Is the "Guile" license OSI approved?

[David Woolley]

David Johnson <david at usermode.org> wrote:

> Not at all. The exception only means that the license does not apply to 
> certain works. It does not say that those works cannot have any license at 

Which means that there are no copyright permissions for the library,
and therefore those works, as derived works of the library, or at least
further copying of them is a breach of the copyright on the library.
Licences give permissions to do things that are otherwise illegal.
No licence, no permission.

I know what they are trying to do, but I suspect, if it ever went to court
that there are two possible interpretations, which are at two extremes of
the spectrum:

1) as I've given above - unless the library copyright owner decides to
  renege on their original intentions, using the poor drafting to
  their advantage, this is more of a fear uncertainty and doubt issue
  (i.e. lawyers of companies thinking of using the code may tell them
  that the licence is unsafe) - "free" software authors have been known
  to renege in the past;

2) the assumed intent of the paragraph, rather than its letter, are used,
   in which case it might be possible to defend the use of a token 
   application which exposes all the functionality of the library, but
   makes the result closed source.   Also, in this case, the warranty
   waiver seems no longer to apply, so the library's author might be
   sued for consequential loss.

The licence needs to:

1) define, as precisely as possible, what is NOT covered by the exception.

2) state the terms of the licence to the library code that applies when
   the exception does apply, either by a complete alternative licence
   (maybe BSD like) or by enumerating the GPL clauses that no longer apply
   (probably has to be down to phrase level).

IANAL

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