a proposed change to the OSD

Russell Nelson nelson at crynwr.com
Sat Oct 26 14:50:10 UTC 2002


Giacomo A. Catenazzi writes:
 > Russell Nelson wrote:
 > > I'm going to propose a change the Open Source Definition at our board
 > > meeting next Thursday.  It is simply this:
 > > 
 > > 0) A license may not restrict use or modification of a lawfully
 > > obtained copy of a work.
 > > 
 > > Anybody have problems with this?  Does this have any problems?
 > 
 > I've two questions:
 > Why this change?

Because over the lifetime of OSI, various people have tried to
interpret the OSD as allowing restrictions on usage.

 > What is really changed by this?
 > [Somebody can give me some example of real licenses that don't follow
 > this point? (Bitkeeper's public license?)]

Yes, BitKeeper's public license.  But there's also a pending license
(Sybase) which requires that users indicate their assent to the
license through click-wrap or equivalent.  *Users*.

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