Re: [Openexr-devel] CTL Licence

[Cyrille Berger]

Hi,

On Wednesday 05 December 2007, Hai Nguyen wrote:
>
> I'm a bit curious to this too....so here is the top portion of the license:
>
> Copyright © 2007 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
> (A.M.P.A.S.). Portions contributed by others as indicated. All rights
> reserved.
>
> A worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive right to distribute, copy,
> modify, create derivatives, and use, in source and binary forms, is
> hereby granted, subject to acceptance of this license. Performance of
> any of the aforementioned acts indicates acceptance to be bound by the
> following terms and conditions:
>
>     * Redistributions of source code, in whole or in part, must retain
>       the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the
>       Disclaimer of Warranty.
>     * Redistributions in binary form must retain the above copyright
>       notice, this list of conditions and the Disclaimer of Warranty in
>       the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
>       distribution.
>     * Nothing in this license shall be deemed to grant any rights to
>       trademarks, copyrights, patents, trade secrets or any other
>       intellectual property of A.M.P.A.S. or any contributors, except as
>       expressly stated herein. Neither the name "A.M.P.A.S." nor the
>       name of any other contributors to this software may be used to
>       endorse or promote products derivative of or based on this
>       software without express prior written permission of A.M.P.A.S. or
>       the contributors, as appropriate.
>     * This license shall be construed pursuant to the laws of the State
>       of California, and any disputes related thereto shall be subject
>       to the jurisdiction of the courts therein.
>
> Which clause in the license are you referring to that makes it
> incompatible?

When CTL was submited, the admin answered that CTL couldn't be added to 
savanah because the jurisdiction clause was GPL-incompatible, see :

http://savannah.gnu.org/task/?6171

Unfortunately, fsf wiki is broken at the moment, but it can be accessed 
through google cache :
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:AFilFZTraSgJ:gplv3.fsf.org/wiki/index.php/Compatible_licenses+http://gplv3.fsf.org/wiki/index.php/Compatible_licenses&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

My understanding of the reason is that it is a clause that isn't in GPL, and 
GPL specificaly say that you can't add other restrictions :
"You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the rights 
granted or affirmed under this License."
(clause 10 of GPLv3 http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html)

"You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of 
the rights granted herein" (clause 6 of GPLv2 
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html)

Then there is the problem of the pattent clause. It's very similar to what you 
can find in the "three-clauses" BSD, except that it also mention "pattents". 
It's also an added clause. And I also think, but that would probably need 
confirmation with people with more legal knowledge than me, that it is not 
compatible with clause 11 of GPLv3 which states :

"Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free patent 
license under the contributor's essential patent claims, to make, use, sell, 
offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents 
of its contributor version."

But for that part, in case, A.M.P.A.S. is willing to change the jurisdiction 
clause, it would probably be better to ask advice from either the FSF or the 
Software Freedom Law Center.

-- 
Cyrille Berger