launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Curtis Hovey <curtis.hovey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 02:05 +0000, keith wrote:
> 
> On 23 Feb 2010, at 01:19, Curtis Hovey wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 2010-02-23 at 00:42 +0000, keith wrote:
> > > Hi Curtis,
> > > 
> > > I am a little confused now, having see this page
> > > 
> > > https://help.launchpad.net/Legal/ProjectLicensing
> > > 
> > > Is the old Squeak_L in contravention of any of these items?
> > 
> > Yes it is, which is why is was disabled. As I cited in my first
> > email to
> > you, it does not permit users to modify the fonts,
> 
> 
> It does not permit users to modify Apple proprietary fonts that are
> included with the product, but there are no apple fonts included in
> Squeak.
> 
> 
> The last remnant of Apple fonts was removed in Sept 2004.
> 
> 
> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2004-September/082165.html

None-the-less, the intent of the license is to discriminate. Neither of
us are lawyers, we are using the guidelines set by organisations with
more experience then ourselves.

Maybe the license of the project could have been changed in 2004.

> > and the users must
> > obey US export law--clear violations of the OSI rules.
> 
> 
> So companies who want to break the US export law just release it under
> oss, and let someone else export it, without any worries of any
> comeback?

Hmm. Again I am not a lawyer, but OSS is not about governments.

> Surely asking people not to break the law with code you give them is
> not an invalid restriction especially if it could come back on you.
>  
> The reason for this clause was due to the restrictions on encryption
> exports (amongst other things) in place at the time. 
> The lawyers didn't check the code themselves, they just made sure that
> apple weren't going to end up in the dock over it, since squeak could
> potentially have had encryption algorithms contained within it. I
> think that the encryption issue is old news now. 

Then the license can be changed so that no one needs to think about the
issue anymore.

> 
> So my thoughts are that if there are no longer any export laws that
> you could potentially or reasonably violate with squeak, then this
> clause has also evaporated. Can you think of an export law that it is
> possible to violate, and that you would be willing to host on
> launchpad?

Well. I am not a lawyer, but are you aware that Launchpad is not hosted
in the US?

> 
> Would the following email not bother you at all?
> 
> 
> Dear US government, I have written a missle control system and posted
> it up on launchpad.net for Iranian's to download for free, signed
> anonymous Hacker.

Well, we are of topic here, but when an Iran group of users wanted to
talk to someone about setting up a commercial project, we could not talk
to them because the entire commercial team was comprised of US citizens.
I think terrible situation placed upon all parties that wanted to talk,
and could not.

> Isn't launchpad rather vulnerable to this type of software with such
> unrestrictive practices as the guidelines?

We follow the rules set out by the OSS communities, we want to remain
good members of these communities, and no one who works on Launchpad has
the authority to change the Launchpad licensing policy or the approve
licenses for the OSI or FSF.


-- 
__Curtis C. Hovey_________
http://launchpad.net/

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