Re: Is admin/unidata/copyright.html a free software license?

[Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com>]

> Sent: Monday, August 21, 2023 at 10:42 PM
> From: "Ulrich Mueller" <ulm@gentoo.org>
> To: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: Is admin/unidata/copyright.html a free software license?
>
> [I'd have expected a previous discussion on this, but I failed to find
> one in the archives of this mailing list. Sorry if this is a duplicate.]
>
> File admin/unidata/copyright.html (also at [1]) contains the "Unicode
> Terms of Use" which say in section H.2:
>
> | Unicode, Inc. shall have the right to modify this Agreement at any
> | time by posting it to this website.
>
> This allows the copyright holder to unilaterally revoke the freedoms,
> which I believe fails the free software definition [2]:
>
> "In order for these freedoms to be real, they must be permanent and
> irrevocable as long as you do nothing wrong; if the developer of the
> software has the power to revoke the license, or retroactively add
> restrictions to its terms, without your doing anything wrong to give
> cause, the software is not free."
>
> IMHO it also fails Debian's "Tentacles of Evil" test [3] which says:
>
> "To be free, the license cannot allow even the author to take away the
> required freedoms."
>
> I am also surprised that these lists in admin/unidata/ or, in general,
> a character set can be copyrightable. (For example, everyone uses ASCII
> without thinking about copyright of the underlying ANSI X3.4 standard.
> The same applies to several much larger CJK character sets.)

Correct, they are not covered by a free license.

> [1] https://www.unicode.org/copyright.html
> [2] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en
> [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guidelines#debian-legal_tests_for_DFSG_compliance
>
>