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Karl Fogel | 2 May 01:48
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Re: SPDX License List v1.14 & OSI questions

Jilayne Lovejoy <jilayne.lovejoy <at> openlogic.com> writes:
>Indeed!  Thanks Karl, John, and Larry.  This is great.  I will take all
>this info, incorporate or update the SPDX License List as applicable and
>then send a revised version.  I think we will have cut the list of issues
>down considerably at that point!

Agreed!  Thanks, Jilayne.

-K

>On 4/30/12 4:38 PM, "Karl Fogel" <kfogel <at> red-bean.com> wrote:
>
>>John, wow.  Thank you so much for that incredibly helpful mail.  I'm not
>>going to have time to incorporate all this information into our site
>>between now and the next OSI board meeting (this Wednesday), but knowing
>>this is in the archives makes some upcoming tasks much less daunting!
>>
>>-K
>>
>>John Cowan <cowan <at> mercury.ccil.org> writes:
>>>Karl Fogel scripsit:
>>>
>>>> I can find no record of approval of the Academic Free License prior to
>>>> 3.0.  As of 2006-10-31, we were linking to "/licenses/afl-3.0.php",
>>>> and now of course we link to http://opensource.org/licenses/AFL-3.0.
>>>
>>>http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://opensource.org/licenses/* is
>>>your friend.  Filtering for "afl" on the page shows that afl-1.1.php,
>>>afl-1.2.php, afl-2.0.php, afl-2.1.php all existed, so I think we can
>>>infer that they were approved.  No evidence for 1.0, though.
>>>
>>>>   > Was this [Apache 1.0] ever OSI-approved?
>>>>
>>>> For the reasons given above, I can't tell, sorry.  I can find Apache
>>>> 2.0, but not 1.0.
>>>
>>>The same search shows that 1.1 was approved, but again no evidence for
>>>1.0.
>>>
>>>> Regarding Apple Public Source License 1.0 (APSL-1.0) you ask:
>>>>
>>>>   > Was this ever OSI approved?  Note at top of fedora url says: This
>>>>   > license is non-free. At one point, it could be found at
>>>>   > http://www.opensource.apple.com/apsl/1.0.txt, but that link now
>>>>   > redirects to APSL 2.0. A copy of the license text has been taken
>>>>   > from archive.org's October 01, 2007 revision.
>>>
>>>The Archive shows that APSL 1.2 was approved.  Wikipedia claims that
>>>APSL 1.0 was also approved, but gives no authority for this statement.
>>>That also matches my recollections (there was a considerable fuss at the
>>>time, because it was OSI-approved but not FSF-free, the first of the new
>>>licenses with that property).
>>>
>>>> That's great, except s/commercial/proprietary/ :-(.
>>>
>>>When the Artistic 1.0 was written, the distinction was not well
>>>understood.  I don't think that's a problem.
>>>
>>>> Regarding old BSD 4-clause (or "original" BSD) you ask:
>>>>
>>>>    > Was this OSI approved?
>>>>
>>>> Again, I don't know.
>>>
>>>No evidence that it ever was, nor do I have any recollection of it.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Regarding the "CNRI Python GPL Compatible License Agreement"
>>>> (CNRI-Python-GPL-Compatible), you ask:
>>>>
>>>>    > not on OSI site, but was OSI approved??  Please clarify will need
>>>>    > link from OSI site once (if) updated
>>>
>>>No evidence for it.
>>>
>>>> Regarding GPL-1.0, you ask:
>>>>
>>>>    > was this ever OSI approved?
>>>>
>>>> Good question.  I'm not sure, but I doubt it, as by the time OSI was
>>>> formed, GPL 2.0 had been published for years already.  Thus 1.0 might
>>>> never have been considered.
>>>
>>>That agrees with my recollections.
>>>
>>>> Regarding GPL-2.0 (and sometimes GPL-3.0) "with Autoconf exception",
>>>> and "with Bison exception", and "with classpath exception", and "with
>>>> font exception", and "with GCC exception", you ask:
>>>>
>>>>   > if the underlying license is OSI approved, then is the exception
>>>>   > also approved?
>>>>
>>>> In my opinion, yes, and there's no need for a separate license
>>>> approval process.  If a license is approved, then that license + an
>>>> exception should be considered approved when the exception clearly
>>>> adds no restrictions or requirements for the licensee, as is the case
>>>> here.
>>>
>>>I agree.
>>>
>>>> Regarding GNU Library General Public License v2 only (LGPL-2.0) you
>>>> ask:
>>>>
>>>>    > Was this ever OSI approved?
>>>>
>>>> I don't know.  I suspect the answer to that one would not be so hard
>>>> to find, but I want to plough to the end of this spreadsheet right now
>>>> and get these responses posted.  I did a cursory search on the OSI
>>>> site and didn't find any evidence of approval.  Anyone here know about
>>>> LGPL-2.0?
>>>
>>>The differences between 2.0 and 2.1, other than the name (GNU Library
>>>vs. Lesser Public License) are entirely editorial.  I can provide a list
>>>of them for anyone who wants it.
>>>
>>>> Regarding OSL-2.0 and OSL-2.1, you asked:
>>>>
>>>>    > is this OSI approved? (versions 1.0 and 3.0 are, but this one not
>>>>    > listed anywhere on site)
>>>>
>>>> I don't know.  Anyone?  Bueller?
>>>
>>>OSL 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, and 2.1 are all on the Archive.  Since AFL and OSL
>>>were always developed together and submitted together, I think it's safe
>>>to assume that AFL 1.0 and OSL 1.2 were both approved, despite the lack
>>>of direct evidence.  See my .sig.
>>
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Michael Bernstein | 1 May 01:20
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Excavating the past [Was: Re: SPDX License List v1.14 & OSI questions]

