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cc-licenses - CC licence options in relation to LGPL and Mozilla 1.1. Open Source licences

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: "Jorn Bettin" <jorn.bettin AT softmetaware.com>
  • To: <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: CC licence options in relation to LGPL and Mozilla 1.1. Open Source licences
  • Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 10:57:15 +1300

Hi,

We're in the process of making a software development toolkit called Time
Conscious Objects (TCO) available in Open Source form. The TCO toolkit
consists of:
(a) the www.eclipse.org/gmt/ generator (Generative Model Transformer) that
we've already licenced under IBM's CPL. I don't like the CPL, but this has
enabled us to host the project on eclipse.org. GMT provides a tool platform
into which further tool components can be plugged in. This part of the
toolkit bound to the CPL - and we're happy with that.
(b) TCO specific configuration files and code templates to configure the GMT
generator for use as part of TCO
(c) The core TCO framework
(d) Code that is generated using GMT and the TCO-specific code templates.

Someone using TCO to build software would use (a)-(d) while developing
software, and only (c) and (d) would become part of the software that is
being built and that would be used by further parties.

Of course (a) is also Open Source and could be used by further parties, but
as indicated that's not an issue for us. Our concern is to ensure that
modifications to (b) and (c) remain Open Source. (d) is automatically
generated from (a) and (b), and people should be able to own the code they
generate with our tool. In a way, the combination of GMT and TCO is like a
compiler: we generate [derive] source code from user provided specifications
and TCO-specific code templates, and the resulting software requires the TCO
framework as a run-time library.

>From the open source licences the LGPL and the updated Mozilla licence seem
to be appropriate. I say "seem" here because these licences seem to cover
our requirements outlined below, but I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not clear
about the implications of the additional fine-fint associated with these two
licences. There are many other Open Source licences that I have not looked
at in any detail - don't know where to start. Can anyone on this list help?

In relation to the CC licences, our requirements are as follows:

1. We require attribution, i.e. The licensor permits others to copy,
distribute, display, and perform the work. In return, licensees must give
the original author credit.

2. We want to allow commerical use of our Open Source software, i.e. in CC
terminology The licensor permits others to copy, distribute, display, and
perform the work. In return, licensees may not use the work for commercial
purposes -- unless they get the licensor's permission.
- What about the caveat about commercial use in the CC licence? We are
mainly interested in ensuring that use of our software in altered form
(changes in our source code) are bound to the same licence as our software,
see below. In practice, does the caveat about commerical use (requiring
permission) help to ensure that people stick to the rules?

3. We want to restrict usage in non Open Source software to usage in
unaltered form. I.e. any derivative work involving altering the source code
of our software also needs to be Open Source.
- The first part of this requirement is covered by The licensor permits
others to copy, distribute, display and perform only unaltered copies of the
work -- not derivative works based on it. in CC terminology.
- The second part of this requirement is covered by The licensor permits
others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the
one that governs the licensor's work. in CC terminology.

In summary, I would like clarification on the legal definition of
"derivative work". Not sure how we can express in proper legal terms that
any modification of our source code requires the result to be Open Source as
well, bound by the same licence, and that in contrast any use (commercial or
non-commercial) of the unaltered software can occur in non Open Source
format. Our requirements seem not to be covered by any of the available CC
licences, but rather represent a mix of two of the CC licencing options.

Jorn Bettin
jorn.bettin - at - softmetaware.com
www.softmetaware.com





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