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So I get that they equal Strictness with Pain. That's just the perspective of somebody who want to include free software in their nonfree software. However I d

So I get that they equal Strictness with Pain. That's just the perspective of somebody who want to include free software in their nonfree software. However I don't get why every copyleft licence get a minimum of two ?'s. They write that it is a measure of popularity and quality, but for example "EPL-1.0 Best copyleft license. Clear patent license. Professionally drafted." "GPL-2.0 Most popular “community” copyleft license. Can hire compliance pros." Those have quality and popularity, but they still get a double ?? in Confusion?

reidrac 10y ago
Also, why the quotes on community?
- extrovert 10y ago
  The most notable GPLv2 project is the Linux kernel, driven by a highly professional "community" of developers.
  - thomasahle 10y ago
    You could just have written "highly professional community of developers".
    - foota 10y ago
      For best sarcastic emphasis I'd go for: Highly "professional" community of _developers_
      - arkitaip 10y ago
        Careful, you're pushing the limits of markdown with all that sarcasm.
- joatmon-snoo 10y ago
  Because it's a malleable term.
- mrkgnao 10y ago
  Is it because it's an adjective here?
ubernostrum 10y ago
Every copyleft license gets at least a double-question-mark. I don't know for certain why he did that, of course, but experience has taught me that copyleft licenses are inherently more confusing than permissive ones.
- kemitchell 10y ago
  Copyleft licensing is permissive licensing with additional conditions. Larry Rosen made this point with his Academic Free License and Open Software License. They're the same form, with just one difference, in 1(c). That difference turns the AFL, a permissive license, into the OSL, a copyleft license. Copyleft license conditions beg interpretive questions about what actions trigger copyleft requirements and what actions satisfy those requirements. Common copyleft licenses differ in their triggers and requirements, as well as how they express them in the legal text.
- milesrout 10y ago
  No, they are not confusing. Nothing is confusing about copyleft, especially to a lawyer. I mentioned offhand the concept of copyleft to my completely non-technical lawyer mother, who hasn't looked at copyright law since she was at university in the 1970s and she immediately understood the concept. It's a very obvious concept. They're not liked by companies that want to be able to take everything for themselves and never give back. This article is just typical anti-copyleft FUD.
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    I'm a committer to a major piece of open-source software, and author of many more pieces of open-source software. I think it's pretty difficult to call me someone who wants "to be able to take everything...and never give back". And I've talked to lawyers! And I still stay far away from the popular copyleft licenses. There's far too much gray area in what constitutes a derivative work and what obligations I might unwittingly take on even when well-advised.
    - milesrout 10y ago
4c2383f5c88e911 10y ago
Yes, that article doesn't read much like "Lawyer's perception of open source licenses" and more like "Licenses liked by companies”. Companies don't like copyleft or responsibility, and want a clear patent clause, that's it. The pain rating is "how difficult is compliance" and the confusion rating is "do I trivially understand the concepts" (and apparently copyleft is hard). It was a bit of a disappointing read as I was expecting some more analysis than one-line descriptions. edit: that was probably a bit unfair of me, since the author has dissected several free software licenses on their blog in separate articles, which I recommend reading
- andybak 10y ago
  Why just companies? Surely the pain and confusion applies to anyone wanting to incorporate open source code into something else that may or may not carry the same licence. The patent granting is rather critical even to other open source projects.
  - 4c2383f5c88e911 10y ago
    Software patents are a US thing, and it's a good thing many don't care about them. I should have said for-profit software instead of companies, really; the legal entity is quite irrelevant in this case. I said companies because they are entities that: 1) stand to be sued in case of license violations (you typically don't sue a hobbyist project) 2) have the perceived need to maximize profits, and as a consequence want to veer off from anything that might require releasing source code, which might offset a competitive advantage. Thus a hobbyist project being a licensing clusterfuck is a less critical issue, although it is of course an important one (and certainly, depending on the project’s popularity, there may be a vocal portion of people wanting to clarify the situation). The pain and confusion ratings also do not go into the details which are useful for OSS projects, such as how do licenses interact with each other, how is attribution and re-licensing managed, etc. Not to mention the ratings do not differentiate between pain/confusion for the developer, and pain/confusion for other future developers (e.g. in case of a lib). (I admit that I tend to forget that there is also hobbyist closed-source software, for reasons I never understand)
legulere 10y ago
It's also pain for copyleft licensed projects. See the ZFS debacle with the incompatible CDDL license.
- carussell 10y ago
  Any CDDL-related pain is totally self-inflicted. There's no good reason to be creating projects and licensing them under CDDL in 2017, and there was even less reason to use CDDL in 2004. If people and orgs are experiencing pain with the CDDL, it's well-deserved.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    The urban legend is that Sun invented the CDDL explicitly to prevent GPL-licensed competitors, Linux in particular, from benefiting from their work. I've not studied the CDDL at all, but I never hear anyone claim there's any other benefit to it. I'm not sure what the rightsholder situation is with regard to ZFS (that is, I don't know if they had a copyright assignment for contributors), but it'd be really interesting if someone could convince Oracle, who I assume is the owner, to re-license it under the GPL. Oracle seems to have at least equal commercial interest in Linux as Solaris at this point. I'm not sure what the benefit is in keeping the license incompatible anymore.
    - carussell 10y ago
      Oracle used to have a copyright assignment policy that covered ZFS contributions, but it went away when they officially killed OpenSolaris. Any contributions since then have been under CDDL and the standard copyright mechanism where authors retain ownership is operating as normal. It's true that Oracle can issue an update to the CDDL that would automatically apply to (past) versions of ZFS, since the CDDL delegates to them (nee Sun) as the license steward and ZFS was being distributed with "or later" terms. Last I checked, though, the current ZFS project maintainers decided to patch that by opting out of the "or later" terms for future versions. At least this was true when I spoke to ryao about it last year. This was around the time that there was a lot of attention on ZFS on Linux. Eben Moglen did a compelling writeup at that time arguing that ZFS is most likely freely mixable with GPL nowadays, because users have been able to accept it on GPL terms ever since Oracle has shipped Linux versions that include ZFS and doing so without making it available under GPL would be a violation of the kernel's rightsholders' copyright. CDDL is still a total quagmire. I'll repeat: there's no good reason to adopt CDDL today, and there's lots of reasons to avoid it.
falcolas 10y ago
> I don't get why every copyleft licence get a minimum of two ?'s. Probably because of the patent uncertainty. You can copy the code legally and still get in trouble for using another entity's IP. Practically speaking, that will probably be more costly than a battle over copyright.

