[Harmony-Drafting] Licensing the agreements

[Eben Moglen]

This conversation is confusing, which is not a good sign.  

I am confining myself to the question of the copyright license to be
applied to the agreements.  I have no view about how to license the
other content of Harmony websites.

First, as to fact, we should be clear about the copyright license on
the GPL.  It is a pure "verbatim copying" license.  It doesn't say you
can make modified versions if you don't call them GPL.  It says
"changing [the license] is not allowed."  (Historically, spontaneous
compliance with this license has been near-perfect.  Over the last
eighteen years, cases of unlicensed variant GPLs have occurred on the
average less than once a year.  I have never been met uncooperatively
when I requested that variant licenses be rewritten not to use
extensively the precise language of the GPL.)

Second, as to analysis, the use of the GPL verbatim copying
provision--or any "no derivatives" license--would, it seems to me, be
evidently inappropriate and self-defeating for Harmony agreements.
Those agreements are useless as starting points for lawyers unless
they can be modified by counsel to suit client projects'
circumstances.  No Harmony agreement should be used unmodified, for
example, if there is an endpoint outside the "Anglo-Saxon" copyright
systems.  No Harmony agreement will be used unmodified by zealous
counsel in cases where, in her opinion, the optimal legal arrangements
for a client project would be achieved by a modification.  If Harmony
agreements cannot be modified, Harmony agreements will not be used at
all in many of the intended applications.

I don't understand the concept of "Harmony brand."  Harmony will be
part of a compound descriptive adjective.  A future Gnomovision
project will no doubt use the Gnomovision Contribution Agreement,
which it will state is a "Harmony family" contribution agreement.  I
think we probably want that statement to be made no matter whether the
agreement has been modified slightly or heavily, because otherwise,
e.g., the party who must modify heavily for use in Kazakhstan will not
be able to spread the "Harmony idea" (never mind "brand") in
Kazakhstan.  

On this analysis, the Harmony agreements should probably state at
their conclusion the apparent tautology--actually a mere declaration
of the base class identity--that they are "Harmony family" agreements.
At that point, the appended license can be either CC-BY, or more
simply, "This agreement may be used, at your own legal risk, in
modified or unmodified form, provided this and the preceding notice
are preserved."

Eben