you can remove it as much as you want, it's still a derivative work under the same license unless you go and start the project from scratch.
Of course this is silly. The code has not been placed in the public domain. The code has attached a license of use for others by its originator. Certainly they can change the license any time they want. You can't change it. And even you could make a new project with specific changes to the license as long as you carry the notice and mark that it's altered and that it comes from WAU (the 3 points of the notice), that's all it demands.
So basically stop scaring people with wrong claims of having disowned their own work when they haven't.
the zlib license is very close to being public domain, the license can only be changed with permission of every single past contributer else it's plain copyright infringment.
You clearly haven't read nor understood the license.
Proximity to public domain is no legal category. Either it is or is not public domain. Clearly it's not having a license that doesn't release ownership to the public domain. Nor is permission of asking all past contributor when the license nowhere states that that is required (and if you actually read the license you will understand that).
The license is very clear what is required:
*) State that code that you used was written under that license and label.
*) State if it was modified.
*) Copy the notice unaltered.
It nowhere states that your modified version can not have another altered license. This is the key fact that you obviously misunderstand. In fact it explicitly states that it can be used for everything once these three points are fullfilled.
Hence in fact I can make a new project called
WAU2 which is exactly WAU plus any changes and add a new license after I have fullfilled the three points above.
New license example:
This work is based on WAU which was released under zlib license [ comment: stating this fulfills requirement 1 of that license]. We have modified it[hence fulfilling requirement 2]. The original license is copied here [hence fulfilling requirement 3]:
<copy of the original notice>
[At this point all conditions of the zlib license have been met]
Additionally we impose further conditions to our new license. Noone shall use any of the modifications of this code if they disagree to these additional license conditions... [new license conditions here]
[There is nothing stated in the zlib license preventing this!]
This is perfectly conforming to zlib license, solely based on the zlib license text. Hence it is in fact easy to modify the zlib license upon iterating on a former zlib license project! Because the zlib license does not state anywhere that modifications are under that license (read the zlib license text again carefully before you go make false claims again).
Of course there is no copyright infringement because the license conditions stated have been met in full.
So to scare people with (a) disowning and (b) call them copyright infringers based on poor understanding of the situation is kind of weird if you ask me. Basically I think you are just trolling but that's me.
I thought about deleting all his posts. But this stands as a shining example of why I am never going to work on another open source project again, and I hope people come away with a true understanding of what a failure OSS is.
This isn't really a good example of OSS at all. The guy is mad because of the crash bug and taking his anger a bit far is all. Even if it wasn't open source, he could still be ripping it apart and redistributing it.
WAU is afaik the only updater that is official and helps to support WoW Ace with the ads. It's kind of sad that the ads (and the method to protect them - ie moving away from the standalone exe) have hurt the stability for alot of people using Vista. I really like the application and I know alot of hardwork when into it. Be nice to just see any comment at all from Kael about the future of updaters for WoW Ace.
@Fish: Instead of engaging in the line of argument provided - you provide a long convoluted link discussion a different license situation.
Clearly you haven't read or understood that link either though.
The link discusses among other things, that a non-author changed a license without giving credit or observing the terms of the previous license.
Read my post again and explain how that applies here. It doesn't. Neither did I suggest giving no credit to prior authors (the contrary) or disregarding a prior license (it's included in full). My description satisfies the terms of the license fully. Also for your own entertainment let me actually quote from that thread you linked:
"It is illegal to modify a license unless you are the owner/author,
because it is a legal document."
Note that the zlib license is not public domain and sylv is the author hence he _can_ change the license as I stated before (and you denied).
Instead you go and claim that sylv has disowned his code by this license, which is plain untrue.
It seems to me that you quote that thread selectively to emphasize your point rather than engaging in the argument here... again I think you are basically trolling and guilty of making one-sided arguments to make your point (and unduly trying to scare people along the way with your claims).
As for my example that you and me can use zlib license in a non-zlib license context, this is a feature of how zlib license is written (follow my steps again, if you disagree please quote the precise step you disagree with and quote the zlib license phrase that disallows it. Unfortunately you won't be able to do that. My example does not rewrite the license. At all. It creates new work (allowed by zlib license) and the new work can be licensed in any which way.
If you want to be really funny read this (from the thread you quote supporting your argument):
"A person who receives the file under two
licenses can use the file in either way.... but if they distribute
the file (modified or unmodified!), they must distribute it with the
existing license intact, because the licenses we all use have
statements which say that the license may not be removed."
BSD license makes explicit claims to observing copyright notices and explicitly includes modifications:
"Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met"
To understand why this is harsh is because it simply means that any modified code will read this:
"Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1990, 1991, 1993
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved."
