is it just summertime?

[Mitchel Sonies]

>I'm also a little confused by (3b).   Isn't fair market value usually  
>determined by what people are willing to pay?   Or are they reserving  
>for themselves the right to determine if there is a market inefficiency  
>creating non-equilibrium conditions?

This is addressed in the comment to the license.  It is a new provision, but I think it plugs a loophole in the whole licensing schema, and I wonder why it's never been addressed before.  I think small open vendor A is probably saying that Monopoly X shouldn't be able to take the code base, do nothing more than slap the "X" brand label on it and charge a lot of money simply because they advertise their brand on television.   That may be "efficient" in the sense that people pay for brands, but it may not result in better software, more competition, more innovation or better options for users, etc.  I think the point is that you want distributors to charge for true value-added services, not sham offerings.  I don't know why all the A's out there aren't more worried about this.

You're right that this provision could be subject to abuse, but it may be a fair trade-off to make.  But I think providing some contractual right to go after clear "sham" offerings will just make potential sham offerors think twice.  This would be expensive to enforce, so unless A is really really big (I assume they're not), I don't think they have the unilateral right to impose unnatural equilibria on the market, in large part because the legal fees would probably be a lousy investment.


-----Original Message-----
From: Dr. Ernie Prabhakar [mailto:drernie at opendarwin.org]
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 12:22 PM
To: Russell Nelson
Cc: license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: is it just summertime?


> Is it just summertime, and people are outside enjoying themselves?
> Are these licenses obviously open source?  It would be helpful if
> someone other than myself would say so.

Since its just you and me working, I'll offer a random opinion to make  
you feel less alone. :-)

> http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm- 
> cgi?3:mss:6923:200306:adcbobdimckahfihhlcg

I had a little trouble following all the brackets.  Does their  
definition of "Downstream Distribution" (1b), (3a) still allow "mere  
aggregation", since it specifies "contains" in addition to "depends on"?

I'm also a little confused by (3b).   Isn't fair market value usually  
determined by what people are willing to pay?   Or are they reserving  
for themselves the right to determine if there is a market inefficiency  
creating non-equilibrium conditions?

> http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm- 
> cgi?3:mss:6976:200306:odefmgncbfagijaemlbg
> http://rosenlaw.com/osl2.0.html

If Larry can't create an obviously Open Source license, then we're all  
in trouble!

None of the changes seem to affect OSD compliance in any way I can see.

Hope everyone else is enjoying their summer vacation. :-)

-- Ernie P.

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