Licence Apple : ce n'est pas de l'informatique libre

Paris, le 22 mars 1999. Communiqué de presse, pour diffusion immédiate

Licence Apple : ce n'est pas de l'informatique libre

Apple Computer Inc. vient d'annoncer ses projets concernant les logiciels libres (http://www.publicsource.apple.com), et prétend ainsi rejoindre la communauté de l'informatique libre.

L'association April accueille favorablement la participation de sociétés au monde du logiciel libre, mais dans le cas de l'Apple Public Source License (APSL), nous estimons qu'un certain nombre de problèmes existent dans cette licence, la rendant non conforme par rapport à la définition du logiciel libre.

April soutient ainsi officiellement la prise de position de Bruce Perens (cofondateur de l'Open Source Initiative), Wichert Akkerman (leader du Projet Debian) et Ian Jackson (président de Software in the Public Interest), et souhaitons que des corrections soient apportées à cette licence.

April, considérant que l'un des plus grands dangers actuels pour la communauté de l'informatique libre est le logiciel presque-libre, ne peut accepter la multiplication d'annonces de licences plus ou moins libres. L'APSL n'est pas une licence libre, et Apple ne peut donc revendiquer son appartenance au mouvement de l'informatique libre.

En dehors des points soulevés par Bruce Perens, nous estimons également que la section 11 (ownership), où Apple se réserve tous les droits sur les modifications au code source original faites par Apple ou de la part d'Apple, n'est pas conforme à la notion d'informatique libre.

Ci-joint, le texte complet de Bruce Perens (disponible sur http://perens.com/APSL.html):


   Preface: Today, I got to speak with Apple's director of Operating
   System Development, and with the specific person in charge of Open
   Source Development. They don't have a problem with our making
   suggestions about the Apple license. They acknowledged that there is
   room for clearing up parts of the license, including defining Affected
   Original Code better to address our concerns with the termination
   clause. They seem willing to work on the issues we have raised.
   
   - Bruce Perens
     _________________________________________________________________
   
                The Apple Public Source License - Our Concerns
                                       
   Bruce Perens, Primary Author: The Open Source Definition. Co-Founder:
   The Open Source Initiative.
   Wichert Akkerman: Debian Project Leader.
   Ian Jackson: President, Software in the Public Interest. Author,
   Debian package installation tool `dpkg'.
   
   We welcome Apple Computer, Inc. as a participant in the Free Software
   Community. We feel that a few problems in the present version of the
   Apple Public Source License (the APSL) disqualify it as "Open
   Source(TM)" or "Free Software". We hope that Apple can address these
   issues to everyone's satisfaction.
   
   The participation of companies like Apple and IBM should be considered
   in the same way as the participation of any free software developer.
   Everyone is welcome to make a contribution. Individually, we each
   decide whether or not to accept a particular developer's contribution,
   for reasons that range from technical to legal and licensing concerns.
   We openly discuss these issues before our community, often quite
   harshly, as a means of developing consensus and charting our course.
   One consensus that we've reached is the Open Source Definition, a
   generally accepted definition of Free Software licensing, written by
   Bruce Perens and the Debian GNU/Linux developers in 1997.
   
   We note that much of the material that Apple has just released under
   the APSL originated at The University of California, Berkeley and at
   Carnegie-Mellon University. That work was sponsored by the U.S.
   Government, paid for with our taxes, and was already available as Free
   Software under the BSD license and other well-accepted Open Source
   licenses. Many of these files do not significantly differ from the
   pre-Apple versions except that they bear the addition of a new
   copyright and license. Other files are entirely authored by Apple or
   bear significant modifications that should indeed be considered
   Apple's property. Where Apple has not significantly modified
   individual files from their pre-Apple versions, their original
   licenses should be preserved without the addition of the APSL.
   
   Section 2.2(c) of the APSL requires that the producer of modifications
   to APSL-licensed code use a particular URL in the Apple.com domain to
   notify Apple. While the demise of Apple Computer, Inc. is unlikely in
   the near future, that sad event would leave us unable to comply with
   this section of the APSL. This would constitute a restriction on all
   rights granted by the license, including those rights necessary to
   qualify under the Open Source Definition. The Free Software community
   plans a very long lifetime for its software, and we hope that Apple
   will cooperate by changing this provision so that APSL-licensed
   software could survive without Apple. We suggest that the simple
   publication of modifications, such as posting on a personal web site
   accessible to the global internet and pointed out in any binary
   distributions, be all that is required. This is consistent with other
   licenses in our community.
   
   Section 9.1 of the APSL allows Apple to terminate our rights to use
   any or all APSL-covered code, at its sole discretion, in the event of
   an unproven claim of infringement, no matter how specious. This is
   derived from a similar objectionable portion of IBM's Jikes license,
   which disqualified that license from being referred to as "Open
   Source". We hope that Apple will consider the investment that members
   of the Free Software community will put into APSL-licensed code when
   they write modifications for it. An arbitrary termination could cause
   us to suddenly lose that investment at some future date, with no
   chance for appeal. The licenses accepted by our community do not
   provide the possibility of termination in this manner. If termination
   due to an infringement claim is to be allowed at all, it should be
   explicitly limited to the particular source-code lines that are
   considered to infringe upon an existing patent. This would make it
   possible for the free software community to "write around the problem"
   and create a non-infringing version. The authors of the APSL
   apparently did not consider that patents expire. It should be possible
   for us to store infringing code for restoral to use upon the
   expiration of the patent in question. Apple might also consider if
   it's possible to allow third-parties to defend the disputed code from
   an infringement claim that would cause us all to lose our rights under
   the APSL.
   
   We also regret to note that that Eric Raymond, with the best of
   intentions, jumped a little too fast to embrace the APSL in his
   enthusiasm to welcome Apple to our community. He placed the Open
   Source designation on a license that wasn't quite ready for that. We
   invite Eric and other members of the Free Software community to join
   us in requesting the few simple changes to the APSL that we have
   outlined in this letter.
   ______________________________________________________________________
   
   Contact: Bruce Perens bruce@perens.com 510-526-1165 (USA)

APRIL

L'APRIL, Association pour la Promotion et la Recherche en Informatique Libre, créée en 1996, est composée de professionnels de différentes sociétés ou administrations, de chercheurs et d'étudiants. Elle a pour objectif de sensibiliser les entreprises, les administrations et les particuliers sur les risques des solutions propriétaires et fermées, et de les informer des potentialités offertes par les logiciels libres et les solutions basées sur des standards ouverts.

Pour plus d'informations, vous pouvez vous rendre sur le site Web à l'adresse suivante : http://www.april.org.

Contact Presse :
Frédéric Couchet, Président. E-mail : fcouchet@capgemini.fr.
Tél : 06.60.68.89.31