Re: Towards a better license for Mutopia

[David Chan]

[In reply to Bernd Warken, Mon, 12 Feb 2001 11:44:45 -0800]

Hi Bernd, and thanks for your continued input - it's always good to
scrutinise licenses very carefully because bugs in them can be disastrous.


> The MutopiaBSD [...] It does not protect the edited music against theft.

Certainly, it's not copyleft.

> Moreover, it is inconsistent.  No printed output actually shows the
> license text as is forced by the license

Hmmm.  I agree that the wording is somewhat ambiguous.

MBSD> Permission is hereby granted, without written agreement and without
MBSD> license or royalty fees, to use, copy, modify, distribute, perform
MBSD> and record this music and to distribute, perform and record modified
     * ----------------------^
MBSD> versions of this music for any purpose, provided that the above
MBSD> copyright notice, this paragraph and the following disclaimer appear
MBSD> with all copies of this music, whatever the format of the copy,
MBSD> printed, audio or otherwise.

If you read it as if there's a ";" where I've marked, then the requirement
to display the disclaimer only applies to distribution, performance and
recording - i.e. if you want to distribute copies then you have to print the
license on the score/CD box.  But it's *always* bad when you have a license
that can be read in two different ways.  Did we actually mean this? :

  "Permission is hereby granted, without written agreement and without
   license or royalty fees, to use, copy, modify, distribute, perform
   and record this music or modified versions of it, provided that any
   copies, modified versions or recordings which you do distribute come
   with this paragraph and the following disclaimer.

> nor does any audio output replay the license.

I don't think that this is neccessary, as long as the midi files are only
distributed with the copyright notice - but see above.

> I will not release my edited scores under MutopiaBSD.
> 
> A crucial point is that the tagline field in the header is not protected
> against malicious modifications.

The tag line is the actual copyright notice - I believe it would be
fraudulent to modify it in Berne Convention countries.  But I Am Not A
Lawyer.

> The GNU Free Documentation provides the concept of invariant sections,
> which would fix this flaw.

But I think there's a lot else wrong with the FDL for music, due to many
ways which music differs from documentation - and, BTW, I think RMS would
agree; see his comment to this list in
<http://www.mail-archive.com/address@hidden/msg01905.html>:

RMS> I think that we should design a license (or more than one) for free
RMS> music.  The two possibilities are copyleft and non-copyleft.
RMS> In order to do this properly, though, we need to work with a lawyer.

> I strongly point out that there has to be done something to create a
> better license for Mutopia.  If not, I would propose to make Mutopia
> a BSDI project instead of a GNU one.
[...]
> [...] or a special GNU license for edited music scores must be
> created, maybe being called GNU Free Score License.

I think you may have a point.  I always knew it would need a lawyer to
design a good copyleft license, but I thought it would be possible for us
to manage a BSD-style one without a lawyer.  However, you appear to have
found potential ambiguities in the first six lines.  I think maybe we
should take up RMS's offer. Does anyone else agree with this?


[BTW Mutopia is not an official GNU project, though Lilypond is].

David
-- 
Lbh unir gbb zhpu serr gvzr.