Modifying existing licenses in minor ways

[Adam C. Engst]

At 1:01 PM -0800 11/28/00, kmself at ix.netcom.com wrote:
>  > A quick question. If you want to adopt an OSI-certified license to
>>  avoid the proliferation of yet more open source licenses, how do you
>>  deal with the fact that many of the open source licenses have
>>  specific language that doesn't make sense if used by any product
>  > other than what the license was generated to address?
>
>My most recent suggestion, reiterated again, is this:
>
>   - Draft a standard Mozilla-style license.  Lets call it SMozPL.
>     Nobody uses it.
>
>   - What people *do* use is their own Derived Mozilla Public License, a
>     DMozPL.  This specifically restricts modifications to, say:
>
>   - The common license provides that, for derived licenses limiting
>     modifications to the specific substitutions specified, code is
>     miscable between licenses.
>
>What this does is allow for use of common licensing terms while
>reserving to a particular organization the right to modify its terms
>(and break compliance) at a later date.

Speaking as someone coming into the open source world from scratch, 
something like this would make figuring out what do a LOT easier.

cheers... -Adam

______________________________________________________________________
Adam C. Engst, XNSORG President                  XNS Name: =Adam Engst
                Email: <ace at xns.org>         Web: <http://www.xns.org/>