License List -- as of 9-11-00

[kmself at ix.netcom.com]

On Mon, Sep 11, 2000 at 09:17:32AM -0700, Danese Cooper (Danese.Cooper at eng.sun.com) wrote:
> Larry,
> 
> Our "Sun Public License" is a verbatim copy of the MozPL 1.1, except
> that we substituted the word "Sun" everywhere for "Mozilla" and
> "Netscape", and we added documentation to the list of covered things
> (as separate from source code).
> 
> So, are we automatically covered because MozPL 1.1 is okay now?  Do we
> need to submit separately?

I've already responded privately to Danese.  It's also been mentioned to
the CLWG.  Anyone know if Mitchel is subscribed to license-discuss?

One suggestion I've made in the past regarding the Mozilla license is,
that as it appears to be emerging as a standard (and is a good choice of
licenses to do so, particularly when dualed with [L]GPL), it might make
sense to institute an organization implement something along the lines
of the following.

Principle degrees of freedom on MozPL variants are:

   1. Occurances of "Netscape Communications Corporation" and "Netscape"
      in section 6, "Versions of the License".

   2. "California", "Northern District of California", and "Santa Clara
      County, California", in section 11, "Miscellaneous".

Nowhere else is there specific language as far as I can see.

(BTW:  I've noticed what appears to be a typo referencing the "NPL" in
section 13 of the MozPL).


A principal concern of companies and organizations is ceding authoring
authority for the license itself to an external company or organization,
including possible competitors.  Simultaneously, there is a concern that
trivially differing licenses might be considered different, leading to
license balkanization.

As a remedy to both concerns, a standards organization is charged with
drafting a reference license, and indicating what variances to the two
items of language above may be allowed.  Licenses which have these and
only these variances from the standard are considered conformant,
allowing for code compatibility (aka license transitivity).  Eg:
software licensed under one set of terms is considered equally validly
covered under any of the variant licenses.  This issue itself could be
addressed either in contractual language or via a certification process
similar to OSI.

Companies or organizations adopting the standard *retain right of
versioning* -- the right is *not* ceded to the central authority.
Rather, as new versions of the reference license are drafted,
co-licensees have the option of adopting the new language or continuing
on their own track.  It is, of course, hoped that conformance will be
maintained.  Previously issued code will continue to be covered under
original (and any subsequent) licensing terms.  This will allow for
conformant license forking of existing projects to maintain conformance
in the event any subset of co-licensees attempts to hijack the standard,
minimizing hijacking risk.

This proposal also allows for continued input into licensing terms and a
continued evolution of language, which has been IMO useful to free
software licensing in the past.

This language does retain a certain US-Centric perspective, however, it
should significantly broaden the prospects for license standardization.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>     http://www.netcom.com/~kmself
 Evangelist, Opensales, Inc.                    http://www.opensales.org
  What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?   Debian GNU/Linux rocks!
   http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/    K5: http://www.kuro5hin.org
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