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.
>>> 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.
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:
>
> 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.
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