5 ms·

CC-BY-NC-ND is a very strange choice of licenses, especially with "contributions welcome".

by hlieberman 9y ago

justinjlynn 9y ago
NC-ND makes the whole project a non-starter... it's not Open Source.
- msla 9y ago
  Right. For anyone who doesn't know these abbreviations, NC means "Non-Commercial" and ND means "No Derivatives", which means you can't take the code and release a modified version. NC by itself is contrary to the Open Source Definition, but ND is completely opposed to what Open Source is trying to accomplish. https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated
  - justinjlynn 9y ago
    Indeed, as it is licensed as such, it's no better than shareware.
  - ddlsmurf 9y ago
    What's really annoying is that it only stifles those who care about licensing.
    - rhn_mk1 9y ago
      That's no different from any other license :)
- aidenn0 9y ago
  Doesn't that make every single person who has forked it and modified it on github (16 as of now) a violator of the license?
msla 9y ago
And the Creative Commons people recommend you not use their licenses for software: > Can I apply a Creative Commons license to software? > We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative. > Unlike software-specific licenses, CC licenses do not contain specific terms about the distribution of source code, which is often important to ensuring the free reuse and modifiability of software. Many software licenses also address patent rights, which are important to software but may not be applicable to other copyrightable works. Additionally, our licenses are currently not compatible with the major software licenses, so it would be difficult to integrate CC-licensed work with other free software. Existing software licenses were designed specifically for use with software and offer a similar set of rights to the Creative Commons licenses. > Version 4.0 of CC's Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) license is one-way compatible with the GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3). This compatibility mechanism is designed for situations in which content is integrated into software code in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to distinguish the two. There are special considerations required before using this compatibility mechanism. Read more about it here. > Also, the CC0 Public Domain Dedication is GPL-compatible and acceptable for software. For details, see the relevant CC0 FAQ entry. > While we recommend against using a CC license on software itself, CC licenses may be used for software documentation, as well as for separate artistic elements such as game art or music. https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm...
rcthompson 9y ago
Someone pointed out in another thread that this calculator is intended to be usable in exams and has an "exam mode" (which presumably provides only a very specific set of functionality) that cannot be exited without plugging into a computer. I wonder if the choice of a "no derivatives" license was motivated by the need for a legal tool to prevent distribution of altered firmware that can break out of exam mode without a computer. Funny side story: when I entered high school, the school recommended that everyone buy a Ti-83. Somehow my parents accidentally bought a Ti-89 instead. Unlike the Ti-83, the Ti-89 supports, out of the box: simplifying symbolic expressions (e.g. evaluating 2/4 to 1/2 instead of 0.5), solving arbitrary equations, solving systems of multiple equations and multiple unknowns, computing derivatives and definite/indefinite integrals of functions symbolically, and a lot more. I was never asked not to use the Ti-89 on any test, either in math class or on a standardized test. I don't think anyone administering the tests was aware that this calculator could basically do the entire test on its own if only it had something to write with. For what it's worth, I never cheated with it, not least because typing a complicated problem into the calculator generally took longer than just solving it by hand. I mostly used these fancy features just to see if the calculator knew how to solve whatever new problem we'd just learned in class. It almost always did.
- aidenn0 9y ago
  IANAL, but my understanding is that the exam mode could be fully protected by the trademark; the ND clause is not needed. Just like non-official builds of Firefox are limited in their use of the Firefox trademarks (thus iceweasel).
- aidenn0 9y ago
  The TI-89 was itself created as a new version of the TI-92, but without a qwerty keyboard, since the standardized tests banned all devices with a qwerty keyboard.
  - acjohnson55 9y ago
    I bought one at a time when schools and tests hadn't quite figured that out yet :)

CC-BY-NC-ND is a very strange choice of licenses, especially with "contributions welcome".

justinjlynn 9y ago

NC-ND makes the whole project a non-starter... it's not Open Source.

msla 9y ago
Right. For anyone who doesn't know these abbreviations, NC means "Non-Commercial" and ND means "No Derivatives", which means you can't take the code and release a modified version. NC by itself is contrary to the Open Source Definition, but ND is completely opposed to what Open Source is trying to accomplish. https://opensource.org/osd-annotated https://opensource.org/osd-annotated
- justinjlynn 9y ago
  Indeed, as it is licensed as such, it's no better than shareware.
- ddlsmurf 9y ago
  What's really annoying is that it only stifles those who care about licensing.
  - rhn_mk1 9y ago
    That's no different from any other license :)
aidenn0 9y ago
Doesn't that make every single person who has forked it and modified it on github (16 as of now) a violator of the license?

msla 9y ago

And the Creative Commons people recommend you not use their licenses for software: > Can I apply a Creative Commons license to software? > We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software. Instead, we strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses which are already available. We recommend considering licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed as “open source” by the Open Source Initiative. > Unlike software-specific licenses, CC licenses do not contain specific terms about the distribution of source code, which is often important to ensuring the free reuse and modifiability of software. Many software licenses also address patent rights, which are important to software but may not be applicable to other copyrightable works. Additionally, our licenses are currently not compatible with the major software licenses, so it would be difficult to integrate CC-licensed work with other free software. Existing software licenses were designed specifically for use with software and offer a similar set of rights to the Creative Commons licenses. > Version 4.0 of CC's Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) license is one-way compatible with the GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3). This compatibility mechanism is designed for situations in which content is integrated into software code in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to distinguish the two. There are special considerations required before using this compatibility mechanism. Read more about it here. > Also, the CC0 Public Domain Dedication is GPL-compatible and acceptable for software. For details, see the relevant CC0 FAQ entry. > While we recommend against using a CC license on software itself, CC licenses may be used for software documentation, as well as for separate artistic elements such as game art or music. https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm...

rcthompson 9y ago

Someone pointed out in another thread that this calculator is intended to be usable in exams and has an "exam mode" (which presumably provides only a very specific set of functionality) that cannot be exited without plugging into a computer. I wonder if the choice of a "no derivatives" license was motivated by the need for a legal tool to prevent distribution of altered firmware that can break out of exam mode without a computer. Funny side story: when I entered high school, the school recommended that everyone buy a Ti-83. Somehow my parents accidentally bought a Ti-89 instead. Unlike the Ti-83, the Ti-89 supports, out of the box: simplifying symbolic expressions (e.g. evaluating 2/4 to 1/2 instead of 0.5), solving arbitrary equations, solving systems of multiple equations and multiple unknowns, computing derivatives and definite/indefinite integrals of functions symbolically, and a lot more. I was never asked not to use the Ti-89 on any test, either in math class or on a standardized test. I don't think anyone administering the tests was aware that this calculator could basically do the entire test on its own if only it had something to write with. For what it's worth, I never cheated with it, not least because typing a complicated problem into the calculator generally took longer than just solving it by hand. I mostly used these fancy features just to see if the calculator knew how to solve whatever new problem we'd just learned in class. It almost always did.

aidenn0 9y ago
IANAL, but my understanding is that the exam mode could be fully protected by the trademark; the ND clause is not needed. Just like non-official builds of Firefox are limited in their use of the Firefox trademarks (thus iceweasel).
aidenn0 9y ago
The TI-89 was itself created as a new version of the TI-92, but without a qwerty keyboard, since the standardized tests banned all devices with a qwerty keyboard.
- acjohnson55 9y ago
  I bought one at a time when schools and tests hadn't quite figured that out yet :)