It would be quite hard work for a mod to separate out the license discussion from the other stuff though, I suspect, so I propose the solution is for people who want to post more circlejerk license stuff to bite their tongues, and let this thread quietly slide off the bottom of the news forum (which is will do anyway, no faster of slower than whether it's being posted to or not, due to the way that forum sorts its posts).
It would be quite hard work for a mod to separate out the license discussion from the other stuff though, I suspect, so I propose the solution is for people who want to post more circlejerk license stuff to bite their tongues, and let this thread quietly slide off the bottom of the news forum (which is will do anyway, no faster of slower than whether it's being posted to or not, due to the way that forum sorts its posts).
The combined amount of time saved for all the regular users who keep checking this thread for the actual topic might far outclass the amount of time that any one moderator would have to spend using the thread split function (that I assume this board software provides).
Moderators willfully agree to being moderators.
The off-topic has continued for several pages, and multiple people have voiced their displeasure.
The best off-topic discussion is the off-topic discussion about off-topic discussions. Maybe we can all just let it go and try to bring it back on topic one more time, with a request that another thread be either bumped or created regarding licensing if people feel they must discuss it. Or not. I am also a part of the problem, and I walked away to avoid bombarding everyone else with (hidden) walls of text.
The best off-topic discussion is the off-topic discussion about off-topic discussions. Maybe we can all just let it go and try to bring it back on topic one more time, with a request that another thread be either bumped or created regarding licensing if people feel they must discuss it. Or not. I am also a part of the problem, and I walked away to avoid bombarding everyone else with (hidden) walls of text.
I think they indicated that a different license might happen later... which fuels discussions with its undefindness (what was the problem already before with the original announcement about Pyra's "openness").
I think it can stay. It only goes offtopic if a point has to be ran away from, which is quite telling:
This is what I got so far:
Should be closed instead
The critique that closed is better than non-commercial, is bunk for two reasons:
*If you like copyleft, non-commercial is no threat to it, because it doesnt carry with it the same virality.
*The license can change, and there are no additional licenseholders to take part here. This is all under control
Should be Free as in Libre
That last point above covers it being free in the future, and also, its a case of patent law, not copyright.
*There is nobody disagreeing or trying to take this away. It is more of a matter of being able to facilitate it while balancing a lot of other things. First and foremost building hardware and getting it on the market, which takes priority over exploring the subtleties of international patent law.
Should be Open
The critique that it should be open rather than Free Is bunk
for reasons it actually is open already, and that is what open means. You see the schematics, they are undoubtedly open. I dont know how source can translate to schematics any closer.
So lets contest the point of what open is. Not everyone subscribes to the OSI denomination of open source, and there is nothing disagreeing with it will do.
Companies doing this will sell you things like the OpenPandora. Im not sold on the OSI being a neccesity more than free means necessarily freedom or gratis in English. Free software however, used in instances such as a free software foundation, necessitates libre.
Should be Copyleft
The sharing back clause is actually there, it just lacks the commercial one.
In conclusion:
It is 3/4 Free (libre) software.
It is 4/5 Copyleft
It is Open
It is Non-Commercial
Those two points contradict each other, be it by the standards of the OSHWA, by those of the OSI, or those of the FSF. (Not that the latter two would have any say when it comes to hardware design licenses.)
So unless you can reference another OH license from a reputable source that clearly states that NC is ok according to their OH definition I'll just tell you again, that this license does not meet the criteria of open hardware.
btw&imho:
I don't think there can be a thing like 3/4 Free software. A software either is or is not Free. And I'm fairly confident, RMS would agree with me if you asked him.
That is open to debate,
English works like this, you put a word in front of another, and it qualifies that word.
Open, is such a word, it is a verb. You don't get to call it a specialist term, because it isn't, and you don't get a trademark on it, for precisely the same reason.
Open source, means the source is open. It is one of many freedoms. OSI-open source is 4 of them. Copyleft is 5.
One, open, two three four, free, five copyleft.
Open isn't the first freedom, so why is just (1)?
What is interesting here is that open does not even guarantee freedom zero, to use it in any way you please.
I never said it was free software, i said it was 3/4 of it. If you cut off a human at the axles up, you are left with 3/4. Platon would disagree, and make a reasonable point that we could get into.
