Plan 9 license

[Matthew C. Weigel]

On Fri, 21 Jul 2000, David Johnson wrote:

> I can understand where they're coming from with the clause, but it
> would have been nice if they limited it to copyright infringements. The
> way it is now, if I goof up and misuse the Lucent trademark as it
> relates to telephones, I lose the license to use Plan9.

I'm not sure that's an "...intellectual property action against Original
Contributor...." But then, I don't know -- perhaps a lawyer can clear that
up.

What it definitely means is that if anyone else *contributes* to Plan 9, and
you (as a licensee) are involved in (whether you initiate or not) an IP
action against that contributor, you (and, AFAICT, the contributor) violate
the license.  So if your stake in Plan 9 is too high, all of your
intellectual property is up for grabs by other contributors, including any
other free software you contribute to the community.

As I've heard others say: that would be fine, except that everything that
goes into Plan 9 continues to be available to Bell Labs -- so everybody plays
fair, and Bell Labs gets to play a little more fair.  Not that I'm painting
Bell Labs as a bad guy; it's just too much licensees have to give up to be free
software, IMO.

As I see it, this license is focused on software research -- if you make
private modifications, Bell Labs can ask to see it; if you have other IP,
but rely on Plan 9 for your money, Bell Labs can get it, modulo the business
decisions you make as to whether you'll give up your license to Plan 9 to
pursue them.

Frankly, I'm willing to toy with Plan 9 anyways.  But the license is not a
free software license, I don't think it's a Debian Free Software License,
and I don't think it should be an OSI Certified license.  I also wish they
wouldn't call it an "open source agreement"
<http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/release3.html> until and if it is OSI
Certified, out of respect for the fact that it's a term the founders of the
OSI brought into use.

 Matthew Weigel
 Programmer/Student
 weigel+ at pitt.edu