For reference, see here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi.../des_a-294372/.

I'm trying to see how these compare to the Free Software Foundation's Liscenses. Are they compatible? In what ways are and aren't they compatible? Do they really do as they were intended to do?

I would consider software distributed under these terms to be non-Free (and therefore incompatible with the GPL, I hope). And generally, I find the attempts to separate between developers and users contrary to the spirit of Free software.

Which is it?

so you wrote these yourself? why?

PS:
i also agree with the previous poster.

2 members found this post helpful.

lol

I see no point in attempting to write a final legal document. This is the job of an attorney.

I see less point in copying a legal document and changing it to suit the exact original intentions, unless of course the intention is to replace the names of two agreeing parties. What I mean here is you've tried to take the GPL which is intended to provide legal protection and guidance for the GNU libraries, and then edit it to protect software. That's what it says already.

Back to my original point, my recommendation would be to consult an attorney, present them with the GPL document, state what concerns you have which extend beyond what the GPL document covers, and request that they help you to create a new document declaring what you wish it to say and protect.

And I've largely found that during such a process as I describe above, there are new discoveries made. Such as it is learned that your personal protective thoughts are too restrictive and inadvisable. You can "write" anything you want in a legal document, but if no one will sign it, then it is worthless. And also if you do manage to get someone to sign it, but it is not defensible, then it is similarly worthless. These are the parts which legal counsel is there to advise you about. Another example would be that you are asking to modify sections or add sections and you are duplicating existing intentions, making contradictions by your additions/subtractions, or negating other sections. Once again, legal counsel will point this out because they will perform the exhaustive read and note your self-entrapment, or attempts to add redundant verbiage. And I do not mean self-entrapment to be a bad term, my point there is that if you write some legal document by your own hand, however in one paragraph you make a certain statement, and in another paragraph you make a different statement which conflicts with the first, then this makes the agreement not defensible from a legal perspective. Hence it becomes a throw-away and negates the entire agreement.

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I agree entirely with rtmistler. Just as you are an expert in software matters, an attorney (specializing in this area) is an expert in the relevant law. Just as you get paid for your expertise, an attorney is entitled to be paid for theirs.

A licensed attorney can review the document, create the changes, advise you about the changes, and, finally, provide you with a signed letter on their letterhead attesting to their work and to their opinion of it.

Now, you have "done Due Diligence."

Someday, some goofball goes after you – challenges what you did or said – takes you to court. Now, your diligent preparations – you scrupulously followed your attorney's advice, and you kept records to prove it – swing into action.

Your attorney presents to The Honorable Court clear evidence that you "minded your p's and q's." Testifies as to what counsel he gave you, provides detailed evidence of each and every time either of you contacted the other and of every discussion. Produces your records and attests that they are true. His/Her Honor knows this attorney, who has appeared before their Honorable Court many times before. The opposing attorney must give up every hope of "this defendant didn't know what (s)he was doing." The attorney advises the plaintiff to settle ... or, that (s)he really doesn't have a case.

Other terms for "attorney" are "advocate" and "counselor." There's a reason for that.

A good attorney is worth every penny that (s)he charges. "Don't leave home without one!"

1 members found this post helpful.

I think it was supposed to read this way:

I don't understand your comment, but I bet you have your reasons for "lol".

I was afraid that if I tried to use something like the GPL, I might not be able to make money by selling the software. But I liked the general idea of the freedom it gives you, or at least the user, and didn't want to restrict users from using the software in just about any manor. I also wanted a way to make it open source of some kind, but wanted to make sure it was protected in some way or another.

So what I did, is I read the GPL v3 for reference, and without trying to copy what I liked word for word, tried to paraphrase it in a way to create my own document, but with some changes. However, I'm not an expert at this, and I am not sure I got the changes right to have the effect I wanted or not, thus leading potential users to be unhappy with it too, and thus, DOUBLE leading me to be unhappy with it, thus this thread, and more learning.