On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 1:19 PM, John Cowan <cowan <at> mercury.ccil.org> wrote:
> Karl Fogel scripsit:
>
>> I can find no record of approval of the Academic Free License prior to
>> 3.0.  As of 2006-10-31, we were linking to "/licenses/afl-3.0.php",
>> and now of course we link to http://opensource.org/licenses/AFL-3.0.
>
> http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://opensource.org/licenses/* is
> your friend

On a related note, I recently came across Warrick, a tool for
reconstructing past versions of a website, that might come in handy to
the folks on this list for various purposes:
http://code.google.com/p/warrick/wiki/About_Warrick

For example, I am currently using Warrick to reconstruct a past copy
of a large site that recently decided to stop distributing its content
under a CC license.

--

-- 
Michael R. Bernstein
michaelbernstein.com
Founder - urbsly.com
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Karl Fogel | 30 Apr 19:25
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Re: SPDX License List v1.14 & OSI questions

Jilayne Lovejoy <jilayne.lovejoy <at> openlogic.com> writes:
>SPDX License List v1.14 & OSI questions
>
>Hi Karl and the OSI license-discuss list,
>
>I'm picking up (finally) where we left off some months ago regarding
>ironing out some questions that came up around aligning the OSI
>licenses and the SPDX License List.  I've included the most recent
>spreadsheet of the license list (only, accompanying .txt files with
>the actual license text not included here for convenience, but can be
>found, if needed, at http://spdx.org/wiki/spdx-license-list)
>
>I have added an "outstanding issues" column with the following
>color-coding:
>
>* red text = issues or questions for OSI.  Some of these are
>  highlighted in gray indicating more urgency in terms of an answer is
>  needed.  Where there is just red text and no gray highlighting, this
>  denotes something that merely needs to be updated on the OSI website
>  (e.g. A missing SPDX Identifier, etc.) 

Jilayne, I'm about two months behind on taking care of this.  Thanks for
putting together such an easy-to-use spreadsheet, and my apologies for
the delay.

I'll respond inline here, so it's easy for others to see and chime in:

First, you asked this about Academic Free License versions AFL-1.1,
AFL-1.2, AFL-2.0, and AFL-2.1:

  > My understanding is that all the Academic Free Licenses were OSI
  > approved, but I can't find a good url to the actual license text of
  > the older versions (just this mirror). question for OSI:
  > 
  > 1) Was this specific license/version OSI approved?
  > 2) if yes, is there a better link to the license text?

