[cc-community] ShareAlike requirement question for a script

Pablo Rodríguez oinos at web.de
Mon Mar 2 16:52:02 EST 2009


Mike Linksvayer wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 12:30 PM, Pablo Rodríguez wrote:
>> The ActionScript code comes with SuperShow (an application release under
>> the GNU GPLv3, http://rastersoft.com/programas/supershow.html). I have
>> contributed to that code and I have improved it. Both SuperShow's main
>> developer and I are very interested in releasing this script with the
>> ShareAlike requirement, so that others might improve the script, keeping
>> those changes available to others.
>>
>> But the issue is that the GNU GPL would require that the presentations
>> on which this script were licensed under the same licensing terms.
> 
> First, I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice...
> 
> Are you sure? Programs don't usually impose licensing restrictions on
> their output. However I guess you're saying that the script is
> included in the presentation, so maybe the presentation would be a
> "covered work" as described in
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html

Many thanks, Mike, for your reply.

Programs do not usually impose licensing restrictions on their output 
and I guess that this is the reason why SuperShow (or any other program 
that would use the script) doesn't impose licensing restrictions on the 
template script itself.

But the script here is included within the presentation and because of 
that I think that is a covered work in the sense of the GPLv3. But I 
think that the embedding itself converts the final work into an 
aggregate and not a derivative work (and so it isn't a covered work by 
the GPLv3).

> Even then you could look into an exception along the lines of
> http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WMS or releasing
> the script under LGPL, which would (or at least it wouldn't be a
> stretch to imagine this, note again that IANAL) have the effect I
> gather you intend -- you want to require modifiers of the script
> itself to use the same license, but not place requirements on
> presentations incorporating the script, where script and presentation
> are roughly like library and application code.

I'm not sure whether the GPL plus an exception would be better than the 
LGPL. Besides from the fact that the LGPL is GPL plus an exception, I'm 
not sure whether the script and presentation can be compared to the 
library and application code, because the Flash presentation is not code 
in the sense that the application is code. The script could be 
considered as code that extends the functionality of the presentation, 
that is, I guess that is code adds features to the content.

But as the whole LGPL is worded with libraries in mind, it is not clear 
(at least for me), whether applying the LGPL suits to other code than 
libraries. I don't see which in my example could match the definitions 
for “minimal corresponding source” and “corresponding application code”. 
The script can be considered as the library, but considering the 
presentation as the application defined by the LGPL as “any work that 
makes use of an interface provided by the Library, but which is not 
otherwise based on the Library” is not clear to me.

The presentation doesn't make use of an interface provided by the 
script, since not only the script doesn't provide any interface to be 
used, but also it is the script which uses the contents of the 
presentation. Probably because of that, there is no “minimal 
corresponding source” nor any “corresponding application code” (as far 
as I'm able to understand).

>> I think its functionality would be similar to a table of contents in a
>> book (it isn't a perfect example, but I think it might illustrate the
>> point here). Would the release of a table of contents under a BY-SA
>> license require the release of the whole book contents under the same
>> license?
> 
> Good question and interesting analogy -- I don't know.

I think that a table of contents released under a CC BY-SA license 
doesn't force the whole contents of the book to be released under that 
license. Otherwise it would be crazy.

If you publish the table of contents of a book as a blog entry licensed 
under CC BY-SA license, does it force the release of the book contents 
under the same license? I don't think so.

But this point raises a problem with this particular presentation: it is 
not whether the final presentation can be considered as a derivative 
from the script, but whether the script should be considered a 
derivative from the original presentation.

Embedding code that provides functionality to a content that might be 
similar to embedding a font into a PDF document. AFAIK, the document 
licensing never imposes a restriction on the embedded font. From my 
point of view, it might be something more than mere aggregation, but it 
is something entirely different from adaptation or derivative work.

The only part of the script that is actually related to the presentation 
and the audio is the syncing. But the syncing is no more than a time 
list in milliseconds that marks where each slide changes. This is the 
syncing rule itself and it is referred to both sound and slides. But as 
such, it is only a time list that I wonder whether this is copyrightable 
as such.

I think that any presentation doesn't impose licensing restrictions on 
the embedded script itself. But I would like to know whether I could be 
missing something or whether I could be simply wrong.

>> And the final question is: would the release of the ActionScript code
>> under a BY-SA license require that all Flash files in which it were
>> embedded to be released under the same license?
> 
> My guess (repeat, non-lawyer) is that the only way BY-SA would be
> different from GPL here is that the former would be more ambiguous, as
> it doesn't address source code. The question is really weather the
> presentation is an adaptation/derivative of the script. If so, both
> would require using the same license for everything, if not, they
> wouldn't. Note that CC recommends against using CC licenses for
> software.
>
> Cue http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/2009/02/27/thinking-it-through/ re
> "separate magisteria".

Probably avoiding the CC licenses for the script is the right thing to 
do, but first I would like to know whether the viral effect of the CC 
BY-SA imposes licensing conditions on the script or not.

Many thanks for your help,


Pablo


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