[GNU-linux-libre] Hyperbola: Other "Information for practical use" under a free license

[bill-auger]

Citing from: https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:main:social_contract

Hyperbola is free culture: All documentation and
cultural works included in Hyperbola are free
culture, with the exceptions of: works stating a
viewpoint, invariant sections and cover texts. All
documentation and cultural works created by or for
Hyperbola are free culture, with no exceptions.

and yes that could not be more clear - this is explicitly making an
exception to "free culture" in order to allow GDFL documentation - and
saying that any documentation that is made specifically for the
hyperbola project will be free culture and presumably with no such
invariant sections

TBH just as a side note, that precise wording seems to be implying
something that was perhaps not intended - the intention here seems quite
clearly to be nothing other than to allow for GFDL licensed
documentation - the phrases: "works stating a viewpoint, invariant
sections and cover texts" are taken straight from the GFDL definition -
but in this context they imply that the hyperbola project would not ever
be allowed to state any "viewpoint" because all hyperbola documentation
is promised to be under a "free culture" license, with no exceptions;
but "works stating a viewpoint" are stated explicitly here to be not
"free culture" - perhaps that was intended - personally, i would applaud
any software project that is dedicated to *not* expressing personal
orthogonal "viewpoints"

i must say that the hyperbola social contract is written remarkably well
in that way as to avoid any normative language - even the section about
social behavior is fully prescriptive without being opinionated or
judgmental

[Luke Shumaker]

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[Jean Louis]

Post by Luke Shumaker
It doesn't say that "works stating a viewpoint" are inherently not
Free Culture, it says that they are not *required* to be Free Culture,
unless they are produced "by or for" Parabola (Hyperbola), in which
case they are required to be Free Culture.
Parabola is allowed to express viewpoints, we simply must use Free
Culture licenses when we do it.

I think there is something seriously wrong with
those people who designed "free culture" to be
"free" to change other people's opinion
statements.

How can a thought spoken by somebody at one point of
time be modifiable in other point of time, by
other person? It makes no sense as it abuses the
author and proper attribution. It is not ethical.

That cannot be "free" in the sense of modifications.

Jean

[Ineiev]

Post by Jean Louis
I think there is something seriously wrong with
those people who designed "free culture" to be
"free" to change other people's opinion
statements.
How can a thought spoken by somebody at one point of
time be modifiable in other point of time, by
other person? It makes no sense as it abuses the
author and proper attribution. It is not ethical.
That cannot be "free" in the sense of modifications.

In fact, many free software licenses have provisions
against misrepresentation of the origin: I can't modify
a program and say that it comes from the original authors
unchanged; this still doesn't make that program nonfree
in the sense of modifications.

[bill-auger]

Post by Ineiev
In fact, many free software licenses have provisions
against misrepresentation of the origin: I can't modify
a program and say that it comes from the original authors
unchanged; this still doesn't make that program nonfree
in the sense of modifications.

indeed, this is true for software licenses like GPL - and to underline the
"unchanged" but: it also requires that modifications must be clearly noted as
such - so even the GPL would be a better choice for "works stating an opinion"
than the free culture licenses

the free culture licenses are much too weak in my opinion in - in the case of
most artwork and music, they reduce to "freeware" blobs with not so much as
indication of the underlying composite source layers and scripts that created it
- i would really like to see free culture proponents to start recommending the
GPL as it is the only applicable license that requires source materials to be
declared and offered, requires modifications to be clearly attributed and noted
as such, and so on

[Ineiev]

Post by bill-auger

Post by Ineiev
In fact, many free software licenses have provisions
against misrepresentation of the origin: I can't modify
a program and say that it comes from the original authors
unchanged; this still doesn't make that program nonfree
in the sense of modifications.

indeed, this is true for software licenses like GPL - and to underline the
"unchanged" but: it also requires that modifications must be clearly noted as
such - so even the GPL would be a better choice for "works stating an opinion"
than the free culture licenses

To tell the truth, licenses like CC BY-SA 4.0 do require

"* Attribution — You must give appropriate credit... and _indicate if
changes were made_."

[Benoît]

Regarding all the discussion (made on the other generic thread
[GNU-linux-libre] Hyperbola evaluation, it is like this point is passed
unanimously. If you don't see an objection I will close this point and I
will open another Thread for another criteria.

