The Spite Software License(github.com)
github.com
The Spite Software License
https://github.com/voynix/spite-license
61 comments
I mean, IANAL but there seems to be a trivial loophole here: have the company lawyer read the license, lawyer determines there’s a trapdoor, and conveys the contents to someone else. Nobody but the lawyer has to read it; everyone but the lawyer can use the software. The license specifically refers to people and not organizations...
And of course the "randos" on the Internet do not have lawyers. Many of them do read licenses and are screwed.
I suspect you're right, but I also suspect that the company lawyer would immediately strongly advise you not to please not rely on the license and just purchase a standard license from the original author.
Kinda reminds me of https://youtu.be/JSTpRCscfKI?t=187
> This video contains content from Sony Pictures Movies & Shows, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.
I think the general idea would work, but not for employees of the same organisation because they're both operating for the same legal entity (the same "licensee" in the language of the license).
It won't because the person reading it may be reading the contract but they don't have full agency for the company to enter a contract/license agreement for the company. It would never hold up in court.
Debatable. The lawyer is working for his clients therefore his reading of the file binds the company to its conditions.
Surely only if the lawyer agrees to it? Otherwise this would mean just reading contracts to check them out for validity would end up being binding - which is a bit much.
Well, I just lost The Game.
Does it count as a loss if you get reminded about it by a comment on HN?
If so I lost too :/
The only caveat is you can't lose from someone else's announcement. You can choose to ignore that house rule if you like... but you should think more about what The Game is and why/how you're participating if that's the case.
Edit: I'm aware of a gray area involving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(rapper); I once was watching a preview or credits or something (can't remember) and at one point it was a black screen with just "THE GAME" in white letters... I thought that was unfair but I can't come up with a consistent policy to exclude that loss.
Edit: I'm aware of a gray area involving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(rapper); I once was watching a preview or credits or something (can't remember) and at one point it was a black screen with just "THE GAME" in white letters... I thought that was unfair but I can't come up with a consistent policy to exclude that loss.
Here, let me help you with that: https://xkcd.com/391/
The Spite License:
The Spite License is, in essence, a trapdoor — it allows potential licensees to use the software under the terms of the secondary license (as shown here, the standard MIT license) if and only if they do not read the license file itself.
The Spite License is, in essence, a trapdoor — it allows potential licensees to use the software under the terms of the secondary license (as shown here, the standard MIT license) if and only if they do not read the license file itself.
Heh, I have now read the license without reading any portion of the licence file. Did we just find a loophole?
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Not hard wrapping the text files was a nice touch.
Any lawyers want to comment on this? My guess is that it's unenforceable because you can't bind someone with a contract by sneak attack.
But it's funny.
But it's funny.
Almost certain it's void in civil law (Europe) for many reasons.
Being deceptive is one. See the concept of dolus malus in Latin https://thehftguy.com/2020/09/08/what-every-developer-should...
The clause about not being read is a problem. A contract is assumed to be read. What to do with a clause saying it's not read? And the clause is the main point of the contract?
The whole thing is basically nonsense for lack of a better word. I can't imagine a court attempting to interpret the contract to enforce it. The title says it all "a joke software licence", they've succeeded at what they were trying to do.
Being deceptive is one. See the concept of dolus malus in Latin https://thehftguy.com/2020/09/08/what-every-developer-should...
The clause about not being read is a problem. A contract is assumed to be read. What to do with a clause saying it's not read? And the clause is the main point of the contract?
The whole thing is basically nonsense for lack of a better word. I can't imagine a court attempting to interpret the contract to enforce it. The title says it all "a joke software licence", they've succeeded at what they were trying to do.
It is funny. But it is also counterproductive. The Spite Software License theoretically makes your code useful only to people who don't care about licenses. But if the source code is published, it's already useful to those people. For those who make the effort to be responsible and respect licenses, the source code is useless. So Spite is probably a very good name for this.
edit: clarity
edit: clarity
Not a lawyer.
I suspect it's not enforceable as a contract, but that it is a valid revocation of the license. That is to say you could still use the project within the bounds of what you can do without a license, but not do anything that copyright law restricts (e.g. reproduce the copyrighted material).
I suspect it's not enforceable as a contract, but that it is a valid revocation of the license. That is to say you could still use the project within the bounds of what you can do without a license, but not do anything that copyright law restricts (e.g. reproduce the copyrighted material).
so if you read the license file can you not license any of your stuff under the spite license
Except that he also releases the license itself into the public domain, so that part would be unenforceable. I want to believe that funny maneuver was intentional!
