I am not a lawyer.  The following is just some rambling ideas, posted
for fun.

Andrew Greenberg <werdna at mucow.com> wrote:
> The copyright may be dedicated to the public domain, in which case,  
> no person holds exclusive rights in or to the work.  There is no  
> meaningful impediment to the use of public domain works, although it  
> is useful to have evidence that the work has been so designated.

This is what I meant.  I agree that it is not a good idea to release
software without declaring any kind of copyright assignment or license. 
However, I see no practical advantage to keeping copyright and releasing
it under an open-source license.  Even the fabulously free MIT/X license
has one string: you have to include the copyright notice if you make
copies.  Is this one string desirable enough to make it worth using a
license instead of going public domain?  If you use MIT/X (or GPL or any
other license) you give up a big advantage of public domain: it's
rock-solid established law that is codified internationally by the Berne
convention.


I don't know why it is claimed that GPL and BSD are interoperable.  You
cannot link code together that was written under these licenses,
correct?  You can (*with limits*) have them talk over sockets, but that
is true for just about any pair of open source licenses.  Usually when
people say that licenses are interoperable, it means that you can take
code from one program and copy-paste it into the other.  That is not the
case with GPL and any non-GPL license.  This is why Mozilla is now
released under both Mozilla-L and GPL; you can take the GPL option if
you want to intermix Mozilla code with GPL code.

Thanks for pointing out, Jim, that FSF does litigate over the code it holds.
Obviously they have are in a different boat than me.  They are
actually putting teeth into the licenses they provide.

This strategy of reducing the number of licenses is interesting, but it
seems better to phrase it as making a few good licenses very popular
instead of reducing the number of licenses around.  For starters,
reducing the number of licenses is impractical past a certain point. 
There is already a vast amount of GPL code and BSD code (and Mozilla
code and Artistic License code and ...), and that code is never going to
disappear.  Further, there will always be indivual programmers that want
to do their own thing.

But maybe it's not even desirable.  To wax philosophical a moment, I
confess it sends a tendril of fear through me to even contemplate
central planning of large populations, and here we are discussing
central planning for every open-source programmer on the planet.  That
aside, I am not sure there is anything that can be profitably done other
than spread information about which licenses are already popular and
about what is known about different licesnes.  No programmer wants their
code to be inaccessible (and heck, if they do, it's their right!).  Just
spread the information, and most programmers should naturally drift
towards using a few popular licenses.  Let programmers be free, and they
will surprise us with the great things they do.


Okay, so here's my plan, in my fantasy open-source advocacy group (some
people have fantasy football teams, others, well, are complete nerds):

	1. Pick one approach or a few approaches to open-sourcing, develop it,
and try to make it popular.  This requires a lot of legal work,
especially if you start thinking about a world-wide effort instead of an
effort in one country.  I'm intentionally vague on the details; maybe
this means developing an uber-license that will be valid everywhere, or
maybe it simply means heralding the wonders of public domain.

	2a. Work on other legal issues.  For example, Andrew and Jimmie discuss
how you know that some software you are looking at is *truly* licensed
under GPL or whatever.  I bet most open-source projects are not careful
about this sort of thing and thus have a legal time bomb.

	2b. As another example, what about right-of-author countries?  The
spirit of open source is that you give your code over to the project
(even though you might retain copyright as a technical matter), but in a
right-of-author country you cannot give away certain rights.  Does this
matter?  How should it be handled?

	2c. And what about countries where licenses are contracts, and where
valid contracts need to meet all kinds of restrictions?  This example,
to me, seems like a strong argument in favor of using public domain.  It
seems rather difficult to roll a license that will be valid in *all* the
major jurisdictions of the world, but if you try then you have to
consider countries like these....

	3. Maybe, try to hook up with law-makers and get the legal systems to
treat open-source content on a par with public domain.  For example,
maybe there should be some sort of legal status, analagous to public
domain, for works that are free and that have contributions from the
general public.  They would sort of be "owned by the public".  This is
very close to public domain, but one possible difference would be that
"contribution" is recognized by the system and treated specially.  If
you contribute to an open-source project, then it would be nice if you
don't need to do anything special to provide a license or transfer
copyright.  Further, contribution might be treated as extending the
work; AFAIK, copyright law currently talks about works and derivatives
of works, but does not talk about a living work that grows over time.


But again, just posting some ideas.  I'm only a spectator enjoying these
exciting times as these issues are worked out.

Lex Spoon