I can find no record of approval of the Academic Free License prior to
3.0.  As of 2006-10-31, we were linking to "/licenses/afl-3.0.php", and
now of course we link to http://opensource.org/licenses/AFL-3.0.

This highlights the need for a clearer license obsolescense process at
OSI and the need to have findable records of approved-but-now-obsolete
licenses.  http://projects.opensource.org/redmine/issues/4 and
http://projects.opensource.org/redmine/issues/25 are about these,
respectively.  We have a rough idea how to do the former and it's just a
matter of implementing it; as for the latter, I don't know, and will
raise the issue at the OSI's upcoming face-to-face in May and in a
separate inquiry on this list.

You asked:

  > Was this [Apache 1.0] ever OSI-approved?

For the reasons given above, I can't tell, sorry.  I can find Apache
2.0, but not 1.0.  (In other words, one thing we need is a record of
licenses that were considered but not approved, so that these searches
wouldn't always depend on how one wants to interpret a negative result!)

Regarding Apache 1.1, you wrote:

  > OSI approved, but only can find license on the "superseded licenses"
  > category list

That's correct.  That license should be indexed only from the
"superseded licenses" list, although of course the license page's URL
itself should be permanent -- another thing we haven't done well, see
e.g. http://opensource.org/osi3.0/licenses/apache2.0.php gets a 404.

Regarding Apple Public Source License 1.0 (APSL-1.0) you ask:

  > Was this ever OSI approved?  Note at top of fedora url says: This
  > license is non-free. At one point, it could be found at
  > http://www.opensource.apple.com/apsl/1.0.txt, but that link now
  > redirects to APSL 2.0. A copy of the license text has been taken
  > from archive.org's October 01, 2007 revision.

Again, I can't tell.  I would hope not, though, given that the Fedora
page says the license is non-free.

Regarding APSL-1.1 you ask simply:

  > Was this ever OSI approved?

Again, I don't know.

Similarly, regarding APSL-1.2 you ask:

  > Was this ever OSI approved?

And again, I don't know.

The earliest OSI page for APSL (that I can find any reference to) is
http://opensource.org/osi3.0/licenses/apsl-2.0.php.  Though that
page itself is now gone, it was linked to from our license list of
2006-10-31, so we can assume it was approved.

Regarding the Artistic License 1.0, you have done some fine detective
work, and you asked:

  > OSI approved, but only can find license on the "superseded licenses"
  > category list.
  >
  > Also note that Perl link has 10 clause version of license, whereas
  > OSI link has 9 clause with note at top about additional clause.  for
  > searching/templating reasons, these should probably be listed as two
  > different licenses. Suggest naming as follows:
  > Artistic License 1.0 (Perl) // Artistic-Perl-1.0
  > Artistic License 1.0 // Artistic-1.0
  > 
  > thoughts?

Excellent idea, except maybe we should put the "(Perl)" before the
version number, since "Perl" describes a flavor of the license and that
flavor could conceivably happen to other versions, though we hope not.
That would also match the proposed SPDX short name.  Thus

  Artistic License (Perl) 1.0 // Artistic-Perl-1.0
  Artistic License 1.0        // Artistic-1.0

Would that work for you?  

For now I've renamed http://opensource.org/licenses/artistic-license-1.0
to opensource.org/licenses/Artistic-1.0, edited it to link correctly to
the superseding version (Artistic-2.0), and to link to a new page
opensource.org/licenses/Artistic-Perl-1.0.

Now, independently of the above, there is a serious bug in the Perl
clause, and while I understand why it was OSI-approved, I think the OSI
approved its *intended* meaning rather than its textual meaning.  

This should really be a separate thread, but I want to at least write it
down here now, so there's a record of it somewhere:

The OSI page above says:

  | Some versions of the artistic license contain the following clause:
  | 
  |   8. Aggregation of this Package with a commercial distribution is
  |   always permitted provided that the use of this Package is
  |   embedded; that is, when no overt attempt is made to make this
  |   Package's interfaces visible to the end user of the commercial
  |   distribution. Such use shall not be construed as a distribution of
  |   this Package.
  | 
  | With or without this clause, the license is approved by OSI for
  | certifying software as OSI Certified Open Source.