# Other "Information for practical use" under a free license
Hyperbola contains in the amendments "Hyperbola is free software"
and "Hyperbola is free culture" from its [1]social contract the
commitment to not include or recommend non-free software or
documentation.
All packages contain its own [2][3][4]source packages and liberated
tarballs available & a [5]git repository.
All documentation available from the [6]wiki contains its own source
clicking in "Show pagesource" option and all website articles
[7]sources are available.
The [8][9]SVG logos include
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
license but I have to open each individual files to check, I don't
find a licence file in the directory, I found them in the [10]git
repository
I don't know if this is an issue.
For the PNG file, I am unable to find the licence so I have opened a
Freedom Issue [11]case yesterday, it is already fixed !
After installing the browser from Hyperbola (iceweasel-esr) this don't
contain DRM support, EME, Telemetry or non-free Add-ons. It is
confirmed [12][13]here.
Hyperbola contains [14]libretools a package with programs for Hyperbola
development that is used to build the entire distro.
References
1.https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:main:social_contract
2.https://repo.hyperbola.info:50000
3.https://repo.hyperbola.info:50011/gnu-plus-linux-libre/testing/sources
4.https://repo.hyperbola.info:50012/gnu-plus-linux-libre/stable/sources
5.https://git.hyperbola.info:50100
6.https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:start&redirect=1
7.https://git.hyperbola.info:50100/services/hyperweb.git
8.https://repo.hyperbola.info:50000/other/logotypes
9.https://repo.hyperbola.info:50000/other/syslinux
10.https://git.hyperbola.info:50100/culture/logotypes.git/tree
11.https://issues.hyperbola.info/index.php?do=details&task_id=733
12.https://git.hyperbola.info:50100/packages/extra.git/tree/iceweasel-esr/PKGBUILD?id=7baa45bf555a3e2997a5d5f2ec20e2de462f6518#n152
13.https://git.hyperbola.info:50100/packages/extra.git/tree/iceweasel-esr/libre.patch?id=7baa45bf555a3e2997a5d5f2ec20e2de462f6518
14.https://www.hyperbola.info/packages/extra/any/libretools

[bill-auger]

Benoît -

it seems that the impression you took of my suggestion for splitting the
criteria into separate threads was to only discuss one issue criteria at a time
and then wait for a conclusion before moving on to the next criteria - i only
meant that separate threads make the discussions more clear and focussed -
multiple threads could be going at once and people could comment to each one by
name even if several months in the future without losing track of the discussion

at this moment today there is not as much participation here as in previous
months and these first two criteria were discussed only briefly - some of these
criteria will be much more time consuming than others and people may have things
to add on different topics at different times; so it is better to have all
topics remain open for discussion - thats not to say that you cant set the check
mark there now if you did a fairly thorough review and nothing blatant was
found; but none should be declared as "closed" or "final" until the entire
process is complete - new evidence and discussions could always arise

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira]

I'm reminded of that long discussion also in Parabola's mailing lists
when their social contract was being remade.

If I recall correctly, both Parabola and Hyperbola seem to be describing
a practice which is similar to my personal one:

I'm a listener/reader/watcher/viewer of at-least-shareable
non-functional data. However, I try to make my works fit in free/libre
culture --- and this also includes provide complete corresponding source
files even if the license doesn't demand me to (such as the CC licenses,
which don't have such requirement, not even BY-SA). In this paragraph,
the term "at-least-shareable" means those works that have half of
freedom 2, this is the minimum requirement for free/libre software
movement[1][2]. However, the GNU FSDG wants at least the entirety of
freedom 2 for those non-functional works. I cannot speak for those who
wrote the GNU FSDG, but I think this requirement is made such that
people can sell exact copies of the entire system distribution.

One challenge everyone here faces I suppose --- and I'm no exception ---
is how to draw the line on what is functional or not. This paragraph is
not exhaustive, but these I know are functional: software, documentation
(including video or audio used for teaching), scripts, text fonts,
models with shading, 3D objects that can be printed and these materials
used in practical jobs (drinking, eating, fixing other things),
spreadsheets, color profiles. However, some non-functional data also has
interesting capabilities that deserve recategorization, and since we are
in a development mailing list I'm not recommending any of these software
to the end user and so I can say their names: Frogatto is an example of
non-free game which has maps with scripting elements. The Battle for
Wesnoth is (last time I checked) a free/libre game with similar
particularity (see [3] for a note on the things I'm currently ignoring).

Of course for distros such as gNewSense --- which as far as I know
follows the Definition of Free Cultural Works (which defines what "free
culture" is) ---, they can stretch the free/libre software definition to
non-functional works and simply drop the entire previous parapgraph, and
as such they don't need to think "is this file functional data?".

With all this said, I hope I have clarified what Hyperbola possibly
means with the wording about free culture that they use.

[1]
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/google-engineering-talk#freedom-2-moral-dilemma

[2]
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/google-engineering-talk#freedom-2-spirit-of-good-will

[3] For simplicity sake, I'm completely ignoring the recent issue about
TBfW changing the licensing terms of the new content in their add-ons
repository, for which the game itself has integration with such location
to get extensions more easily (similar to what Mozilla Firefox, NodeJS's
npm, Python's pip and many others have by default), because this
repositories alone are subject of another thread
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[bill-auger]

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[Adonay Felipe Nogueira]

However --- taking the same hook I used in a 20min talk I gave about
free/libre software movement in May 12th on a city nearby --- functional
a) sequence of orders executed blindly by the computer (applies only to
scripted elements);
b) written by someone else (also applies to non-functional data, but
read on);
c) one can use it without the corresponding source (id.);
d) for practical use (in the sense that given data can by itself
misbehave);
e) modifies local culture (the absense of the data might impact how
people perceive my work because they are already expecting me to use
and depend on that data). This is particularly seen with text fonts
and color profiles.
These characteristics *aggravate* the need for these goods to be
free/libre first, in contrast to non-functional ones.
In my presentation, after talking about (e), I also reminded people
about (b) again, precisely because --- taking the example of software
---, while in the case of cement you (or someone hired by you) can
easily break, redo, append to and provide services based on it, software
isn't that way, once you lose the source files and the rights to do such
things, you lose control of your own material environment, your
capability.

Addendum: I can also think of a [initially non-functional] work that has
the same characteristics as the above: scientific research (and the
publications that resulted from that).