Approval request for BXAPL

[Forrest J. Cavalier III]

This is a very complicated license.   Thanks for providing
the remarks and annotations.  Very nice.

After a quick read, I think that it should not be OSI approved,
for numerous reasons, some follow.

Because the license is so complicated, it is not clear
to me that addressing the following points would be adequate
to make it OSD compliant.  I think the two fundamental issues
are
  it very much seems to be a EULA, trying to function
  under copyright law, and EULA's are hard to get through OSD.
and
  the Rationale a) is very difficult to set forth legally.
  Any license which attempts to make such distinctions must get
  extra scrutiny.  After all, the license ends up defining
  "Programming Tool" as 
     "Any Software or portion of such Software
     that is declared as being a "programming tool"
     by the Copyright Holder. Such declaration must
     be located in the Copyright Notice."
   which I think is ripe for abuse and inconsistency in itself.

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The definition of "User" is too broad.  It allows any
Distributor to force someone to be a "User" simply by
sending them a copy.

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The "Source code" definition includes this statement, "Source files
or members that contain obfuscated source do not count
as Source Code."

"Obsfucated" is not well-defined.  I've see a lot of legitimate
source files that appear to be obsfucated.

Other OSI-approved licenses have definitions of "Source."

Also, as written, I think this definition includes
compilers and linkers (and more!  run-time ld? ) as
Source code.

------------------------

Paragraph 6 says, in part:
     No right is granted to the trademark(s) of any Contributor even if such marks
     are included in the Software. The names of Contributors or any of
     their products may not be used in any way without prior written
     permission from the pertinent Contributor. Derivatives and/or
     Dependent Software may not be named after the Software, nor may
     they be given a name that might be confused with the name of any
     Contributor or any Contributor's products and/or trademarks.
     Remarks 

Since "Contributor" is defined as to include any "Distributor" it is
fundamentally impossible to know the set of Contributors.  Without
knowing that set, it is impossible to know what names you are
not permitted to use.

The "even if such marks are included" is a problem when you also
require (in a separate paragraph) verbatim distribution of the 
software.  I read that as "when there is any trademark in the 
software, you are not permitted to distribute."

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Paragraph 10 claims that all items which "make use of ... 
the original or modified versions of the Software"
are "Derivatives."

That is plainly wrong.  md5sum will make use of the Software
to compute the MD5 sum, and by Paragraph 10, md5sum is a
"Derivative" of the Software.

-----------------------

Paragraph 12 uses the term "Distributor" and "Contributor" in
a manner inconsistent with the definition in the Item 2.

-----------------------

Paragraph 12.2 is unsatisfiable because the set of Contributors
is unknown.  It is against the OSD because as I read it, any
new "official" contributed modification will invalidate
existing versions.  This constitutes the need for a "separate 
license": always checking some official site that there are no
new contributions.





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