That's great, except s/commercial/proprietary/ :-(.  What the text
obviously means is "proprietary", and furthermore, if it were to be
interpreted literally as "commercial", then it would (to my mind) be
clearly not open source.

I'm not sure what to do about this now.  I just wanted to mention it.
Any review of old licenses, such as you have done, is bound to turn up
issues like this.  Thank goodness it's an issue with Artistic-Perl-1.0
and not with, say, GPL-2.0 :-).

Regarding old BSD 4-clause (or "original" BSD) you ask:

   > Was this OSI approved?

Again, I don't know.

Regarding the "CNRI Python GPL Compatible License Agreement"
(CNRI-Python-GPL-Compatible), you ask:

   > not on OSI site, but was OSI approved??  Please clarify will need
   > link from OSI site once (if) updated

Again, I don't know.

Note that with the Python licenses, the situation is very complex,
because we're currently evaluating submissions from them.  While that
shouldn't technically affect past licensing decisions, in practice at
may at least affect the names by which we call some of those past
licenses.  See http://projects.opensource.org/redmine/issues/3.  Ball is
in their court right now.

At this point, looking at where I am in the spreadsheet (the scrollbar
thumb is still disturbingly high) and the importance of getting some
kind of response to you and the group, I'm not spending a lot of time
searching for the answers -- I'm just answering.  Obviously, some of
these issues will have to be addressed in followup steps, and one of the
things I intend to bring up at the OSI face-to-face meeting is the size
and relative priorities of the licensing work backlog.  It's beyond what
one or two volunteers can address, IMHO.  If anyone here knows better
answers to some of these questions, or has suggestions for process
improvement, please say something.

Regarding the CNRI Python License (CNRI-Python), you ask:

   > short identifier missing on license list and license page (thus,
   > url probably also needs to be updated there and here?)

I've fixed the two immediate problems there, thanks!  It probably does
need to be updated elsewhere, but I didn't see those spots in a quick
search, so am leaving that issue for now.

Regarding "Common Public Attribution License 1.0" (CPAL-1.0), you write:

   > OSI approved, but only can find license on the "superseded
   > licenses" category list

Hmm, I see it on http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical -- are you
sure?

Regarding "Eiffel Forum License v1.0" (EFL-1.0), you write:

   > OSI approved, but only can find license on the "superseded
   > licenses" category list

That's expected for a superseded license (as per Apache 1.1 above).

Regarding "European Union Public License 1.1" (EUPL-1.1) you wrote:

  > UPDATED url for license
  > OSI needs to update link as well on their website

Turns out we did so, between when you sent the spreadsheet and now :-).
But thanks for noticing this.

Regarding "Fair License" (FAIR), you wrote:

  > OSI site missing short identifier on license list page

Fixed now, thanks.

Regarding GPL-1.0, you ask:

   > was this ever OSI approved?

Good question.  I'm not sure, but I doubt it, as by the time OSI was
formed, GPL 2.0 had been published for years already.  Thus 1.0 might
never have been considered.

Regarding GPL-2.0 (and sometimes GPL-3.0) "with Autoconf exception", and
"with Bison exception", and "with classpath exception", and "with font
exception", and "with GCC exception", you ask:

  > if the underlying license is OSI approved, then is the exception
  > also approved?

In my opinion, yes, and there's no need for a separate license approval
process.  If a license is approved, then that license + an exception
should be considered approved when the exception clearly adds no
restrictions or requirements for the licensee, as is the case here.

In a sense such exceptions can simply be considered additional estoppel
(danger, danger, I'm using the word "estoppel" but I'm not a lawyer) on
the part of the licensor, similar to having made a public promise not to
assert patents or something like that.  The mere accumulation of such
statements, which would affect only the behavior of the licensor, not
the licensee, never narrows the underlying license.

Regarding GNU Library General Public License v2 only (LGPL-2.0) you ask:

   > Was this ever OSI approved?

