Re: Clarification regarding "FSF legal network" (was Re: Import and export function of SPDX)
RUFFIN MICHEL
So Bradley, what is your suggestion for me to try to standardize these FOSS clauses. What organization? I have tried SPDX, I have been advised to go to FSFE legal network. I have join the FSFE legal network and I tried to get a reaction without success except "that's interesting". Any suggestion of organization that would have a look?
It took us a lot of manpower to define FOSs clause which are widely accepted and tremendous effort to negotiate them with various suppliers before reaching this state. And if not standardize we can expect again more efforts
That's important because we are trying to standardize as much as we can of our FOSS governance process (for instance having an "open source" database describing iPR issues so the effort done by each company today will be shared and copyright owners can have their own word for correcting information interpretation. I think this will be the benefit of everybody: copyright owners, open source communities, proprietary software vendors, FOSS distributor companies.
Michel
Michel.Ruffin@..., PhD
Software Coordination Manager, Bell Labs, Corporate CTO Dpt
Distinguished Member of Technical Staff
Tel +33 (0) 6 75 25 21 94
Alcatel-Lucent International, Centre de Villarceaux
Route De Villejust, 91620 Nozay, France
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It took us a lot of manpower to define FOSs clause which are widely accepted and tremendous effort to negotiate them with various suppliers before reaching this state. And if not standardize we can expect again more efforts
That's important because we are trying to standardize as much as we can of our FOSS governance process (for instance having an "open source" database describing iPR issues so the effort done by each company today will be shared and copyright owners can have their own word for correcting information interpretation. I think this will be the benefit of everybody: copyright owners, open source communities, proprietary software vendors, FOSS distributor companies.
Michel
Michel.Ruffin@..., PhD
Software Coordination Manager, Bell Labs, Corporate CTO Dpt
Distinguished Member of Technical Staff
Tel +33 (0) 6 75 25 21 94
Alcatel-Lucent International, Centre de Villarceaux
Route De Villejust, 91620 Nozay, France
-----Message d'origine-----
De : spdx-bounces@... [mailto:spdx-bounces@...] De la part de Bradley M. Kuhn
Envoyé : jeudi 14 juin 2012 16:39
À : spdx@...
Cc : spdx-tech@...
Objet : Re: Clarification regarding "FSF legal network" (was Re: Import and export function of SPDX)
RUFFIN, MICHEL (MICHEL) wrote today:
ftf-legal mailing list, even if a topic seems off-topic for similar,
public lists.
ftf-legal is an invite-only mailing list, and thus it's probably not a
good choice for discussion of topics where the Free Software community can
help, since most of the Free Software community can't access ftf-legal.
The list organizers said publicly at LinuxCon Europe 2011 that the
criteria for subscription to ftf-legal are secret, so no one outside of
existing list members actually know what they need to do to qualify for
participation. After my three-year-long Kafkaesque experience of
attempting to subscribe to ftf-legal, I eventually just gave up.
Thus, I'd hate for (even tangentially) relevant discussions to SPDX to
fall into the black hole of private discussion on ftf-legal. As most
subscribers to *this* list know, I've been occasionally critical of SPDX
for various reasons, but I have *no* criticisms about the inclusiveness
and openness of SPDX's process, which are top-notch. Indeed, Martin
invited me to the SPDX list when he chartered it as "FOSS Bazaar Package
Facts". I've lurked on the list since its inception, and I've always been
welcomed to participate (sometimes even by pleading private phone calls
begging me to get more involved in SPDX :).
