Plan 9 license

[Lewis Collard]

John Cowan r sez:
> Ralph Mellor scripsit:
> 
> > It turns out that this license is still *NOT* OSD compliant,
> > ie. it is not what those running the OSI would label "Open
> > Source".
> 
> Could you please specify wherein the Plan 9 license fails of Open
> Sourceness in its current incarnation?  The complaints of RMS at
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/plan-nine.html seem to apply with equal
> force to the Perl license (which he calls unFree) and the OSL 1.0,
> with the exception of the termination-on-any-IP-lawsuit provision.

The Plan 9 license forbids personal modification and doesn't permit
commercial distribution (the Artistic license allows one to distribute
it for profit by claiming the charges are for "support", and allows
one to aggregate it with other products and then sell it - the latter
is in compliance with section 1 of the OSD).

Also, RMS also points out on the license list page on the GNU site
that the primary problem with the Artistic license is one of wording,
not of intent.

(I am not commenting on the latest Plan9 license, I haven't read it
yet. I am just pointing out that most of RMS's criticisms do not
apply to the Artistic license at all.) 

lewis
-- 
Lewis Collard <lewis at zquack.net>
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