In the case of the pyra hardware license, it is a meaningful 3/4, if you were going to lose one out of 4, or even 5 for copyleft, it would be the non-commercial bit.
Saying the pyra hardware license is open, is true, but it isn't that meaningful, not because that freedom isn't important, and valuable even alone, it is because
Open is not a specific word. It means access. Access to whatever word you want to qualify as open after it, be it open source, open schematics, or what have you.
It means free as in freedom software no more than use as you please, modify, or share. It means in most sentences, or without an implied understanding, libre software at the exact same rate free software means gratis. Because yes, as you are pointing out, talking about free software in less than free as in freedom, as per the definition, is vague, meaningless, possibly devious, or all of them.
And open is just that, and im a certifier. To qualify as zingu- open source, it must be open, can be vague, meaningless, possibly devious, or all of them.
Edit: Btw, oshwa deals with hardware. 'Open hardware' is, albeit for the time being, a specific term. It is a social term, so you could hollow it out if you wanted to. That will probably happen, as the different open hardware licenses differ widely in terms of grasp, legality and protection.
So, to counter your point. No, FSF or OSI standards do not govern open source. I believe the FSF coined Free software with the definition it holds today, but that is beside the point.
Yes, free software is a glass-is-always full ordeal, but open, or open source, does not at all rule out non-commercial.
While free as in freedom software is no longer free once it is non-commercial, open, or open souce, is just as open, or open source if it is non-commercial.
You are cherry-picking organizations, and confusing it with hardware.
btw&imho:
I don't think there can be a thing like 3/4 Free software. A software either is or is not Free. And I'm fairly confident, RMS would agree with me if you asked him.
(Response only for the sake of historical accuracy: )
At least in the past there RMS woudl have disagreed, he defined then indeed semi-free software. A classification which was later removed from the FSF terminology.
[doublepost=1481829388,1481829065][/doublepost](again, for the sake of historical accuracy)
As I just pointed out, there is no such thing like being 3/4 Free software. Just as there is no such thing like being 1/2 pregnant.
A license might meet a subset of the required criteria, but if it doesn't meet ALL of them, then it's not a Free software license. I don't get why you even bring that up if you don't claim this license to be FS-compliant.
Does that mean you want to make your point based on Open Access declarations? That's a whole different story and I'd rather not go there if you don't insist on it.
Edit: Btw, oshwa deals with hardware. 'Open hardware' is, albeit for the time being, a specific term. It is a social term, so you could hollow it out if you wanted to. That will probably happen, as the different open hardware licenses differ widely in terms of grasp, legality and protection.
Please show me such a hollowed OH license that's actually used in some project! Until then I'm just going to assume that the one from the OSHWA is the only relevant one, and that is pretty clear about openness with regards to commercial use.
I can assure you that I do neither. I know the difference between HW and SW. Not only OSHWA, OSI and FSF reject NC clauses, so does the OKN [1]. I can only assure you that I'm not cherry-picking, but of course I cannot prove that, because whatever reference I might come up with, you could still call it another example of my cherry-picking. I might however have a limited knowledge of actually existing OS licenses. That's why I keep asking for examples of relevant OS licenses that permit NC clauses.
Both projects dropped the use of these licenses in favor of clearly accepted OS licenses. The original MAME license wasn't even written or approved by a lawyer. [2] So I don't see the relevance here.
Im not a native English speaker either.
I brought it up because proponents of free software want to see 4/4, right now they have 3/4. So adding one freedom more would get it there.
I dont want to make a point, im pointing out you dont have one.
Being zingu open doesnt rule out anything, there is no requirements other than being open.
Cern, OSHWA and tapr all have different terms. Anything that doesnt strictly use patent law in this day and age is hollowing out the term, because then it doesnt have the same legal backing. It isnt patent law to be funny, that is actually how sad things are. I could dig it up again, but if you want to discuss, read up on it first.
You can be relevant with a claim all you like, it isnt irrelevant that claiming it doesnt protect the word "open" invalidates it. Nor was it ever in defense of that. You go on about public-domain software, call the FSF ecosystem irrelevant, and now all of a sudden OSHWA is the decider in open hardware alone?
You are cherry-picking in the blind, and you have fallen down from the tree multiple times already.