No. You always retain full copy right to your own works. You can choose to license your work to somebody else on arbitrary terms (like, for instance, the spite license), but that doesn't affect your right and ownership of the software.
But since license terms and in general legal art is granted copyright, does one have the right to use the license for their own projects? That is, what is the license of the license?
See various controversies surrounding provincial law text being under copyright.
See various controversies surrounding provincial law text being under copyright.
Without an explicit license grant, you're not allowed to use copyrighted works for any purpose (modulo fair use). There's no reason to assume a license is licensed according to itself; most licenses aren't.
Without an explicit license grant, you wouldn't be allowed to use the license for any reason.
In this case, it's unencumbered:
> I hereby abandon all rights and claims and release the text of the Spite License into the public domain.
Without an explicit license grant, you wouldn't be allowed to use the license for any reason.
In this case, it's unencumbered:
> I hereby abandon all rights and claims and release the text of the Spite License into the public domain.
To be protected by copyright, a work most be considered a creative effort. Legal documents, in my experience, are not often considered creative works.
Here's the exclusive rights copyright gives you under American law:
https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106
> Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
> (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
> (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
> (3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
> (4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
> (5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
> (6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
Note that running the program is not listed in those exclusive rights. The copyright owner doesn't have the exclusive right to run the program, so the copyright owner cannot take it away from you, any more than I can take away your right to wear yellow socks.
https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106
> Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
> (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
> (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
> (3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
> (4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
> (5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
> (6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
Note that running the program is not listed in those exclusive rights. The copyright owner doesn't have the exclusive right to run the program, so the copyright owner cannot take it away from you, any more than I can take away your right to wear yellow socks.
When you run a program, you are directing the computer to copy the program into working memory.
Time to create a computer that runs entirely from disk without copying anything into RAM.
It's called XIP, and it's as weird as you'd expect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execute_in_place
That’s how the old cartridge-based game consoles worked: the cartridge contacts are the processor’s memory bus, and it executed directly off of the ROM chip inside the cartridge.
That's not a copyright infringement. See 17 USC (a)(1):
"(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.—Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
" (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or [...]"
It is interesting to compare that to 17 USC 109, the codification of the "first sale" doctrine:
"(a) Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106(3), the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord [...]"
Note that 109 specifically limits itself to copies that were "lawfully made". If I receive a CD-ROM containing a pirated copy of a program and I give that CD-ROM away (the actual CD-ROM I received, not a copy of it) I am potentially guilty of copyright infringement. I've infringed the copyright owner's exclusive distribution right, and the first sale doctrine does not save me because that particular copy was not lawfully made.
If I receive a CD-ROM containing a pirated copy of a program and I run that program from the CD-ROM (or, arguably, copy it to my hard disk for the sole purpose of running it from the hard disk), it would appear that I have not infringed any of the copyright owner's exclusive rights. Section 117 does not contain a restriction to lawfully made copies, and so seems to save me.
I never noticed that difference before. Anyone happen to know why 109 is limited to lawfully made copies and 117 is not?
"(a) Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.—Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
" (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or [...]"
It is interesting to compare that to 17 USC 109, the codification of the "first sale" doctrine:
"(a) Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106(3), the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord [...]"
Note that 109 specifically limits itself to copies that were "lawfully made". If I receive a CD-ROM containing a pirated copy of a program and I give that CD-ROM away (the actual CD-ROM I received, not a copy of it) I am potentially guilty of copyright infringement. I've infringed the copyright owner's exclusive distribution right, and the first sale doctrine does not save me because that particular copy was not lawfully made.
If I receive a CD-ROM containing a pirated copy of a program and I run that program from the CD-ROM (or, arguably, copy it to my hard disk for the sole purpose of running it from the hard disk), it would appear that I have not infringed any of the copyright owner's exclusive rights. Section 117 does not contain a restriction to lawfully made copies, and so seems to save me.
I never noticed that difference before. Anyone happen to know why 109 is limited to lawfully made copies and 117 is not?
Software companies at least would like you to believe that you do not own a copy of a program, but rather a license to use a copy of the program. They are almost certainly not on firm ground when it comes to physical copies, but download-only software is much less clear cut.
As I understand it there was some case law that tried to build the premise that you had to copy the software incidentally as part of running it. Most of the cloth of software-licensing is woven from that thread.
That's like saying that you make a copy of a book when you read it, because the words are in your memory. Or at least that memorizing passages of text is copyright infringement.