reidrac 10y ago

Also, why the quotes on community?

extrovert 10y ago
The most notable GPLv2 project is the Linux kernel, driven by a highly professional "community" of developers.
- thomasahle 10y ago
  You could just have written "highly professional community of developers".
  - foota 10y ago
    For best sarcastic emphasis I'd go for: Highly "professional" community of _developers_
    - arkitaip 10y ago
      Careful, you're pushing the limits of markdown with all that sarcasm.
joatmon-snoo 10y ago
Because it's a malleable term.
mrkgnao 10y ago
Is it because it's an adjective here?

ubernostrum 10y ago

Every copyleft license gets at least a double-question-mark. I don't know for certain why he did that, of course, but experience has taught me that copyleft licenses are inherently more confusing than permissive ones.

kemitchell 10y ago
Copyleft licensing is permissive licensing with additional conditions. Larry Rosen made this point with his Academic Free License and Open Software License. They're the same form, with just one difference, in 1(c). That difference turns the AFL, a permissive license, into the OSL, a copyleft license. Copyleft license conditions beg interpretive questions about what actions trigger copyleft requirements and what actions satisfy those requirements. Common copyleft licenses differ in their triggers and requirements, as well as how they express them in the legal text.
milesrout 10y ago
No, they are not confusing. Nothing is confusing about copyleft, especially to a lawyer. I mentioned offhand the concept of copyleft to my completely non-technical lawyer mother, who hasn't looked at copyright law since she was at university in the 1970s and she immediately understood the concept. It's a very obvious concept. They're not liked by companies that want to be able to take everything for themselves and never give back. This article is just typical anti-copyleft FUD.
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  I'm a committer to a major piece of open-source software, and author of many more pieces of open-source software. I think it's pretty difficult to call me someone who wants "to be able to take everything...and never give back". And I've talked to lawyers! And I still stay far away from the popular copyleft licenses. There's far too much gray area in what constitutes a derivative work and what obligations I might unwittingly take on even when well-advised.
  - milesrout 10y ago