I don't know.  I suspect the answer to that one would not be so hard to
find, but I want to plough to the end of this spreadsheet right now and
get these responses posted.  I did a cursory search on the OSI site and
didn't find any evidence of approval.  Anyone here know about LGPL-2.0?

Regarding "Lucent Public License Version 1.0 (Plan9)" (LPL-1.0), you say:

   > OSI approved, but only can find license on the "superseded
   > licenses" category list

That's expected, as we're on LPL 1.02 now.

Regarding LPL-1.02, you pointed out:

   > OSI site missing short identifier on license list page

Fixed now!  Thank you.

Regarding MirOS, you pointed out:

   > OSI site missing short identifier on license list page

Likewise fixed now.  Thanks again :-).

Regarding Mozilla-1.0, you write:

   > OSI approved, but only can find license on the "superseded
   > licenses" category list

Yes, that's expected now that Mozilla-1.1 has been approved.

Regarding Multics, you said:

   > OSI site missing short identifier on license list page

Fixed.

Regarding "Non-Profit Open Software License 3.0" (NPOSL-3.0), you said:

   > OSI site missing short identifier on license list page

Fixed.

Regarding Nokia Open Source License (Nokia), you said:

   > OSI site missing short identifier on license list page and on
   > license page

Fixed, and thanks for noticing both sides of that problem.

Regarding "Open Software License 1.0" (OSL-1.0), you wrote:

   > OSI approved, but only can find license on the "superseded
   > licenses" category list

As expected, due to approval of (latest) OSL-3.0.

Regarding OSL-2.0 and OSL-2.1, you asked:

   > is this OSI approved?  (versions 1.0 and 3.0 are, but this one not
   > listed anywhere on site)

I don't know.  Anyone?  Bueller?

Regarding "Simple Public License 2.0" (SimPL-2.0), you wrote:

   > OSI site has wrong short identifier on license list page and on
   > license text page (and has it in two place on license text page??)
   > will need updated url

Whew!  Thanks.  All fixed now.  New URL is:

   http://opensource.org/licenses/SimPL-2.0

Regarding "Sun Public License v1.0" (SPL-1.0), you wrote:

   > OSI site has wrong short identifier on license list page and on
   > license text page. Will need updated url

Fixed all.  (I think some of these might be due to SPDX identifiers
changing after the last time we did a sync?  Not sure.)  New URL is:

   http://opensource.org/licenses/SPL-1.0

Regarding "W3C Software and Notice License" (W3C), you wrote:

   > OSI site missing short identifier on license list page

Fixed.  Most of the missing identifiers on the license list page were
because I'd first thought we wouldn't explicitly give the identifier
when it's already part of the license name and "obvious".  But I think
your suggestion of consistency is better anyway.

>* green text = issues for the SPDX Legal work group (OSI can ignore)

Okay; didn't address any of these.

>Please let me know how we can best proceed to get these issues
>resolved, i.e. Would it be easiest for someone from the OSI to respond
>to the questions in a new column in the spreadsheet and send it back
>or would setting up another call with Karl (and/or anyone else from
>the OSI) be easier?

Well, I was hoping this email would do it.  I realize the email leaves
some questions unanswered, but I think they're ones the OSI has to
figure out internally (e.g., get a handle on records of all past license
approvals).  At least by having this mail we have all the issues laid
out in an archiveable way, and others can follow up if they know things.
I will make sure to link to it from the relevant tickets in Redmine too.

Thank you again for the extremely thorough set of questions and bug
reports!

Best,
-Karl
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Kevin Hunter | 30 Apr 17:36

license for code used for scientific results?

Hullo List,

For a scientific computing project, I'd like to encourage redistribution 
of software upon publication of research results (e.g. academic 
journals) by third parties using our code.  I'm not currently aware of 
any license geared toward this scenario.  (There are lots of examples of 
academic journals requiring this, but I'm having a difficult time 
tracking down a license for /code/ that is generally used to inform an 
academic publication.  More specifically, the sub-sub discipline for 
which the code I have written will potentially be used currently does 
not run rich with a FOSS ethos.)