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A "copy" for copyright law must be "fixed" in a tangible medium: the brain doesn't count.
The "copies to RAM count as copies" cases have been around for a while and are on pretty solid footing, but there's some uncertainty in the area.
The "copies to RAM count as copies" cases have been around for a while and are on pretty solid footing, but there's some uncertainty in the area.
Well then could you not consider the disk copy the "archive" and the running copy the "actual" work thus creating the single copy to run in memory would fall perfectly under Fair Use? As you are allowed to make a Archive copy of the software in case it is damaged or lost, and RAM is volatile memory thus prone to loss....
There is no need to jump through hoops like that to try to justify making copies to execute. The same section of US copyright law that says making archival copies is not an infringement also says that making copies to run is not an infringement [1]. See section (a)(1) at that link.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117
If you want randos on the internet but not big corps, then probably the latest GPL is the best bet.
Or just put "non commercial use" somewhere in the text.
Or just put "non commercial use" somewhere in the text.
AGPL
The AGPL is a terrible license that is extremely vague and unclear. Please don't use it. Depending on how you interpret it, it's either completely useless (can be trivially worked around, thus giving you no extra protections over the GPL) or imposes onerous requirements on all your users, including the developers themselves. It is not a Free Software copyright license, but rather an EULA, since it imposes conditions beyond redistribution and also on usage (a big difference). As far as I know it has not seriously been tested in court and I don't see that ending well when it happens.
I recently found out that I may be violating the AGPL because I use dspam with my mail server, because I run Gentoo Linux, and the Gentoo ebuild includes a patch, so by installing dspam I have applied a patch to it (since Gentoo builds from source), and then put it on the internet, and I'm not including some kind of offer for the patched dspam source code for people who connect to my mail server (I don't even know how I'd do that). I didn't even know dspam was AGPL, all I did was install a package (but Gentoo unfortunately considers AGPL as Free Software and allows it by default with no explicit acceptance required, unlike corporate EULAs which they do force you to acknowledge by default, so I was clueless about it). It's just a huge massive can of worms of a license. Just don't.
I recently found out that I may be violating the AGPL because I use dspam with my mail server, because I run Gentoo Linux, and the Gentoo ebuild includes a patch, so by installing dspam I have applied a patch to it (since Gentoo builds from source), and then put it on the internet, and I'm not including some kind of offer for the patched dspam source code for people who connect to my mail server (I don't even know how I'd do that). I didn't even know dspam was AGPL, all I did was install a package (but Gentoo unfortunately considers AGPL as Free Software and allows it by default with no explicit acceptance required, unlike corporate EULAs which they do force you to acknowledge by default, so I was clueless about it). It's just a huge massive can of worms of a license. Just don't.
How else do you deal with (aiui) “cloud” loophole in traditional GPL?
Well, first you need to decide if it's worth caring about that, because in order to deal with it you have to impose restrictions beyond redistribution, which means your license is no longer a pure copyright license, which arguably means it violates Freedom Zero and cannot qualify as a Free Software license per the FSF's own definition (of course they say the AGPL does, as it's their own license, but by a strict reading, it doesn't; by a looser reading it does, but it is also toothless). (It would qualify as open source under the OSI definition, but the OSI definition is unfortunately really poor in this regard, as it does not require lack of usage restrictions; you could say "you can't run my app on more than one CPU core or have more than 4 simultaneous users" and that license would still meet the OSI guidelines!)
Now, if you're prepared to make that concession... I don't know what to tell you. The AGPL is a terrible option as I've mentioned. However, the FSF deliberately made the GPLv3 and AGPLv3 an interoperable pair, so if you want to link with GPLed software, you have no other option. If you don't have any GPLed dependencies, you could write your own license, and properly spell out what "remote network interaction" means for your app (and especially how transitive it is to being integrated into other systems, interaction with proxies, frontends, etc - all of which the AGPL is completely mute on), and how the source should be distributed. Ideally you'd build in a source code offer mechanism into your network protocol and make the app able to serve its own source code, so as to not burden your users with licensing traps they have to take explicit action on, and then make the licensing conditional on that.
In principle, since you can always make a license less strict via exceptions, if you're willing to accept that the AGPL may be completely ineffective at closing the loophole depending on interpretation, then you could use the AGPL and spell out what the required extent of the network interaction requirements is in the form of an exception; this would lessen the problematic burden of the AGPL on your users, but it doesn't buy you any extra protections, as you can only go weaker, not stronger.