I.e. even modified work is claimed to full reserved rights to Regents of UC[ also other points make positive rights claims for R of UC (ad clause) but lets skip that for a minute, except to note that zlib has no such positive right claims.] zlib license makes no such claim on modified work and that is critical but I wouldn't have make that argument at all if you would read and understand the zlib license itself, because it does define its own conditions quite well.
zlib is different because it actually does not state that you cannot provide a new license for modifications. It only states that you cannot remove the zlib license notice and not make false claims about the origin of zlib licensed code and the state of it being modified. And have to meet the other two conditions.
The whole linux thread is kind of a red herring in this context for this reason.
This important difference means that much of the argument about BSD licensing doesn't apply to zlib license. zlib makes no claims over modified code, except to carry on the origin of the original and its notice, and to not misrepresent modifications. Just to explain why digging through that thread you link is unforunately not very productive to this discussion.
There is no common misunderstanding here at all. At least if people read and understand the license and the situation they are discussing.
@sylv: I can see where you are coming from. Though funny enough fish is just wrong with his claims and that's about it. You are author and have copyright and right to change license conditions. Deleting all his posts isn't a bad idea, because he hasn't actually contributed anything constructive as far as I can see so far (unless scaring people with false claims is constructive). I won't mind if this thread goes away, because it mostly contains bogus claims with respect to license and copyrights and unnecessary attempts to correct the bogusness.
I agree that it isn't to be taken seriously. Basically sylv has never suggested anything inappropriate. Just claims were made that it was. The claims were false and that's about it.
(Btw this isn't about zlib, but about WAU being under zlib license (which is the name for the license type invented originally for zlib but used for many other things now) but as said it's not serious at all and the point never was to decredit zlib but change the license for WAU which is sylv's authorship anyway).
IANAL, this issue has been fought over for years and until someone takes it to court people will continue fussing, I'd be happy to provide a test case if you REALLY want a fight about it.
"It seems to me that you quote that thread selectively to emphasize your point rather than engaging in the argument here... "
Looks like you're guilty of this, cf:
"It is illegal to modify a license unless you are the owner/author, because it is a legal document."
you missed off the next sentence:
"If there are multiple owners/authors, they must all agree."
(better start contacting those contributers, of course, you can't retroactively revoke licenses...)
---
This is a bad example of open source as the project is no longer open.
The very worst that could have happened is that you'd have a a few dozen users taking the adverts out of their copies, >95% of users will go to your web page and download the official version.
---
I didn't say anything about using the zlib license in other contexts.
The whole derivative work thing WRT software is also fuzzy legally, Sylvanaars additions are clearly not the majority of the code (easily checkable with the .NET reflection API) and are a derivative work in this case.
Now, if you're accusing me of not reading the entire thread, if you actually read the entire kernel thread (I followed it at the time so my notes before were from memory), you'll actually find the person who attempted to remove the BSD license from that source code was actually the guy who dual licensed it in the first place, so it's directly applicable here.
---
If you don't write software for enjoyment rather than to just satisfy a community, yes, you're going to burn out when you get people complaining.
I'm also a core member of a development team for a 60,000 line piece of software (GPL'ed) used by a few million people (most IRC networks worldwide), we've had to deal with forks that became other large IRC servers, people pinching code, dodgy releases causing support nightmares, thousands of whinging users, but we're still there as we enjoy programming.
I hope you continue as you're clearly talented, just don't expect people to sit there and tolerate critical bugs if you're not willing to fix them yourself.
(and deleting the posts is just cowardly, if you feel the need to lock the thread I won't continue posting on this issue)
I'd be happy to provide a test case if you REALLY want a fight about it.
Hehe, well you are basically a douche.
"If there are multiple owners/authors, they must all agree."
(better start contacting those contributers, of course, you can't retroactively revoke licenses...)
Not at all. Sylvanaar is perfectly fine to chance the license on any code that is his because the license never forced him to cover any of his code.
Sylvanaar is fine to change the license with reguards to the ad portion for example, because he is sole author of it afaik. Also this is still wrong because the way zlib works. Noone ever had any claims on portions that Sylvanaar wrote.
The whole derivative work does _not_ apply to zlib licenses, because there never was any claims to modifications and protection of original work beyond credit in zlib! So that you bring this up (again) is another red herring that ignores the context.
You are _no_ author as I understand it. You don't even have any suable rights. You are just trolling here and making wild scary claims of suing (where you have no rights to sue for), which makes you clearly completely ignorant as well.
I didn't say anything about using the zlib license in other contexts.
Well you said that he can't change the license based on the license which is wrong.