As an example, if we license our code under the GPL, then folks who 
publish papers with results from use of our software are never 
redistributing any /software/, only publishing a paper, and are thus not 
required to share code.  However, we feel from a scientific standpoint 
that it's crucial that the code (*and* data) used for publication 
results be shared.

The closest I've been able to find is the EPPA license, which has this 
as provision 6 (currently available from: 
http://globalchange.mit.edu/research/IGSM/eppadl_form ):

-----
6. Any party which publishes results from a modification of the Software 
Model must also publish the source code of their modifications, in the 
same form as the Software Model is here released, and under the same 
license terms.  Said party must cause the modified files to carry 
prominent notices stating that the files were changed and the date of 
the change.
-----

Unfortunately, there are other parts of the license which are not 
acceptable to us (e.g. we do not want to limit non-academic use)

So, are there other licenses geared toward code (and data) used for 
academic publications?

Also, in the case that there are no other licenses acceptable/available 
to us, a second, meta-license question: How are the texts of the various 
OSI approved licenses themselves licensed?  Are they free for folks to 
modify?  (Perhaps to be described as a 'modified-OSI license' when used 
...?)

Also, please, I'm not looking for responses along the lines of "you 
can't enforce it so ignore it."  I'm very specifically focused on the 
licensing aspect.  (As they say, "One problem at a time!")

Thank you,

Kevin
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Luis Villa | 5 Apr 20:22

the role of OSI and the license list [was Re: BSD, MIT [was Re: Draft of new OSI licenses landing page; please review.]]

On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 8:43 AM, Tom Callaway <tcallawa <at> redhat.com> wrote:
> On 04/05/2012 11:35 AM, John Cowan wrote:
>> So put Apache before MIT/BSD, but don't drop them altogether.
>
> Perhaps we should simply alphabetize these licenses? I'm not sure we'll
> ever reach consensus on ordering by "importance" or "value" or "usefulness".

Perhaps it would be most productive for license-discuss to proceed
under the assumption that OSI would like to fill a more constructive
role in the community, and discuss what a license list published by
that sort of OSI would look like.

In parallel, the board and affiliates can discuss whether a more
proactive role is appropriate.

If the affiliates and board approve of a more active, forward-looking
role for OSI, then OSI can follow through on what license-discuss
advises in this thread. If they would prefer to remain in the current,
filter-only-for-OSD position, then this will have been an interesting
thought experiment for someone else to build on.

Luis
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Luis Villa | 5 Apr 16:30

BSD, MIT [was Re: Draft of new OSI licenses landing page; please review.]

On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 7:08 AM, Christopher Allan Webber
<cwebber <at> dustycloud.org> wrote:
> I also agree that Apache License 2.0 should go before BSD and MIT... I
> feel like we learned that lesson over CC0 discussions.

Without getting into other issues, I'd hope we can agree that BSD/MIT
do not belong in a first-class list here in 2012. Apache fills the
same purpose[1] (permissive license) while being better drafted and
properly handling patents.

Even if the rest of Karl's proposal does not go through, and nothing
else changes with the license list pages, I'd be perfectly happy
moving BSD and MIT to the redundant or superseded lists.

Luis

[1] The very short version of my objection to removal of MPL is that
it addresses a clear need (predictable, compatible copyleft) that is
not otherwise addressed. Apache, BSD, and MIT address the same need
(permissive license). The only possible justification for BSD/MIT is
GPL v2 compatibility, but if that's why we're leaving them in the
list, then that should be called out as the only justification for
using them.
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Lawrence Rosen | 5 Apr 01:32

CPOL 1.02

The CPOL 1.02 license was discussed on this list in 2009. [1, and see attached.) As far as I can tell from reading my old emails and reviewing the OSI license list, it was never approved by OSI. Richard Fontana said this about it on 10/5/2009:

 

This license recently came to our attention at Red Hat. The CPOL fails to meet the Open Source Definition (and Free Software Definition) in numerous ways. I've already been in contact with people at codeproject.com about this.

