We recently added two new licenses to our list of Various Licenses
and Comments about Them and we updated our comments on Creative
Commons 0 (CC0). We cleaned up the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
Licensing & Compliance Team page and refreshed the materials on
it. What follows is a brief rundown on those changes, and how you can
learn more about free software licensing.
Personal Public License Version 3a (PPL)
The PPL is a nonfree license based on the GNU General Public
License version 3 (GPL). The PPL takes the language of the GPL,
but redefines who is a licensee to exclude "Organizations." That means
that non profits, governments, and other organizations are not able to
enjoy the four freedoms in any software licensed under the PPL.
Free software does not discriminate based on who the user is, or how
the user intends to use the software. The PPL falls into the same trap
of those who would restrict military or "commercial" use of
software. Such restrictions are antithetical to software freedom,
so any license with such a term is necessarily a proprietary software
license.
Anti-996 License
We added the Anti-996 License to the nonfree list. The "996" in
the name refers to a common labor practice in China requiring workers
to work from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm, six days a week. The license attempts
to ban use of the software by organizations or users that fail to
comply with local labor laws or international labor standards. Like
the PPL, this restriction on who may use the software renders the
license nonfree. Free software never limits the freedom to run the
program.
CC0
CC0 is a public domain dedication. If for any reason such
dedication is not possible, it has a fallback license meant to ensure
virtually the same conditions. But CC0 explicitly does not grant a
patent license, making it problematic for use on software. Our entry
previously didn't cover this last aspect of the license. We've updated
our comments to explain how the patent situation with CC0 works, and
to warn users about the issues involved in using software available
under the license.
Licensing team updates
As part of our spring cleaning, we made some updates to the overview
of our available licensing materials. We welcomed some new team
members over the past year, and finally have them included on the FSF
Compliance Lab Team page. We made a number of other minor
updates, as we're always looking to improve the resources we
offer. But if we missed something, or if you would like to see more
resources added, let us know by sending us an email at
licensing@fsf.org. Here's what else you can do to help:
Thank you to all the FSF associate members and donors who
make this important work possible.