The whole derivative work thing WRT software is also fuzzy legally, Sylvanaars additions are clearly not the majority of the code (easily checkable with the .NET reflection API) and are clearly a derivative work in this case.
No need to even respond to this part.
Now, if you're accusing me of not reading the entire thread, if you actually read the entire kernel thread (I followed it at the time so my notes before were from memory), you'll actually find the person who attempted to remove the BSD license from that source code was actually the guy who dual licensed it in the first place, so it's directly applicable here.
No, because he tries to select a license also over code that wasn't his. It does not apply so don't make it such. And it is a different license, which matters very much. See above.
If you don't write software for enjoyment rather than to just satisfy a community, yes, you're going to burn out when you get people complaining.
I hope you continue as you're clearly talented, just don't expect people not standby and tolerate critical bugs if you're not willing to fix them yourself.
Excuse me what kind of entitlement crazed idiot are you? You and nobody is entitled to force people to "fix bugs" on free time efforts they provided. You are not even entitled to have WAU in any form functional or not. If anything you are entitled to say thank you for long spare time spend for free for your enjoyment. Basically you are a complete ass and don't know it. It's rather clear that the reason why this whole thread should be deleted is because you are this idiot who has no sense what one asks of people and what not. And it's not cowardly. It's sane. I really wish this thread had been locked long time ago. And entitlement trolls should be banned after their first post. Period.
Where is your thank you for the hard work others provide to you for free, jerk? Nowhere, now go away and only come back when you actually have manners to treat people who have treated you with free goodies well.
(and deleting the posts is just cowardly, if you feel the need to lock the thread I won't continue posting on this issue)
Btw,
I (me, personnaly) am really happy to see adverts in WAU if this can help kaelten in the monthly server fees.
I *agree* these adverts cause some bugs (and overall *lag* when opening wau) but i am happy to live with this.
Thank you all addons authors, wau develpers,
And thanks for not adding strange code that auto delete my chars at login ^^
(sorry this was a useless post, but i think they may need support sometimes for the job they do (freely, you all remember?) for the wow community.
Thank you, all :)
yes, you're the one throwing pathetic insults and I'm the troll.
if you understood the argument you'd realise that the test case was in reference to me being sued by wowace/whoever for hosting a reverse engineered copy, not me suing wowace.
if you understood the basics of copyright law you'd understand that unless it's public domain (which you've gone into great detail to show that it isn't) then you'd realise the derivative work sections of the berne convention apply to ANY work, you CAN'T get around it UNLESS IT IS PUBLIC DOMAIN.
you'll see my thanks for sylvanaars efforts in two previous posts, along with an offer to supply bandwidth (or in another word money) at my own cost.
and no I don't have a sense of entitlement, I'd like the adverts bug to be fixed, I don't expect it to be fixed, so I fixed it myself.
please try to understand the entire argument before you resume the offensive remarks, thank you.
I understand the argument just fine. You provide more false "legal" claims (derivative work drivel "Those using permissively licensed works can relicense derivative work under more restrictive license terms.", I'll leave it up to you to google that.). You provide false representation who has threatened to sue whom (You have). You are still as I said entitlement crazed and don't even understand it. Clearly you don't understand that you are not entitled to WoWAce bandwidth on _your_ terms.
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Curse PremiumSo are you planning on fixing the bug with the ads? Or was this just a big leech job.
Of course this is silly. The code has not been placed in the public domain. The code has attached a license of use for others by its originator. Certainly they can change the license any time they want. You can't change it. And even you could make a new project with specific changes to the license as long as you carry the notice and mark that it's altered and that it comes from WAU (the 3 points of the notice), that's all it demands.
So basically stop scaring people with wrong claims of having disowned their own work when they haven't.
Proximity to public domain is no legal category. Either it is or is not public domain. Clearly it's not having a license that doesn't release ownership to the public domain. Nor is permission of asking all past contributor when the license nowhere states that that is required (and if you actually read the license you will understand that).
The license is very clear what is required:
*) State that code that you used was written under that license and label.
*) State if it was modified.
*) Copy the notice unaltered.
It nowhere states that your modified version can not have another altered license. This is the key fact that you obviously misunderstand. In fact it explicitly states that it can be used for everything once these three points are fullfilled.
Hence in fact I can make a new project called
WAU2 which is exactly WAU plus any changes and add a new license after I have fullfilled the three points above.
New license example:
This work is based on WAU which was released under zlib license [ comment: stating this fulfills requirement 1 of that license]. We have modified it[hence fulfilling requirement 2]. The original license is copied here [hence fulfilling requirement 3]:
<copy of the original notice>
[At this point all conditions of the zlib license have been met]
Additionally we impose further conditions to our new license. Noone shall use any of the modifications of this code if they disagree to these additional license conditions... [new license conditions here]
[There is nothing stated in the zlib license preventing this!]