In April 2012 at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit legal track
that I chaired, I explained the reasons that I don't regularly participate
in SPDX. For those who weren't present for that event, the two primary
reasons why I don't actively participate in SPDX are:
(a) SPDX currently has no plans nor mechanism to address the key and
most common FLOSS license compliance problem -- namely, inadequate
and/or missing "scripts to control compilation and installation of the
executable" for GPL'd and/or LGPL'd software. Given my limited time and
wide range of duties, I need to focus any time spent on new
compliance-assistance projects on solutions that will solve that primary
compliance problem before focusing on the (valuable but minor) ones that
SPDX seeks to address. (And many of you know, I've given my endorsement
to the Yocto project, as I think it's a good tool to help address the
key issue of FLOSS compliance. I also encouraged the Yocto project to
work more directly with SPDX, which I understand is now happening.)
(b) I strongly object to the fact that most of the software being written
by SPDX committee participants utilizing the SPDX format is proprietary
software. I find this not only offensive but also ironic (i.e.,
developing and marketing *proprietary* software to help people better
utilize *Free* Software).
I should have posted these concerns sooner to this mailing list, but I
hadn't thought to do so since I'd already explained the concerns privately
to so many of you before.
-- bkuhn
_______________________________________________
Spdx mailing list
Spdx@...
https://lists.spdx.org/mailman/listinfo/spdx
De : spdx-bounces@... [mailto:spdx-bounces@...] De la part de Bradley M. Kuhn
Envoyé : jeudi 14 juin 2012 16:39
À : spdx@...
Cc : spdx-tech@...
Objet : Re: Clarification regarding "FSF legal network" (was Re: Import and export function of SPDX)
RUFFIN, MICHEL (MICHEL) wrote today:
I know that the discussion on this subject should be in FTFE mailingActually, I caution against being too quick to move discussion to
list.
ftf-legal mailing list, even if a topic seems off-topic for similar,
public lists.
ftf-legal is an invite-only mailing list, and thus it's probably not a
good choice for discussion of topics where the Free Software community can
help, since most of the Free Software community can't access ftf-legal.
The list organizers said publicly at LinuxCon Europe 2011 that the
criteria for subscription to ftf-legal are secret, so no one outside of
existing list members actually know what they need to do to qualify for
participation. After my three-year-long Kafkaesque experience of
attempting to subscribe to ftf-legal, I eventually just gave up.
Thus, I'd hate for (even tangentially) relevant discussions to SPDX to
fall into the black hole of private discussion on ftf-legal. As most
subscribers to *this* list know, I've been occasionally critical of SPDX
for various reasons, but I have *no* criticisms about the inclusiveness
and openness of SPDX's process, which are top-notch. Indeed, Martin
invited me to the SPDX list when he chartered it as "FOSS Bazaar Package
Facts". I've lurked on the list since its inception, and I've always been
welcomed to participate (sometimes even by pleading private phone calls
begging me to get more involved in SPDX :).
In April 2012 at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit legal track
that I chaired, I explained the reasons that I don't regularly participate
in SPDX. For those who weren't present for that event, the two primary
reasons why I don't actively participate in SPDX are:
(a) SPDX currently has no plans nor mechanism to address the key and
most common FLOSS license compliance problem -- namely, inadequate
and/or missing "scripts to control compilation and installation of the
executable" for GPL'd and/or LGPL'd software. Given my limited time and
wide range of duties, I need to focus any time spent on new
compliance-assistance projects on solutions that will solve that primary
compliance problem before focusing on the (valuable but minor) ones that
SPDX seeks to address. (And many of you know, I've given my endorsement
to the Yocto project, as I think it's a good tool to help address the
key issue of FLOSS compliance. I also encouraged the Yocto project to
work more directly with SPDX, which I understand is now happening.)
(b) I strongly object to the fact that most of the software being written
by SPDX committee participants utilizing the SPDX format is proprietary
software. I find this not only offensive but also ironic (i.e.,
developing and marketing *proprietary* software to help people better
utilize *Free* Software).
I should have posted these concerns sooner to this mailing list, but I
hadn't thought to do so since I'd already explained the concerns privately
to so many of you before.
-- bkuhn
_______________________________________________
Spdx mailing list
Spdx@...
https://lists.spdx.org/mailman/listinfo/spdx