or interacts with the Hack, even indirectly, providing data or receiving data elaborated from it
- every User have the right provided by the license
- condition 3.2 impose to makes sources available to every User
- condition 3.5 forbids any legal or technical impediment.
A violation of 3.5 (or any other condition) terminates the grants, with no forgive provision.
Well, the GPL doesn't allow other restrictions either.
Yet, there are businesses who offer services around GPL software, where the contracts for the continuation of those services depend on the recipient of the GPL software not exercising their GPL rights.
This would violate the condition 3.5 terminating any right obtained under the Hacking License.
Is that right or wrong, I don't know. Even if it's wrong, it's very hard to do anything about it: The recipient has no standing to sue. The copyright holder may never receive the specifics from any of the recipients involved, and even if they do none of those recipients may be willing to be involved in any enforcement action - for fear of crossing the entity offering the tied-service (who may be much more powerful than any of the copyright holders, or whose favour may be far more valuable to the recipients than any of the copyright holders).
This would be a pretty risky attempt to workaround the Hacking License. Suppose a user (that is a human according the license) publish anonymously the program somewhere. He has the right to do so. Any other other human who obtains the program, obtain the same rights and can exercise them without any legal constraints. At that point, if the source are not promptly available by reasonable means and with no further restrictions, those who have modified the source have violated the conditions and a Judge could only recognise the termination of their rights over the code got from the Inspiring Hack.
This without affecting the third parties that could at that point obtain the sources of the modified Hack.
The only solution I see to that is to require source distribution to all, with minimal conditions (except to meet desert island and dissident tests).
I don't like listing exceptions, sounds too fragile. I prefer clearly stated general rules.
Yet, people who are not users (as per definition) have no right on the hack.
Right, that is an issue, given my experience (as a copyright holder) with parasitical, abusive entities and side-contracts.
If you get a copy of the Hack, you become a user. If you interact, even asyncrously or through a human proxy, with the Hack, you are a User. I think the definition of user is wide enough to minimize the risk of abuses.
OTOH, I think that forcing people to send back patches would disincentivate hacking. The goal of the Hacking License is to maximize the forks of the software it covers, maximizing the experiments and the learnt lessons for the humanity.
In an isolated island all users must have access to the modified source but there's no need to send them outside. If the isolation ends, though, all new users have the righr to access the sources.
No, this licence restricts source distribution to the /recipients/, rooted at those Humans the original distributor chose.
No. Condition 3.2 grant access to the sources to every _User_ as defined by the license itself, that is "any human receiving a copy of the Hack or its source and/or performing any action permitted by this License."
So if you interact with the Hack somehow, you are a User.
That set is not the same set as the people on the desert island.
No, it's a subset: all Users in the desert island.
Same for the dissident: all users have right to access the modified source code they use, but there is no need to send it upstream.
Maybe, but it doesn't seem to address the practicalities of the restrictive side-contract, and making it harder for abusive entities to get away with that.
I think it does, to the widest possible extent that still allow it the Hacking License to pursuit its purposes.
Giacomo
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