Misunderstanding of the basics?

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Ralf Schwoebel <puzzler at intradat.com> writes:

> The major problem are the paragraphs:
> 
> 6.3 "The infection theory": isn't that close enough to the other
> licenses?
> 
> 
> But I see your (community) problem now and that paragraph might 
> needs clarification:
> 
> 6.3.3: "Don't touch the license key"
> 
> What we mean:
> 
> If there is no license key, it is not issue (see our VSLEdit 1.0),
> that paragraph only applies for software with a license key.
> 
> But with VShop3.0 we want to put a license key in it and then it is
> probably violating the idea, but still comes with the source code...
> 
> So, the major issue to be approved from your side would be the 
> license key paragraph?
> 
> If you approve to that, then we are talking about much less than
> in the beginning and we will work on a 1.1 release.

The license key paragraph is a show stopper.  A software license which
requires a license key is not going to be approved as open source.

I'm afraid that I don't entirely understand what you are saying above.
Do you expect the OSI to approve the license key paragraph?  That will
not happen.

There was a somewhat similar issue with the Bitkeeper license.  They
don't use a license server, but they require that all Bitkeepers log
information to their server, and they forbid removing that logging
code.  Larry McVoy argued pretty hard that his license should be
considered open source, but his arguments failed.  The Bitkeeper
license is not open source.  You may be interested in reading
    http://www.bitkeeper.com/bk19.html
    http://www.bitkeeper.com/free.html

Ian