[CAVO] Fwd: [License-review] Submission of OSET Public License for Approval

Wed Sep 2 07:47:14 UTC 2015

I'll punt this one to the big brains...but Meeker sounds like she is
justifying a solution to a non-existent problem..  i.e . why would a new
license be needed other than GPL.  ?  When asked previous who in government
craved a special OSET created license.. the silence was notable.

BT

On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 9:33 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:

> FYI. Larry
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Tab®|PRO
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: "Meeker, Heather J."
> Date:09/01/2015 3:18 PM (GMT-08:00)
> To: license-review at opensource.org
> Cc: Gregory Miller ,John Sebes ,"Meeker, Heather J." ,
> christine at osetfoundation.org
> Subject: [License-review] Submission of OSET Public License for Approval
>
> 1 September 2015
>
>
>
> Members of the OSI License Review Community
>
> VIA EMAIL to license-review at opensource.org
>
>
>
> CC:         Christine M. Santoro, Esq., OSET Foundation General Counsel
>
>                 John Sebes, CTO, OSET Foundation / TrustTheVote Project
>
>
>
> RE:          Application for Consideration of the OSET Foundation OPL for
> OSD Compliance Approval
>
>
>
> Greetings, Members of the OSI License Review Community:
>
>
>
> The Open Source Election Technology Foundation (OSET) is pleased to submit
> the OSET Public License (OPL) for OSI license review and for discussion
> with the larger community.   We believe the OPL falls into the special
> purpose category.  We coordinated the drafting of this license, with review
> and input from other lawyers both within and outside of the Open Source
> Election Technology Foundation (OSET).
>
>
>
> OSET’s tax-exempt non-profit mission is to facilitate the development of
> technology to deliver free, and fair elections within an accountable and
> verifiable process.  The public servants tasked with running our elections
> are poised to embrace the benefits of open source software licensing, but
> they also must work within the procurement rules of their profession.
> While we hesitated to create a new license, we have done so to meet the
> needs of our user community.  Existing open source licenses do not deliver
> what our community needs, and we have written the OPL to meet these needs,
> and bridge the gap between open source licensing and many county and state
> government technology procurement regulations.
>
>
>
> Our goal is for the OPL to facilitate the implementation of verifiable,
> accurate, secure, and transparent elections system technology that are not
> only federal- and state- certified, but also demonstrably worthy of the
> public’s trust.  We believe this can only be accomplished using open source
> software.
>
>
>
> Our stakeholder community—elections administrators and officials—are very
> receptive to acquiring open source software-based election and voting
> systems provided the software (and related support and services) can be
> legally acquired through their procurement process.  A primary ingredient
> of their procurement process is terms and conditions of software licensing
> that meet their regulatory requirements.
>
>
>
> While governments already often acquire open source technology on an ad
> hoc basis under existing licenses, they face more, and different, hurdles
> acquiring open source election systems.  Open source software that is
> merely part of a larger IT system is usually covered by two documents—the
> open source license, and an overarching (and often superseding) procurement
> agreement that fits with the applicable regulations.  Where an agency is
> acquiring an entire open source technology system—especially technology to
> be used in public elections and subject to competitive bidding—procurement
> regulations need to be handled properly within the four corners of the open
> source license.
>
>
>
> Accordingly, OSET has based its license on the Mozilla Public License
> version 2.0 (“MPL”) with the addition of six modifications:
>
> 1.            Governing Law
>
> 2.            Venue
>
> 3.            Government Rights
>
> 4.            March-in Rights
>
> 5.            Sovereign immunity
>
> 6.            Deployment
>
>
>
> These modifications address necessary requirements for the provisioning of
> election software to county and state government agencies and their
> contractors.  Election technology procurement takes place primarily at the
> local (state, county, and jurisdictional) level; however, we would like the
> license to work at the federal level as well.
>
>
>
> Also, we are mindful of the benefit of compatibility with other licenses.
> Like MPL 2.0, the OPL is compatible with GPL and LGPL 3.0.  So, all
> software issued under OPL can be used in GPL and LGPL projects that have
> adopted the version 3 licenses. Therefore, any project that does not
> require the added provisions of OSET is free to elect not to use them, and
> to use GPL, or LGPL instead.  We think this is the best way to address our
> constituents’ needs while limiting the compatibility problems of a new
> license.
>
>
>
> We have posted the text of the license (in plain text, PDF, and HTML), our
> rationale document, and an FAQ, as support for our submission.
> http://www.osetfoundation.org/public-license/.
>
>
>
> Thank you for your consideration and we look forward to the discussion!
>
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
>
>
> Heather Meeker
>
> O’Melveny & Myers
>
> Counsel to OSET
>
> +1 650.473.2635
>
> &
>
> Gregory Miller
>
> Co-Executive Director, Chief Development Officer, OSET
>
> +1 503.703.5150
>
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