Adaptive Public License

Michael Tiemann tiemann at redhat.com
Thu Apr 15 10:54:03 UTC 2004


Russ Nelson called for more discuccion of this license, which does look
interesting to me.  The OSI board has certainly spent its share of time talking
about license compatibility (or the lack thereof), and this license certainly
encapsulates many of the issues we've discussed.  My initial read of this
license is that yes, it does satisfy the letter of the OSD, so that's a Good
Thing.  But the larger question that I must always ask is: if/when it becomes
used by multiple third parties, what problems can it solve that other
OSI-approved licenses don't solve.

What is unclear to me is how this license addresses the question of what
happens when two (or more) parties check the boxes differently in Exhibit A.
Are there any incompatible choices within this framework, or are the "combined"
licenses severable (meaning every individual part remains valid even when some
parts offer different terms)?  If the latter, then this is a very interesting
license and I think we should move to approve.  If the former, it's not clear
to me that having a name for a license that preserves the incompatibility issue
is all that valuable.  In fact, it may be bad.

Michael Tiemann

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