Permissive Public License: proposed new open-source license

[Frank Hecker]

John Cowan wrote:
> The purpose of the Permissive Public License is to achieve
> the effect that people think they have achieved by attempting to
> put their works into the public domain.  Given that they cannot directly
> do that, the PPL grants all rights to everybody and disclaims
> all warranties.
> 
> I would like it to be considered as a new OSI Certified
> Open Source license.  It is derived from the MIT license.

I personally happen to like the simplicity of the MIT license, and
thought it would be interesting to see exactly what you changed from the
MIT license to create this license. See my comments below.

> The Permissive Public License
> 
> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
> copy of this work and any works associated with it (the "Works"),

Change 1: You've broadened the scope of the MIT license language from
"this software and associated documentation files" to "this work and any
works associated with it". Further references to "the Software" are then
replaced with references to "the Works". (Except that you missed one --
see below.)

> to deal in the Works without restriction, including without limitation the
> rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, publicly display, publicly
> perform (whether by way of digital audio transmission or otherwise),
> distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Works,

Change 2: You've included the additional rights to "publicly display,
[and] publicly perform (whether by way of digital audio transmission or
otherwise)". (These are not explicitly called out in the MIT license,
and adding them sounds like a good idea.)

> and to permit persons to whom the Works are furnished to do the same.

Change 3: You've omitted the MIT license language that makes the rights
"subject to the following conditions". You've then completely omitted
the first condition, namely that "The above copyright notice and this
permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial
portions of the Software." So people can redistribute all or part of the
Works with all copyright notices and license language stripped out.

You've retained the warranty disclaimer that constituted the second
condition; however again since you've removed the first condition
someone could redistribute the Works in toto but with just the warranty
disclaimers stripped out. (Not being a lawyer, I'm not sure what effect
if any that would have on the effectiveness of the disclaimers in
practice.)

> THE WORKS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
> IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
> FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL
> THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR
> OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE,
> ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
                                                 ^^^^^^^^
> OTHER DEALINGS IN THE WORKS.

TYPO: As indicated, you have one remaining instance of the word
"SOFTWARE" that needs to be replaced with the word "WORKS". (This
supports my theory that CAPITALIZING warranty disclaimers makes them
less likely to be read closely, not more likely :-)

Also, shouldn't the last clause actually read "OR THE USE _OF_ OR OTHER
DEALINGS IN THE WORKS"? In other words, if the phrase "OR OTHER DEALINGS
IN" were removed, then the clause would ungrammatically read "OR THE USE
THE SOFTWARE". I note that the original MIT license as referenced at

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html

has this issue too (more support for my theory).

Frank
-- 
Frank Hecker            work: http://www.collab.net/
frank at collab.net        home: http://www.hecker.org/