Conflicting license for Adeona?

[Francois Marier-3]

(Please CC me on your responses)

Hi all,

I was looking at Adeona [0] and considering ITPing [1] it but then noticed
that the license [2] was a bit weird.

Under "TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION",
it's using the GPLv2, so that's fine.

However, under "TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE" it's got the following:

  "This program is offered "AS IS". Any use of this program is entirely at
   the user's own risk."

which I think is fine and maybe even redundant since the GPL already covers
something like that.

But then, it also says this:

  "Any output from this program is intended for informational, research and
   evaluation purposes only."

which seems to disagree with DFSG#6 but also with the GPL since it's,
perhaps unintentionally, adding a restriction against commercial uses of the
software.

Does anybody have any thoughts on this?

(I haven't emailed the university about it, I wanted to discuss it here
first.)

Francois

[0] http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/index.html)
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=490922
[2] http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/license.html


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[Ben Finney-5]

Francois Marier <francois@...> writes:

> (Please CC me on your responses)

Done.

> I was looking at Adeona [0] and considering ITPing [1] it but then
> noticed that the license [2] was a bit weird.

Could you please post the complete text of the license in this thread,
so we (and hypothetical future readers) know we're all discussing the
same text? A URL might not forever deliver the same content.

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Ben Finney


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[Francois Marier-3]

Here is the full text of the license:

Adeona version 0.2.1 as of July 14, 2008
Copyright (c) 2007-2008 University of Washington,
Gabriel Maganis, Thomas Ristenpart, Tadayoshi Kohno, and Arvind Krishnamurthy

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE

This program is offered "AS IS". Any use of this program is entirely
at the user's own risk. Any output from this program is intended for
informational, research and evaluation purposes only.

For licensing information, please contact: license@...

All bug reports and technical questions can be sent to:
adeona@...

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2.0,
1991, as published by the Free Software Foundation Inc., 59 Temple
Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html).

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY, NONINFRINGEMENT, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

(http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/license.html)


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[Ben Finney-5]

Francois Marier <francois@...> writes:

> Here is the full text of the license:

Thanks.

> TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE
>
> This program is offered "AS IS". Any use of this program is entirely
> at the user's own risk. Any output from this program is intended for
> informational, research and evaluation purposes only.

I don't think "is intended for [use Foo, Bar, Baz] only" is a
restriction upon the recipient. It states the *intent*, but isn't
phrased as a condition or restriction on what the recipient actually
may do.

It is confusing that this is part of a section named "TERMS AND
CONDITIONS FOR USE", but I don't think the statement could be
interpreted as any kind of condition or restriction on the recipient's
use of the work.

Could you explain this to upstream? Even if they don't change the
text, it would be best for them to be made explicitly aware of this
confusion in the terms.

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Ben Finney


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[Arnoud Engelfriet-2]

Ben Finney wrote:
> I don't think "is intended for [use Foo, Bar, Baz] only" is a
> restriction upon the recipient. It states the *intent*, but isn't
> phrased as a condition or restriction on what the recipient actually
> may do.

I agree. My reading is that this is a warning of some kind. If you use
this for commercial purposes, it's at your own risk. Something like that.

Arnoud

--
IT lawyer, blogger and patent attorney ~ Partner at ICTRecht.nl legal services
        http://www.arnoud.engelfriet.net/ ~ http://www.iusmentis.com/


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[Joe Smith-10]

"Arnoud Engelfriet" <arnoud@...> wrote in message
news:20080725075110.GA99968@......

> Ben Finney wrote:
>> I don't think "is intended for [use Foo, Bar, Baz] only" is a
>> restriction upon the recipient. It states the *intent*, but isn't
>> phrased as a condition or restriction on what the recipient actually
>> may do.
>
> I agree. My reading is that this is a warning of some kind. If you use
> this for commercial purposes, it's at your own risk. Something like that.
>
> Arnoud

I'm not sure though. The listing of an e-mail adress for licensing
information in the "TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE" section
makes it sound like they think usage is a licenseable right independent of
the other rights. In that case, they may belive that uses other than the
intended uses are forbidden by default, and a license is nessisary for those
purposes.

It is rather common for Universities' legal departments to have unusual
theories about copyright law. Some universities belive that they have the
rights to all work created by any of its students, even those not in any
employment relationship with the University, and despite the lack of such
terms in any contracts the students have signed. I'm pretty sure that is a
near laughable belief, but some universities do belive that. As such, I
would recommend cation when dealing with software from a univeristy.

So recieving a clarification would be quite desirable.

DISCALIMER: IANAL, IANADD

However, I do agree that they may just be trying to warn that the program
was not designed with certain  uses in mind (such as law enforcement use)
and thus might be unsuitable for such purposes.




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[Ben Finney-5]

"Joe Smith" <unknown_kev_cat@...> writes:

> I'm not sure though.
[…]

> It is rather common for Universities' legal departments to have
> unusual theories about copyright law.
[…]

> As such, I would recommend cation when dealing with software from a
> univeristy.
>
> So recieving a clarification would be quite desirable.

Full agreement from me.

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