This is perfectly conforming to zlib license, solely based on the zlib license text. Hence it is in fact easy to modify the zlib license upon iterating on a former zlib license project! Because the zlib license does not state anywhere that modifications are under that license (read the zlib license text again carefully before you go make false claims again).
Of course there is no copyright infringement because the license conditions stated have been met in full.
So to scare people with (a) disowning and (b) call them copyright infringers based on poor understanding of the situation is kind of weird if you ask me. Basically I think you are just trolling but that's me.
This is a good thread to be lock tbh.
cf. http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070901041657
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Curse PremiumI thought about deleting all his posts. But this stands as a shining example of why I am never going to work on another open source project again, and I hope people come away with a true understanding of what a failure OSS is.
WAU is afaik the only updater that is official and helps to support WoW Ace with the ads. It's kind of sad that the ads (and the method to protect them - ie moving away from the standalone exe) have hurt the stability for alot of people using Vista. I really like the application and I know alot of hardwork when into it. Be nice to just see any comment at all from Kael about the future of updaters for WoW Ace.
Clearly you haven't read or understood that link either though.
The link discusses among other things, that a non-author changed a license without giving credit or observing the terms of the previous license.
Read my post again and explain how that applies here. It doesn't. Neither did I suggest giving no credit to prior authors (the contrary) or disregarding a prior license (it's included in full). My description satisfies the terms of the license fully. Also for your own entertainment let me actually quote from that thread you linked:
"It is illegal to modify a license unless you are the owner/author,
because it is a legal document."
Note that the zlib license is not public domain and sylv is the author hence he _can_ change the license as I stated before (and you denied).
Instead you go and claim that sylv has disowned his code by this license, which is plain untrue.
It seems to me that you quote that thread selectively to emphasize your point rather than engaging in the argument here... again I think you are basically trolling and guilty of making one-sided arguments to make your point (and unduly trying to scare people along the way with your claims).
As for my example that you and me can use zlib license in a non-zlib license context, this is a feature of how zlib license is written (follow my steps again, if you disagree please quote the precise step you disagree with and quote the zlib license phrase that disallows it. Unfortunately you won't be able to do that. My example does not rewrite the license. At all. It creates new work (allowed by zlib license) and the new work can be licensed in any which way.
If you want to be really funny read this (from the thread you quote supporting your argument):
"A person who receives the file under two
licenses can use the file in either way.... but if they distribute
the file (modified or unmodified!), they must distribute it with the
existing license intact, because the licenses we all use have
statements which say that the license may not be removed."
BSD license makes explicit claims to observing copyright notices and explicitly includes modifications:
"Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met"
To understand why this is harsh is because it simply means that any modified code will read this:
"Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1990, 1991, 1993
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved."
I.e. even modified work is claimed to full reserved rights to Regents of UC[ also other points make positive rights claims for R of UC (ad clause) but lets skip that for a minute, except to note that zlib has no such positive right claims.] zlib license makes no such claim on modified work and that is critical but I wouldn't have make that argument at all if you would read and understand the zlib license itself, because it does define its own conditions quite well.
zlib is different because it actually does not state that you cannot provide a new license for modifications. It only states that you cannot remove the zlib license notice and not make false claims about the origin of zlib licensed code and the state of it being modified. And have to meet the other two conditions.
The whole linux thread is kind of a red herring in this context for this reason.
This important difference means that much of the argument about BSD licensing doesn't apply to zlib license. zlib makes no claims over modified code, except to carry on the origin of the original and its notice, and to not misrepresent modifications. Just to explain why digging through that thread you link is unforunately not very productive to this discussion.
There is no common misunderstanding here at all. At least if people read and understand the license and the situation they are discussing.
@sylv: I can see where you are coming from. Though funny enough fish is just wrong with his claims and that's about it. You are author and have copyright and right to change license conditions. Deleting all his posts isn't a bad idea, because he hasn't actually contributed anything constructive as far as I can see so far (unless scaring people with false claims is constructive). I won't mind if this thread goes away, because it mostly contains bogus claims with respect to license and copyrights and unnecessary attempts to correct the bogusness.
I agree that it isn't to be taken seriously. Basically sylv has never suggested anything inappropriate. Just claims were made that it was. The claims were false and that's about it.
(Btw this isn't about zlib, but about WAU being under zlib license (which is the name for the license type invented originally for zlib but used for many other things now) but as said it's not serious at all and the point never was to decredit zlib but change the license for WAU which is sylv's authorship anyway).
