Software license for AutoIt scripts/UDF

[ypid-geberit]

Hi

I come from a GNU/Linux, Python background and are usually more at home on GitLab and GitHub. There it is very common that authors pick a license they like and release software under such a license. This makes it clear what usage the author wants to allow and so on. Now I am involved with AutoIt for some time now and recently published some code which I thought could be useful for others (https://github.com/geberit/e2e-tests). There I make use of some nice UDFs (thanks for sharing!). The issue is that the legal status of the UDFs is unclear to me so I cannot share nor share a modified copy of those UDFs along.

I now started to ask the authors of those UDFs if they could resolve this uncertainty and got a response from @Jos stating that:

I appreciate such a statement. The issue is that it is not very precise. Software licenses cover this much better and legally binding. Without a clear statement from the autor(s) of some code, the default copyright applies which does not grant very much. Sharing of (modified) copies for example is not allowed by default. This makes collaborative improvements or usage kinda dangerous.

I think it could be helpful to get awareness for this. Can it maybe be added to?

Lets discuss

[Jos]

Understand where you are coming from, but this is not a software sharing platform like GitHub, but rather a forum where we support AutoIt3 and also post/share the work we've made. The original authors of both UDF's you posted the request for haven't been around for quite a while so my guess is you won't get any answer from them anyway.

So let's keep this simple and just recognise the people that provided code in your project when no firm license model was defined.  

Jos

[ypid-geberit]

Thanks for you feedback. I also understand that software licenses are not common in this forum and how this came to be. This is a general issue that should be addressed to be on the safe side. At least for UDFs that are basically libraries, authors should assign a license when they post their work. Otherwise, nothing will improve, people come and go and now we have the situation were there is some code but legally I would be required to rewrite it from scratch if I wanted to use/modify it in my work and properly publish it. Everything else is simply not legal. Some community/collective understanding of "All code posted here is free" is nice but legally not tough. (I assume you mean "Public domain". You could also mean Free Software licenses like the GPL. I can hardly tell).

This scares people like me who would like to improve some UDFs but effectively can’t. The thing I could probably do is to publish patches (that can be applied with the Unix `patch` command), but not the original code itself.

> just recognise the people that provided code in your project when no firm license model was defined

The jurisdiction I know (Germany and basic knowledge of the US), you are not allowed to simply do that. Note that I am not a lawyer.

[Earthshine]

you can maintain your own UDFs if you are so worried about it I guess.

[ypid-geberit]

To summary, the issue is not that I am not allowed to use UDFs or even modify them as long as it stays inside a company. It only becomes an issue when you want to be kind to your fellow AutoIt users around the world and share that derivative work. Can’t we instead just improve the basis on that we work and share here in this forum to clarify this? Maintain my own UDF sounds redundant to me.

[water]

Latest license related discussion I could find:

See the opinion of the overlord in the last post

[Earthshine]

Water, this made me think of Sealab 2021--Happy Cake Oven ep

ALL HAIL THE OVERLORD! ALL HAIL THE OVERLORD....

https://vlipsy.com/vlip/sealab-2021-all-hail-the-overlord-wXGuXuss

Now you people get back to work... this ain't no--UNION shop (Overlord says that after disintegrating that dude) LOL, love that season.

Edited October 4, 2019 by Earthshine

[ypid-geberit]

I would be interested in this but for some reason I cannot access it "Sorry, we can't show this content because you do not have permission to see it." (check this post while not being logged in/in private mode). I already did some quick search in the forum.

[Musashi]

6 minutes ago, ypid-geberit said:

I would be interested in this but for some reason I cannot access it ...

That's because it was posted in the CHAT part of the forum, and your are not yet an 'Active Member' (-> less than 20 posts).

[Jos]

6 minutes ago, ypid-geberit said:

I would be interested in this but for some reason I cannot access it "Sorry, we can't show this content because you do not have permission to see it." (check this post while not being logged in/in private mode). I already did some quick search in the forum.

Try again please.  

Just now, Musashi said:

That's because it was posted in the CHAT part of the forum, and your are not yet an 'Active Member' (-> less than 20 posts).

Close but not totally correct afaik.

Jos

[Earthshine]

here is the post

and he's the Overlord, so word if final. Is it wrong of me to picture Melba as the evil sparks playing overlord? It’s just too funny

Edited October 4, 2019 by Earthshine

[Jos]

5 minutes ago, Earthshine said:

and he's the Overlord,

"He" is Jon! 

Jos

[Musashi]

5 minutes ago, Jos said:

Close but not totally correct afaik.

That's what I've got as i tried to enter the CHAT area (before being an 'Active Member').

https://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/37739-forum-information-and-faqs/

Quote

Active Members - Members with more than 20 posts have additional rights

• No adverts
• Slightly more generous attachment and PM limits
• Access to the Chat forum
• Ability to upload files to the Downloads section

 

[Jos]

22 minutes ago, Musashi said:

That's what I've got as i tried to enter the CHAT area (before being an 'Active Member').

You are right ..... I thought is was just Member.  

[BrewManNH]

2 hours ago, ypid-geberit said:

The jurisdiction I know (Germany and basic knowledge of the US), you are not allowed to simply do that. Note that I am not a lawyer.

In the US, you certainly can do that. It's called public domain.

Also licenses only apply in the case that someone tried to prevent you, or charge you for the use of, their code. They'd have zero legal standing in almost any country to prevent the use of their code  if they posted it with a notice that said all their code posted here was in the public domain, or included line like I have in my signature, that said my code is free to use unless otherwise stated. 

None of the code posted with such a line could ever be licensed later because it's public domain. 

[ypid-geberit]

@BrewManNH Thanks for your input. I agree with you. The sentence you quoted should be seen in the context of "Author did not state any license and someone publishes a (modified) copy".  That was probably not 100 % clear. Anyway.

I appreciate that you thought about this and made a decision +1

[Musashi]

@ypid-geberit : Are you from Germany, like one reply suggests ?
If yes, I can give you some links to postings I wrote in the german AutoIt forum. This topic is a minefield anyway, full of legal gray areas where even lawyers can and often do fail. There are also significant differences between german, continental-european and anglo-american copyright law.
Under german copyright law, for example, not even the creator him/herself can release his/her creation to the public.
You can only grant licence rights which allow the highest possible degree of freedom, i.e. :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license

Whether a source code is worthy of protection under german law depends on the so-called 'level of creativity' (another 'gray area').

I better quit at this point, because this topic always turns my stomach, and many others probably as well .

Finally : I'm not a lawyer - this is just a personal statement.

[jchd]

Exactly what Musashi said, copyright legalese is a total mess and a correct interpretation depends on where you live, where the various contributors of the work live, when they contributed their part and which terms they used.

So even for what appears to be trivial cases, things are not trivial at all.

AFAICT there are also a number of countries/states beyond Germany which deny public-domain terms. And many countries vary on how to interpret even the most common license terms.

[ypid-geberit]

@Musashi @jchd Jup, I am located in Germany. You can give me the links if you want to. I should know the basics already I hope 😉 It is a complex subject, as always when you look closer into something. Sure the countries handle this differently. That is one reason I like software licenses because they express the wish of the author with the knowledge that not every statement of the license is effective in every country. With this, most of the wishes you have are effective. For example the GPL has been subject of many court cases around the world already and it has proven to work.

"level of creativity": You are right. But for a long UDF file, this should definitely apply.

A note about the Creative Commons that has been mentioned. This license family, except maybe the public domain variants, are not suitable for software projects. That just as a reminder.