 

Yet Black Duck reports that this is the 8th most popular open source license. [1]

 

Popularity isn't all that matters!

 

/Larry

 

[1] http://www.codeproject.com/info/cpol10.aspx

[2] http://osrc.blackducksoftware.com/data/licenses/

 

 

Lawrence Rosen

Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com)

3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482

Cell: 707-478-8932

 

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From: Joe Bell <joe.bell <at> prodeasystems.com>
Subject: First Post / Question Regarding CPOL 1.02
Date: 2009-10-05 19:44:06 GMT

Hi all:

 

This is my first post to this particular discussion group - please be gentle and refer me to a FAQ if I egregiously violated any list rules. 

 

My question is regarding the Code Project Open License (http://www.codeproject.com/info/cpol10.aspx) and whether or not anyone has done a “rigorous” analysis of it - I did notice that it isn’t an OSI-approved open source license, but the fact is that it does cover quite a variety of useful C# and .NET projects on the Code Project website and I’d be interested to learn other’s opinions on any gotchas and/or loopholes in this license.

 

Best regards,

Joe

 

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Karl Fogel | 4 Apr 20:40
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Draft of new OSI licenses landing page; please review.

(This may be more controversial than my last post -- we'll see.)

For many people, the OSI web site is a first source of information about
open source licenses.  Historically, we haven't tried to steer newcomers
toward choosing the most popular / widely-recognized licenses, probably
because we thought it more important to remain neutral among all
OSI-approved licenses.

Times change, though.  These days we have a better sense of which
licenses are most used and where, and even more experience with the
problem of license proliferation.

Also, somewhat related to the above, our license pages are a bit hard to
navigate.  One click from the front page the user is faced with a choice
("alphabetical" vs "by category"), and neither choice quite answers the
questions newcomers are most likely to have -- although to be fair the
by-category page makes an effort to.

I think it's possible to steer newcomers toward a small set of
widely-used licenses without denigrating or hiding all the other
licenses, and to present all our licenses in a way that's more helpful
to newcomers while still being useful for experienced people who just
need a reference.

So I've drafted this page:

  http://opensource.org/licenses-draft

I'm not really seeking consensus about it -- I think it unlikely we'll
have consensus about something like this.  Ultimately, the Board will
have to decide.  But I am seeking feedback and corrections, e.g.,

  "The XYZ license is much more/less popular than you think!"

or

  "The FooBar license is not FSF-approved, so maybe it should be listed
   father down, since all other things being equal we don't want to push
   a non-FSF-approved license over approved ones".

or

  "There's a better way to present what you're trying to present; let me
   show you..."

...that sort of thing.

I used both external sources [1] and my own domain knowledge to come up
with the groupings on the page.  But I know many people here have a lot
of licensing experience, and welcome suggestions for better ordering or
grouping.

What I'd like to do is to make this page be "/licenses" on the web site
-- that is, we'll have exactly one master licenses page, finally (no
more sync problems), and the old "alphabetical" and "by category" pages
will be obsoleted and replaced with forwarding pointers.

Finally, please note that this page does *not* reflect an official
position of the OSI, nor of anyone of the Board.  Luis Villa and I have
been talking about this problem a bit, but I basically created this page
out of whole cloth, and neither Luis nor anyone else should be held
responsible for it... yet :-).

­Karl

[1] http://osrc.blackducksoftware.com/data/licenses/
    http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/open_source_license_popularity/
    http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2008/05/standing-against-license-proliferation.html
    http://www.opensource.org/proliferation-report
    ...and probably others whose tabs I already closed...
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Karl Fogel | 4 Apr 02:53
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New OSI FAQ items posted about Public Domain and CC0.

(This seems appropriate for both license-discuss@ and license-review@, so
I'm posting it in both places.)

I've been seeing an increasing number of inquiries about the public
domain and open source, and about CC0 and open source.  A few of those
inquiries have come here, but I'm also getting them elsewhere.

So I've tried to formulate good answers:

   http://opensource.org/faq#public-domain
   http://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero

I hope I've reflected the general consensus of the License Review
committee accurately, not made any legal mistakes, etc.  I'd appreciate
feedback on these.

