Hi fred I think what you are asking for guidance on, is outside the mandate of osi, and fsf too. The time delayed license should of On 14 Aug 2013 19:24, "fred trotter" <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi, > I am sending this to both FSF and OSI people. Please tolerate > my use of the various terms interchangeably, I know the various rules > but I am talking to two different communities, if at all possible > please permit me to skip the "I don't like your choice of terms" > lecture. > > I have just returned from OSCON, where I gave an Ignite talk on > Open Source Eventually, which is yet-another-fine time ransom license > that converts to FLOSS. While there I had several meetings with Monty > Widenius about his Business Source concept. He and I have tentatively > agreed to merge our efforts. I was also advised by Simon Phipps and > Deborah Bryant to investigate the history of the concept here on the > mailing list, which I have done. I have seen the history with > GhostScript, the thread on delay-able open source licenses from Qian > Hong and the recent and original discussions about TGGPL from zooko. > With that historical context in mind, let me outline my aim. > > First, no ransom license of any type should ever be OSI approved as an > Open Source license or be FSF approved as a Free Software License. > Ransom licenses are proprietary until they are Open Source or > Free/Libre. I am not going to ask you to compromise the core values of > our community by putting lipstick on a pig. > > Second, despite this, both OSI and FSF should consider having a > position, either formally or informally on these licenses. We need to > standardize on one specific license text that is "known good" for this > type of business approach to avoid license proliferation. Real world > FOSS users would be better served by having a standard license, than > having lots of slight variations because: > > * All of the promotors of this concept are writing different licenses, > so we are again facing a license proliferation problem. > * Poorly written or understood versions of this license could "taint" > the release of subsequently released FLOSS software. > * Automated license compliance systems will have a difficult time > evaluating licenses that always have different data (dates) embedded > in the license text. > * Companies using the delayed method should have the option to choose > from the menu of OSI/FSF/CC licenses as the "target" licenses > * The license should support different "proprietary intents", such as > Monty's aim to favor small business with costless versions, or zooko's > idea of creating a "proprietary community". No version of these > proprietary intents should be able to mar the conversion of the > license to a FOSS license at the specified conversion date. > * Users should be able to trust that they have the right to perform > the conversion to FOSS themselves and should not be in a position to > pay for software with the mere promise of a subsequent and separate > release. > * Companies who are using this method should have a limit to the > maximum time they can delay a release, because 20 years would be just > as bad as a software patent. > * The licensing methods should be compatible with automated compliance > software. > * The licensing methods should be compatible with current file > conventions "README, LICENSE, COPYRIGHT etc etc" > * The license should work for hardware, bioware and "other" things, > not just software. > * end users should be mostly protected from any obvious misuse of the > license > > With that in mind, I would like to propose the following process to > develop this idea further. > > First, I would like for the OSI and FSF people on this list to > consider some kind of new status for a license, like "OSI tolerated" > or "OSI Not Open Source But It Doesn't Suck" , or "Not Free Software > but tolerated for this purpose" or something like. Some way to clearly > mark this as "the standard way of time delaying a FOSS release" but > not actually "OSI/FSF Approved". > > Second I would like for interested parties to join me developing the > license on GitHub. > https://github.com/ftrotter/OSE > > At this stage, I am accepting issue creation and will be using that to > remove obvious bugs from the text. If a git pull feels comfortable to > you, that works too. I will of course require copyright assignment for > text modifications. > Once the basic license no longer sucks I will setup a co-ment instance > for public comment. > Finally I might be able to get NOD (my employer) to actually pay for a > legal review once everything is done. > > We will be releasing data sets under the resulting license as soon as > it is ready. > > Remember, I am not specifically advocating for the "Time Ransom > License" approach. I remain somewhat uncomfortable with the approach. > However, I am somewhat more uncomfortable not being able to make a > living making Libre Software. There are enough people doing this that > unless we sort something formal out, an FLOSS project is going to be > put in a situation where it relied on copyrights to revert to Open > Source or Free/Libre Software Licenses and that either did not happen > or happened in an unreliable manner. If you are uncomfortable with > this business model, then it is even more important that you > participate with specific criticism. Some issues will be endemic to > approach, but many issues might be avoided with careful crafting of > the language. If we are careful we will get something that an Open > Source or Free Software community can rely on. > > Feel free to submit an issue on github, but if you prefer to submit > your issues with a "reply all" I will convert them to github issues > and address them in the license (or acknowledge that I will be unable > to address them) > Please do take a second actually read the license and its README.md > file on github, I have spent some time actually thinking the various > issues through and I need comment on what is actually missing from our > actual license, and not a merely a theoretical discussion as such. > > IANAL and as per normal if someone else can point me to a project with > similar scope and aims I will be happy to withdraw my project (I am > sure Monty would do the same, assuming his aims were met)... > > Thanks, > -FT > > > -- > Fred Trotter > Blog: http://radar.oreilly.com/fredt > Twitter: https://twitter.com/fredtrotter > _______________________________________________ > License-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss >
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