"It seems to me that you quote that thread selectively to emphasize your point rather than engaging in the argument here... "
Looks like you're guilty of this, cf:
"It is illegal to modify a license unless you are the owner/author, because it is a legal document."
you missed off the next sentence:
"If there are multiple owners/authors, they must all agree."
(better start contacting those contributers, of course, you can't retroactively revoke licenses...)
---
This is a bad example of open source as the project is no longer open.
The very worst that could have happened is that you'd have a a few dozen users taking the adverts out of their copies, >95% of users will go to your web page and download the official version.
---
I didn't say anything about using the zlib license in other contexts.
The whole derivative work thing WRT software is also fuzzy legally, Sylvanaars additions are clearly not the majority of the code (easily checkable with the .NET reflection API) and are a derivative work in this case.
Now, if you're accusing me of not reading the entire thread, if you actually read the entire kernel thread (I followed it at the time so my notes before were from memory), you'll actually find the person who attempted to remove the BSD license from that source code was actually the guy who dual licensed it in the first place, so it's directly applicable here.
---
If you don't write software for enjoyment rather than to just satisfy a community, yes, you're going to burn out when you get people complaining.
I'm also a core member of a development team for a 60,000 line piece of software (GPL'ed) used by a few million people (most IRC networks worldwide), we've had to deal with forks that became other large IRC servers, people pinching code, dodgy releases causing support nightmares, thousands of whinging users, but we're still there as we enjoy programming.
I hope you continue as you're clearly talented, just don't expect people to sit there and tolerate critical bugs if you're not willing to fix them yourself.
(and deleting the posts is just cowardly, if you feel the need to lock the thread I won't continue posting on this issue)
[edit: typo]
Hehe, well you are basically a douche.
Not at all. Sylvanaar is perfectly fine to chance the license on any code that is his because the license never forced him to cover any of his code.
Sylvanaar is fine to change the license with reguards to the ad portion for example, because he is sole author of it afaik. Also this is still wrong because the way zlib works. Noone ever had any claims on portions that Sylvanaar wrote.
The whole derivative work does _not_ apply to zlib licenses, because there never was any claims to modifications and protection of original work beyond credit in zlib! So that you bring this up (again) is another red herring that ignores the context.
You are _no_ author as I understand it. You don't even have any suable rights. You are just trolling here and making wild scary claims of suing (where you have no rights to sue for), which makes you clearly completely ignorant as well.
Well you said that he can't change the license based on the license which is wrong.
No need to even respond to this part.
No, because he tries to select a license also over code that wasn't his. It does not apply so don't make it such. And it is a different license, which matters very much. See above.
Excuse me what kind of entitlement crazed idiot are you? You and nobody is entitled to force people to "fix bugs" on free time efforts they provided. You are not even entitled to have WAU in any form functional or not. If anything you are entitled to say thank you for long spare time spend for free for your enjoyment. Basically you are a complete ass and don't know it. It's rather clear that the reason why this whole thread should be deleted is because you are this idiot who has no sense what one asks of people and what not. And it's not cowardly. It's sane. I really wish this thread had been locked long time ago. And entitlement trolls should be banned after their first post. Period.
Where is your thank you for the hard work others provide to you for free, jerk? Nowhere, now go away and only come back when you actually have manners to treat people who have treated you with free goodies well.
Lock please.
I (me, personnaly) am really happy to see adverts in WAU if this can help kaelten in the monthly server fees.
I *agree* these adverts cause some bugs (and overall *lag* when opening wau) but i am happy to live with this.
Thank you all addons authors, wau develpers,
And thanks for not adding strange code that auto delete my chars at login ^^
(sorry this was a useless post, but i think they may need support sometimes for the job they do (freely, you all remember?) for the wow community.
Thank you, all :)
if you understood the argument you'd realise that the test case was in reference to me being sued by wowace/whoever for hosting a reverse engineered copy, not me suing wowace.
if you understood the basics of copyright law you'd understand that unless it's public domain (which you've gone into great detail to show that it isn't) then you'd realise the derivative work sections of the berne convention apply to ANY work, you CAN'T get around it UNLESS IT IS PUBLIC DOMAIN.
you'll see my thanks for sylvanaars efforts in two previous posts, along with an offer to supply bandwidth (or in another word money) at my own cost.
and no I don't have a sense of entitlement, I'd like the adverts bug to be fixed, I don't expect it to be fixed, so I fixed it myself.
please try to understand the entire argument before you resume the offensive remarks, thank you.
(edit: typox2, I need some coffee)
Lock please.