The "public domain" entry is complex.  It felt wrong to simply say that
PD is not open source, when it clearly exhibits most or all of the
important properties of Open Source and is at least capable of meeting
the OSD; on the other hand, it is not a license and therefore cannot be
OSI-approved, and it has some portability problems.  So I've tried to
express all of that in the answer, and recommend that people use
OSI-approved licenses wherever possible.

The CC0 entry is more straightforward, but also would benefit from peer
review.

Please hold the flamethrowers, anyone who might be tempted to flame, and
remember that these are inherently contentious and complicated subjects!
It would be easier for the OSI to just say nothing on the topics :-),
but silence on these questions would not serve our mission very well.

Thanks,
-Karl
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Reincke, Karsten | 21 Mar 15:42
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Freely published and hosted Open Source License Compendium [in an early state]

Dear Open Source (License) Community,

As recently indicated, Deutsche Telekom AG (DTAG) has now published the initial, very early version of an
Open Source License Compendium. It is 

a) licensed under the 'Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Germany' [http://dtag-dbu.github.com/oslic/en/oslic/license.html],

b) published as an eBook (pdf) [http://dtag-dbu.github.com/oslic/en/planning/results.html]

c) realized by a LaTeX based 'development environment' hosted as an open and free GitHub project [https://github.com/dtag-dbu/oslic]

We describe our intention in our home page (also hosted on GitHub) [http://dtag-dbu.github.com/oslic/]
and specify the cooperation as far as it's possible for the moment
[http://dtag-dbu.github.com/oslic/en/collaboration/repository.html]. Additionally, the items
of the column 'download' explain how to prepare, how to obtain, how to install, and how to use the
development environment. [Anyway, you will directly see, that we find a solution for solving our logo
challenge ;-)]

Please feel free to visit/review our work. But don't be too disappointed: publishing early and
often means starting with a nearly 'empty' release, however we have created the skeleton of the
compendium and begun fleshing out the sections. Nevertheless any comments are welcome!

And now some additional details:

Scope :

Large (IT) companies are particularly challenged by the quantity of licenses and their various versions.
It is becoming quite expensive for each company to allocate and train employees as "Open Source License
Experts" in order to ensure that the company acts according to those Open Source licenses touched by their
projects. A better solution would be to have something like a "compendium" which lists all relevant usage
scenarios, and offers for the major Open Source licenses something like a to-do list that describes what
one has to do in order to fulfill the license conditions applicable to these usage scenarios. As far as we
know such a reliable compendium doesn't exist at the moment.

Following the spirit of Open Source Software, DTAG has published this compendium under the 'Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Germany' License and wants to follow the rule 'publish early,
publish often' for developing this compendium together with the community.

Not in scope :

To be clear, it is not our task to describe all possible ways to fulfill a license. Particularly we do not want
to discuss special cases and the ways of specific companies. This must remain the tasks of lawyers and
state specific experts. Instead of this we want to offer one reliable way for each Open Source use case
and each Open Source License to act according to the requirements. We want to find something like the
traffic rule of thumb: Stay at red light, drive at green light (and let the other experts discuss whether it
might be allowed to drive through yellow in this case - or if in this specific case the color is not
red, but still very dark yellow.)

Happy Coding (for (re)activating a famous salutation)
Karsten Reincke, John Dobson,  Greg Sharpe, Peter Schichl, Michael Kern 

---
Deutsche Telekom AG
Products & Innovation
Karsten Reincke, PMP®
Fach-Senior Manager T&P/A&S/TM
T-Online-Allee 1
64295 Darmstadt
Tel.: +49 6151 680 - 8941
Fax.: +49 6151 680 - 2529
E-Mail k.reincke <at> telekom.de
http://www.telekom.de/

Erleben, was verbindet.
Deutsche Telekom AG
Aufsichtsrat: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Lehner (Vorsitzender)
Vorstand: René Obermann (Vorsitzender), Dr. Manfred Balz, Reinhard Clemens, Niek Jan van Damme,
Timotheus Höttges, Claudia Nemat, Thomas Sattelberger
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Gmane