Nick Weinstock wrote: > To your question below, I can cite two examples of Richards concern:
And you also cited two examples of your own concern about unapproved/un-approvable licenses. Thanks! I appreciate that. * Ms-LPL: True. That license is not open source because it fails OSD #10. It requires a specific technology. I believe it was not approved by OSI. * CPOL: True. That license has a "fields of endeavor" limitation concerning "illegal, immoral, or improper purposes." I believe it was not approved by OSI. They have always rejected such licenses, but the provision can be imposed in another, open source friendly way. I avoided that problem in OSL 3.0 by merely placing the contractual obligation to obey the law (including export restrictions) upon the licensee. OSL 3.0 § 15: "Right to Use. You may use the Original Work in all ways not otherwise restricted or conditioned by this License or by law, and Licensor promises not to interfere with or be responsible for such uses by You." * BSD: True. The patent license is not express. I have complained about that loudly every time someone proposes another BSD version. But our community is simply not worried about that. However, if a license now is proposed without an express patent grant, I'd object to it vociferously based on the definition of "open source software" that you quoted. OSI recently disapproved a license that expressly excluded a patent license, written that way purposefully to collect consideration. On the other hand, licenses from universities or research institutions may try to limit patent licenses based on previous contractual or legal requirements. That is why it becomes important to define "open source software" as software that is "actually distributed under terms that grant...," so that nobody can claim that their software is open source merely because they can see it. Is it "actually distributed" or "terms that grant" that concerns you? The W3C Royalty Free Patent Policy requires only that "the RF license conforming to the requirements in this policy shall be made available by the licensor as long as the Recommendation is in effect." The hope and expectation is that actual patent licenses won't be needed. That was also the approach taken by the Open Web Foundation. What is OSI's position on this? * There are no open source copyright or royalty-free patent licenses that impose "consideration". There is some confusion in our field about the difference between "consideration" and "conditions" in licenses. OSI accepts license conditions that related to copyright or license enforcement such as copyleft, attribution, trademark, the warranty of provenance, jurisdiction, patent defense but those are not forms of consideration. For example, the copyleft "condition" for the licensee to reciprocate with his/her own software doesn't mean that anyone proposes to make money off that condition; copyleft licenses are granted for the purpose of creating "open source software," which is its own reward. Academic licenses, on the other hand, treat the "condition" of attribution as its own reward, even though there is no way to calculate the actual value of any such pleasure. /Larry From: Nicholas Matthew Neft Weinstock <nwein...@qti.qualcomm.com> Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2018 11:37 AM To: lro...@rosenlaw.com; license-discuss@lists.opensource.org Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Proposed license decision process This crossed in the ether with my response to Richard. To your question below, I can cite two examples of Richards concern: * Ms-LPL is generally viewed as not Open Source because it has a platform limitation. Its not listed in SPDX or on OSI. It would satisfy this definition. * Code Project Open License is sometimes viewed as not Open Source because it has a fields of endeavor limitation (may not be used for illegal, immoral, or improper purposes). It is listed in SPDX, but not on OSI. It would satisfy this definition. I can also cite two examples of my concern, that licenses traditionally viewed as Open Source could be excluded by a highly literalist reading of the OSD: * A highly literalist reading of actually distributed under terms that grant could suggest that the copyright and patent license terms must be express. The standard 3-clause BSD license does not make any mention of patents, and could thus fail the OSD. * A highly literalist contemplation of without payment of royalties or other consideration, to distribute the unmodified or modified software could extend other consideration to actions that require the licensee to become a licensor, such as requiring binary distribution to also make the accompanying source (including the licensees modifications) available under the same terms. Copyleft licenses such as GPL could thus fail the OSD. Note: a highly literalist reading might also exclude CPOL, because it requires that a distributing licensee must ensure that recipients agree to the license, which could be another other consideration. -Nick From: Lawrence Rosen Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2018 10:09 AM Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Proposed license decision process Richard Fontana wrote: > I can easily come up with hypothetical licenses that would seem not to fail a highly literalist reading of the OSD, but which historically would never have been *treated* as conforming to the OSD, because of an obvious failure of the license to provide software freedom as traditionally understood in the community. Can you please cite examples that we've screwed up (or create a hypothetical) because of a "highly literalist reading of the OSD"? "Traditionally understood?" You sound like the late Justice Antonin Scalia! (Sorry; that crack is ad hominem!) :-) /Larry
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