Zeratec Public License

Forrest J. Cavalier III mibsoft at mibsoftware.com
Tue Jul 13 21:38:46 UTC 1999


The whole point of an open source license is to open up participation
and development.

No reasonably sensible programmer starts contributing without
understanding the license and implications of it.

Instead of trying to understand a license like that one, I'll just move
on and find something else.

Lawyers only sometimes seem like they have a special
command of language and intelligence.  If a license is going
to bewilder and fatigue a programmer who tries to read it, chances
are there will be some lawyers, courts, and judges who are confused
as well.

I think the GPL already approaches the upper limit of how
complicated a license should be.  The Zeratec license as
proposed goes WAY beyond that.

As a general point, perhaps you should split the license into
separate licenses which cover the same code/product instead of 
trying to do it all (Exhibit A, B, etc) in one license.  In
fact, could you GPL it, and include a notice along the lines of "if you
want to use our trademarks, certification marks, etc. contact
us for a different agreement." That would clean up the open
source license a great deal, I think.


Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software  Voice 570-992-8824 
The Reuse RKT: Efficient awareness for software reuse: Free WWW site
lists over 6000 of the most popular open source libraries, functions,
and applications.  http://www.mibsoftware.com/reuse/  



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