I would like to when I get to that point, produce the OS I'm going to write with GPL, however, I'm afraid that there might be special technical features that might make that a security risk to do that with.

I would like on my OS, to create a concept called "liscense files". Basically a liscense file is a file "linked" to another file, and every file on the OS will require a liscense file, even if it's the default liscense which really doesn't provide restrictions or anything. A liscense file cannot be linked to another liscense file, you are free to do whatever you want with those, and use any of those for any purpose you want.

The liscense file, is a mechanism that would have the potential to replace the normal way of liscensing stuff. A user who wants to follow the law, would not have to try to memorize each liscense that they accept, or refer to it constantly, and decide what to do. They would simply let the liscense file do the work for them. The computer wouldn't let you do anything that the liscense file didn't say was okay to do (or prevent you from doing).

I would love to make my OS GPL, and would welcome good editions to my OS, but I was afraid that if I liscensed it under that or something, that that would be a security risk.

Although I wanted to allow legitimate modifications to the OS, and understanding how it works, I didn't want someone to be able to either, change the code to get around the liscense files in their version, for the purpose of breaking the law, or find some way to get around them in another manor. I wanted developers to feel "safe" with using the liscense files as their way of liscening things.

However, I provide the tools in that case, not the exact rules or implementation on how they would be used. It could be used for serious harm to the system, or could be used for illegal purposes, rather than my idea of making things easier on the law abiding user and programmer. I wanted to minimize this potential threat, and that was the only way I could think to do it. This liscense (the software one), wouldn't be the exact one used for the OS, but the one that would be would be directly based off of it.

I think this concept is incompatible with Free software. It sounds like DRM.

1 members found this post helpful.

There are quite a few folk who make money selling Linux software. My advice would be to have a look at some of these with regards to how they go about this, including their licensing methods. I think that this may well be a better way ahead than the direction you're currently taking.

Just for pure info, and not because I want to be hung up on grammar, you should probably know that the noun is license (US English) or licence (UK English) (my apologies to all other countries who speak English and fall into one of these two categories), not liscense.

...I am constantly misspelling

...

You were previously working on a language.

Now you're working on an operating system?

All of what you wrote here is exactly why myself and sundialsvcs advised you seek legal counsel. You just don't do this effort ad hoc and expect defensible results.

Noting that hydrurga has commented on the misspellings and given the possible nod to language variations across the world, this point also does highlight the very important aspect surrounding international copyrighting. Therefore once again, legal counsel is best called upon to advise here.

Otherwise you are just spinning your wheels performing amateur revision of an existing license.

Regarding your misunderstanding of dugan's point, I believe what they may be saying is that the term they've seen in your proposed license is funny to them. I would agree, and also note that what you've done was to attempt to rewrite paragraph 12 of the GPL, and done so in an unclear manner.

Since I want to implement this feature, I will be forced to use non-free software when it comes to that time then. I guess at that point, I'd have to try to speak with lawyers about getting the license ready, since I appearently can't seem to do that on my own.

It'd work okay to license the language under GPL, but not the OS, and license most of the components under GPL for the OS. They are separate programs in their respective rights, and are not linked by source linking in any way.

...Which brings me to questions about copyright laws...

I'm not working on the OS again yet. I had started an OS, which needs to be scrapped and rewritten from scratch again. It did very little, didn't quite get past the boot up process yet, but it could print, "Hello World" to the screen willy nilly.

What the idea is, for my rewrite, however, is this:

1. Finish the languages as far as application development is concerned.

2. Write an OS, for the sake of learning to write Operating Systems in existing technology.

3. Rewrite the interpreter, as an OS, using some of the code that was part of my learning OS.

4. At that point, I am able to write the real OS I desire in my languages which I had created, which would be compiled to the PNF language and be interpreted by the OS. Then, the whole OS, becomes a new type of bootloader, in effect, and my OS is written in my own language(s). I could easily cross-compile the OS, on Windows or Linux at that point.