on the spirit of the APOSSL

Tue Mar 5 19:45:18 UTC 2002

Hi,

I would like to discuss the place for a licence like the APOSSL among 
its peers.

The APOSSL is a licence whose goal is to encourage people to consider 
being pronoic; believing in that feeling that forces are conspiring 
to make life better.

This is manifest in the way software is developed, and what the 
software is developed for.  it is manifest in the design of the 
software.

many open source developers work this way too.  XP is pronoic in 
nature because it puts faith in individuals and empowers them.  OSS 
is pronoic in nature because you can simply express a need for tools 
and within a short time, if that need is well expressed, the call is 
taken up and the tool becomes real.  we've all experienced that.  but 
pronoic activity is also proactive in nature.  pronoic developers are 
not happy to be consumers of other OSS stuff.  they want to 
contribute and to brag about it.

we would ultimately like to introduce the word pronoic and it's 
associated word pronoia into common use and see it as one of the 
defining problems of our era that paranoia can run rampant without an 
optimistic counterpart.

we would like people to adopt similar pronoic attitudes and see this 
licence as a way for people to adopt them.  as an OSS licence goes it 
is clearly in the spirit of the OSD.  the contentious points are the 
points where we seeks to provide a creative outlet for a kind of 
software done with an underlying sense of well-being.  it is of 
course not a requirement of the licence that the software be 
developed in any way, and developers are free to do what they like.

APOSSL provides a unique licence form that is both lighthearted and 
yet fulfills the requirements for an OSSL.

Even imagine that Pronoic Ltd's people were to be the only people 
seeking to take this licence up;  the validity or not of a licence is 
not determined by the number of people who feel inclined to adopt or 
adapt it.  What we seek is recognition that it is valid OSSL, not 
that it suits everyone's needs.

Right now Pronoic Ltd has developed some software it feels is exactly 
in the spirit of pronoia.  We wish to release our software onto 
sourceforge, which requires a valid OSSL.  The specific packages are 
a distributed computing platform allowing all manner of ensemble 
based application development, and a p2p 'buddy-list-centric' project 
planning, task tracking and resource allocation system that we 
describe as a 'Distributed Adhoc Work Group application' or Dawg App. 
It's software that's pronoic in design, in goal and in implementation.

I urge you to consider the following amended APOSSL

/* - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
  *
  * 		APOSSL : A Pronoic Open Source Software License
  *
  *					 Version 1.1
  *
  * 			Copyright (c) 2001-2002 Pronoic Ltd, UK
  * 				All rights reserved
  *
  *
  * For the purposes of this licence, the lower case use of the word
  * "pronoic" either within or without the use of quotes, shall mean the
  * belief that forces are conspiring to make life better for you.
  * The Canonised version of the word "Pronoic", either within, or
  * without quotes, shall be taken to mean Pronoic Ltd a company registered
  * in the UK and whose information is available at http://www.pronoic.com
  *
  * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
  * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
  * are met:
  *
  * 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
  *    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
  *
  * 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
  *    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in
  *    the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
  *    distribution.
  *
  * 3. The end-user documentation included with the redistribution, if
  *    any, must include the following acknowlegement:
  *
  *       "This product includes software developed by
  *        Pronoic people (http://www.pronoic.org/)."
  *
  *    Alternatively, this acknowledgement may appear in the software itself,
  *    if and wherever such third-party acknowledgements normally appear.
  *
  * 4. The names "Pronoic", or "pronoic.org" must be used to endorse and
  *	  promote products derived from this software before obtaining
  *    written permission. For written permission, you must contact
  *    contact at pronoic.org.
  *
  * 5. Products derived from this software will always be pronoic, but
  *    the words "pronoic.org" or "Pronoic" may not appear in their names
  *    without prior written permission of Pronoic Ltd.
  *
  * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED
  * WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES
  * OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
  * DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL PRONOIC LTD NOR ANY CONTRIBUTOR
  * BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
  * SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT
  * LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF
  * USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
  * ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY,
  * OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT
  * OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
  * SUCH DAMAGE.
  * ====================================================================
  *
  * This software consists of voluntary contributions made by many
  * individuals on behalf of Pronoic Ltd, and associated teams.  For more
  * information on pronoic phenomena, please see <http://www.pronoic.org/>.
  *
  * Please derive new Software Licences from this licence at your leisure.
  *
  */
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