4c2383f5c88e911 10y ago

Yes, that article doesn't read much like "Lawyer's perception of open source licenses" and more like "Licenses liked by companies”. Companies don't like copyleft or responsibility, and want a clear patent clause, that's it. The pain rating is "how difficult is compliance" and the confusion rating is "do I trivially understand the concepts" (and apparently copyleft is hard). It was a bit of a disappointing read as I was expecting some more analysis than one-line descriptions. edit: that was probably a bit unfair of me, since the author has dissected several free software licenses on their blog in separate articles, which I recommend reading

andybak 10y ago
Why just companies? Surely the pain and confusion applies to anyone wanting to incorporate open source code into something else that may or may not carry the same licence. The patent granting is rather critical even to other open source projects.
- 4c2383f5c88e911 10y ago
  Software patents are a US thing, and it's a good thing many don't care about them. I should have said for-profit software instead of companies, really; the legal entity is quite irrelevant in this case. I said companies because they are entities that: 1) stand to be sued in case of license violations (you typically don't sue a hobbyist project) 2) have the perceived need to maximize profits, and as a consequence want to veer off from anything that might require releasing source code, which might offset a competitive advantage. Thus a hobbyist project being a licensing clusterfuck is a less critical issue, although it is of course an important one (and certainly, depending on the project’s popularity, there may be a vocal portion of people wanting to clarify the situation). The pain and confusion ratings also do not go into the details which are useful for OSS projects, such as how do licenses interact with each other, how is attribution and re-licensing managed, etc. Not to mention the ratings do not differentiate between pain/confusion for the developer, and pain/confusion for other future developers (e.g. in case of a lib). (I admit that I tend to forget that there is also hobbyist closed-source software, for reasons I never understand)

legulere 10y ago

It's also pain for copyleft licensed projects. See the ZFS debacle with the incompatible CDDL license.

carussell 10y ago
Any CDDL-related pain is totally self-inflicted. There's no good reason to be creating projects and licensing them under CDDL in 2017, and there was even less reason to use CDDL in 2004. If people and orgs are experiencing pain with the CDDL, it's well-deserved.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  The urban legend is that Sun invented the CDDL explicitly to prevent GPL-licensed competitors, Linux in particular, from benefiting from their work. I've not studied the CDDL at all, but I never hear anyone claim there's any other benefit to it. I'm not sure what the rightsholder situation is with regard to ZFS (that is, I don't know if they had a copyright assignment for contributors), but it'd be really interesting if someone could convince Oracle, who I assume is the owner, to re-license it under the GPL. Oracle seems to have at least equal commercial interest in Linux as Solaris at this point. I'm not sure what the benefit is in keeping the license incompatible anymore.
  - carussell 10y ago
    Oracle used to have a copyright assignment policy that covered ZFS contributions, but it went away when they officially killed OpenSolaris. Any contributions since then have been under CDDL and the standard copyright mechanism where authors retain ownership is operating as normal. It's true that Oracle can issue an update to the CDDL that would automatically apply to (past) versions of ZFS, since the CDDL delegates to them (nee Sun) as the license steward and ZFS was being distributed with "or later" terms. Last I checked, though, the current ZFS project maintainers decided to patch that by opting out of the "or later" terms for future versions. At least this was true when I spoke to ryao about it last year. This was around the time that there was a lot of attention on ZFS on Linux. Eben Moglen did a compelling writeup at that time arguing that ZFS is most likely freely mixable with GPL nowadays, because users have been able to accept it on GPL terms ever since Oracle has shipped Linux versions that include ZFS and doing so without making it available under GPL would be a violation of the kernel's rightsholders' copyright. CDDL is still a total quagmire. I'll repeat: there's no good reason to adopt CDDL today, and there's lots of reasons to avoid it.

falcolas 10y ago

> I don't get why every copyleft licence get a minimum of two ?'s. Probably because of the patent uncertainty. You can copy the code legally and still get in trouble for using another entity's IP. Practically speaking, that will probably be more costly than a battle over copyright.