Now, if you're prepared to make that concession... I don't know what to tell you. The AGPL is a terrible option as I've mentioned. However, the FSF deliberately made the GPLv3 and AGPLv3 an interoperable pair, so if you want to link with GPLed software, you have no other option. If you don't have any GPLed dependencies, you could write your own license, and properly spell out what "remote network interaction" means for your app (and especially how transitive it is to being integrated into other systems, interaction with proxies, frontends, etc - all of which the AGPL is completely mute on), and how the source should be distributed. Ideally you'd build in a source code offer mechanism into your network protocol and make the app able to serve its own source code, so as to not burden your users with licensing traps they have to take explicit action on, and then make the licensing conditional on that.
In principle, since you can always make a license less strict via exceptions, if you're willing to accept that the AGPL may be completely ineffective at closing the loophole depending on interpretation, then you could use the AGPL and spell out what the required extent of the network interaction requirements is in the form of an exception; this would lessen the problematic burden of the AGPL on your users, but it doesn't buy you any extra protections, as you can only go weaker, not stronger.
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Are there cases of a big corp actually using one of the weirder, but extremely permissive, licenses like WTFPL?
The big companies do not typically like these licenses, tending to read them as "all rights reserved" instead of "do whatever you want". Here's Google's explanation: https://opensource.google/docs/thirdparty/licenses/#wtfpl-no...
Yeah I would expect a no from the legal team at the company I worked at last. Meanwhile I'd assume that most "randos on the internet" would be fairly comfy using that license for their own use.
>> Because you want randos on the Internet but not big companies with lawyers who make their engineers actually read licenses to use your software
I don't understand this sentiment of just sticking it to big companies because they're big and employ lawyers. The problem is the opposite: when a company has no excuse to do scummy things because they can afford lawyers, but they do scummy things regardless. I'd love it if big companies embraced the GPL more. But if they just ignored it that would be terrible, and sometimes they do.
Sometimes hospitals have (on paper) a policy to ensure patients have been informed of and understood their rights, so they have you sign a form acknowledging this. That's a good thing! But in practice they often get an image of your signature from you and then add it to the form knowing full well you haven't seen it.
I feel like the attitude of this license is that it's cooler for randos to do the latter than for big companies to do the former. It's backwards if you actually care about the rule of law and equity.
I don't understand this sentiment of just sticking it to big companies because they're big and employ lawyers. The problem is the opposite: when a company has no excuse to do scummy things because they can afford lawyers, but they do scummy things regardless. I'd love it if big companies embraced the GPL more. But if they just ignored it that would be terrible, and sometimes they do.
Sometimes hospitals have (on paper) a policy to ensure patients have been informed of and understood their rights, so they have you sign a form acknowledging this. That's a good thing! But in practice they often get an image of your signature from you and then add it to the form knowing full well you haven't seen it.
I feel like the attitude of this license is that it's cooler for randos to do the latter than for big companies to do the former. It's backwards if you actually care about the rule of law and equity.
If I had a dime for every time a big company I've worked at has investigated the licenses of the software it uses, I'd have fifty cents.
People tend to forget that big companies are really just collections of normal people who are not lawyers and don't even think about licenses. If 5 levels of managers haven't all been explicitly instructed to read random software licenses or they're fired, the engineer's not gonna do it unless they feel like it, and most don't feel like it. It mostly only comes up when legal goes out of their way to make a stink about it, and they're not just continuously demanding license information.
People tend to forget that big companies are really just collections of normal people who are not lawyers and don't even think about licenses. If 5 levels of managers haven't all been explicitly instructed to read random software licenses or they're fired, the engineer's not gonna do it unless they feel like it, and most don't feel like it. It mostly only comes up when legal goes out of their way to make a stink about it, and they're not just continuously demanding license information.
I did an internship at Bosch a while ago, and I can say they take software licenses very seriously.
Google takes licenses very seriously as well: https://opensource.google/docs/thirdparty/licenses/#wtfpl-no...
They certainly have a lot of eyes on them, so any mistake with licenses could be very costly.
They certainly have a lot of eyes on them, so any mistake with licenses could be very costly.
I worked for an insurance data provider, and as part of our server upgrade, the legal team requested licenses for all of software dependencies.
It was a bit of shell-scripting around conda env list, but it certainly wasn't completely trivial to do.
It was a bit of shell-scripting around conda env list, but it certainly wasn't completely trivial to do.
This license assumes that "randos on the internet" don't read license texts. Not true---I read every single one!