The reasons Free software companies denounce non-commercial licenses is because 1. they dont work 2. they cause problems. and 3. they cause problems in the way they don't work, for stuff that does. Free software.
Of course they don't want to tarnish the word Free, it is open that is a lost cause to the free software (as in libre) agenda. And we are discussing why the pyra license is open, and why that does not please free software folks fully. It could do, but then you would use a meaningful term, full of meaning, not devoid of almost all.
Have you read the GPL1 license? Original BSD? Not everyone is a lawyer.
Luckily public domain software and non-commercial licenses are as weak as they ever were. Not relevant.
Its just a not that clever thing to do, you can do it with closed source, you can do it with open source.
And this is where the venn diagrams overlap with free software and public domain and open, the latter also with with non-commercial. Free software doesnt touch that. Never the two shall meet. Highly relevant to the point free software is trying to make.
If you are going to shoot yourself in the foot, be it the copyleft foot by not being able to do that by doing libre software in the public domain, you can atleast pick yourself up by taking it back by expanding on it.
Dont shoot yourself in the other foot after that with non-commercial open source. You aren't going anywhere with that.
If you read the linked to article, it talks about free software as being an opposition to a free lunch, only in making it actually free beer, no strings attached.
It uses the term "public-domain software" and being free as an alternative to commercial, again, gratis.
Public domain is actually a curious concept, because things don't get there by chance, it takes ages. If you want to put something in there, you have to license it that way.
Putting something into a bbs and saying people can use it, isn't making it PD at all. You still retain copyright that way.
I am unaware of any important software licensed into the public domain from the time, but i could be wrong.
Point of the matter is free software was equally unknown and non-widespread at the time. To suggest they even knew about each-other by saying one stole from the other, begs the question as to what you can steal.
One is using it to mean libre software, and since the other has no mention of source, it is unappologetically talking about freeware. One favours ethical matters, and the other concerns itself with ability.
"Freeware is not exactly free, but it is not priced as a normal commercial transaction either"
Program for free, and then request a donation. That is just nagware.
Still doesn't use free as anything but a substitute for gratis
If the commercial guys dont wise up, it will wipe them out, they have priced themselves out. Yes, but earlier it said someone could take a program without even attribution, so clearly there is a few pieces missing here.
>"piracy is not the only way to get free software"
Well there you have it, 100% unmistakable use of free software indistinguishable from freeware.
The difference isn't the donations you ask for, or if you are IBM PC compatible or not. As we know today.
>"Strictly speaking" …Software isn't free, because phone bills and asking for donations. bla bla bla
Again using free as a substitute for gratis. Calling on third party costs as having something to do with what the software is, when it is inconsequential, and going on about ethics of asking for donations in the same sentence. Class act. Just above it its people struggling even when giving something away for free…
Turns out i learned something valuable:
Before 1974, when the US Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works (CONTU) decided that "computer programs, to the extent that they embody an author's original creation, are proper subject matter of copyright",[4] software was not copyrightable and therefore always in public domain. This legislation, plus court decisions such as Apple v. Franklin in 1983 for object code, clarified that the Copyright Act gave computer programs the copyright status of literary works.
Free software isn't important as a term in English, only as a cultural happening, and perhaps the greatest hack of copyright law to date. The freedom nature of it is important, not what you call it. This is why taking the time to say "as in freedom" is warranted. When talking to people who dont know, or are purpously unaware like you.
So people figured out how to take back control. Supported by the newfound provisions in copyright law. Old hacker is the new hacker.
Edit: History repeating itself with hardware this time around.
I fail to see why you keep talking in that length about software licenses when this is clearly a matter of hardware licenses. There are parallels but those are still two different things. Mixing those things brings us nowhere.
And yes, among others I've read all the GPL and BSD licenses.
I have no idea what "zingu open source" is. There doesn't seem to be anything online, that documents what this is. Is it relevant to Open Hardware? If so, how?
So far you're just beating around the bush. PD is totally irrelevant here and claiming that "open" is just a generic English word that can be applied any way you like defeats the point of legally defining licenses in the first place.
To shortcut this: Please simply link to a license applicable to hardware design that fulfills the following criteria:
1. It claims to define what "Open Hardware" is.
2. It states that an NC clause is ok.
3. It is actually and currently applied to some project that has the goal of creating "Open Hardware" (or has already done so).
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