For Approval: Educational Community License

Mon Jun 7 17:54:44 UTC 2004

[ Please discuss this license ]

Greetings,

The purpose of this message is to submit the Educational Community
License (ECL) for OSI certification.  This request is driven by a recent
acceleration of application software projects in higher education (over
a dozen current projects with new grants pending).  There is a growing
concern that many of these projects will need to share code and
interoperate with each other to achieve their full potential for users.
In the present state, many of these projects are evolving on unique
licenses from their local host universities.  There is a timely
opportunity and need for a common license that can be used for these and
future projects.

In a step towards realizing a common license, the Sakai Project
(www.sakaiproject.org <http://www.sakaiproject.org/> ) ($6.8M project)
and the Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OSPI)(www.theospi.org
<http://www.theospi.org/> ) ($1M project) - both funded by the Mellon
Foundation - have both agreed to use the proposed "Educational Community
License".  This includes formal acceptance from the administration at
Foothill-De Anza Community College District, Indiana University, MIT,
Stanford University, the University of Michigan and several companies
who provide support for open source software in higher education (no
small feat to reach common agreement!).  The IMS Global Learning
consortium (50 members) that works on interoperability matters and
sharing in the education community has also endorsed the ECL as it sees
a tremendous need for a common license.  Other universities and projects
have indicated their interest in using the license if it receives OSI
certification. As a board member for both the Sakai Project and OSPI, I
am submitting ECL on their behalf, and I can provide supporting letters
or emails from any of the institutions named here if those would be
helpful.  

ECL is conceived as a very open license regarding the creation of
derivative works, reuse of code, and freedom to commercialize.  It
builds on the very successful university-commercial experiences of the
uPortal Project that also used a very unrestrictive license.  It adds
some explicit restrictions deemed necessary to protect the
trademarks/brands of the copyright holders and provides for a lineage of
modifications to help users understand the origins of their software.  

The title of the license is intended to further adoption among open
source projects in higher education - especially administrative and
teaching/learning application software projects.  There is no single
community, organization, or project implied by the license as the
pattern is that two-three universities pool their resources with a
foundation or government grant to create some new application.  Each may
have its own community of users, identity, and organization, but all are
generally affiliated in one way or another with educational endeavors.

The following numbered items correspond to the "Getting a License
Approved" items from the OSI website:

1. Title: Educational Community License

2. HTML Version in OSI mock up:
http://wheeler.kelley.indiana.edu/ecl1.htm 
    Full Plain Text Version is at the end

3. Legal Analysis: Comments and references to the Open Source Definition
are in [brackets].

---------------------------------------------

The Educational Community License

This Educational Community License (the "License") applies to any
original work of authorship (the "Original Work") whose owner (the
"Licensor") has placed the following notice immediately following the
copyright notice for the Original Work:
Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>
Licensed under the Educational Community License version 1.0
This Original Work, including software, source code, documents, or other
related items, is being provided by the copyright holder(s) subject to
the terms of the Educational Community License. By obtaining, using
and/or copying this Original Work, you agree that you have read,
understand, and will comply with the following terms and conditions of
the Educational Community License: [2. Source Code is Provided]
Permission to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, and
sublicense this Original Work and its documentation, with or without
modification, for any purpose, and without fee or royalty to the
copyright holder(s) is hereby granted, provided that you include the
following on ALL copies of the Original Work or portions thereof,
including modifications or derivatives, that you make: [1. Free
Redistribution] [3. Derived works can be created and distributed under
this license or any other license of the author's choice]
* The full text of the Educational Community License in a location
viewable to users of the redistributed or derivative work. 
* Any pre-existing intellectual property disclaimers, notices, or terms
and conditions. 
* Notice of any changes or modifications to the Original Work, including
the date the changes were made.
* Any modifications of the Original Work must be distributed in such a
manner as to avoid any confusion with the Original Work of the copyright
holders. [4. Integrity of Author's Source Code: There are no
restrictions on patches or modifications to the source code.
Modifications must be identified so that they can be distinguished from
the original work]
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,
TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
The name and trademarks of copyright holder(s) may NOT be used in
advertising or publicity pertaining to the Original or Derivative Works
without specific, written prior permission. Title to copyright in the
Original Work and any associated documentation will at all times remain
with the copyright holders. 
[5. No Discrimination Against Persons: The ECL license makes no
reference to any person groups whatsoever]
[6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor: The ECL license makes
no restriction regarding any field of endeavor and could be adopted by
any software project, group, or commercial organization.  Its title is
intended to imply its applicability in the educational domain where
educational institutions have a long and common philosophy of
cooperating and sharing.]
[7. Distribution of License: The ECL license imposes no requirements for
execution of any license or documents]
[8. License Must Not be Specific to a Product: The ECL license imposes
no restrictions on bundling or severability of modules or their
modifications and distribution as a whole save for disclosing the
original work carried this license]
[9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software: The ECL license imposes no
restrictions on bundling or any licensing terms chosen for other works
including derivatives]
[10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral: The ECL includes no provisions
regarding the form of consent or distribution method]
---------------------------------- 
4.1 Similar License:

The Educational Community License is most similar to the MIT license.
It evolved from the OKI Project at MIT to the CHEF project at the
University of Michigan to what is now the multi-institutional Sakai and
ePortfolio projects mentioned above.  The MIT license presented three
problems in reaching wide-spread agreement among the universities and
projects that are proposing ECL.

a.	It did not contain a provision for making notice of changes and
modifications (lineage).
b.	It did not contain a provision for distinguishing modifications
and derivative works from the Original Work.
c.	It did not contain explicit language for protecting the
trademarks of the copyright holders from being using in conjunction with
publicity of the original or derivative works.  This is particularly
important as the license is intended to be commercialization friendly
for the original work and derivative works.

The projects and their respective university counsel also reviewed other
OSI approved licenses as alternatives including BSD and the Academic
Free License.  There was very strong desire to use a short and easily
understood license that could be readily understood by developers
without the consultation of counsel.

4.2 Compatibility with Other Licenses:

The ECL is readily compatible with other licenses that provide few
restrictions on derivative works.  Licenses with copyleft provisions,
such as GNU General Public License, the Jabber Open Source License, or
the Open Source License 2.0, would impose obligations on derivative
works that ECL does not.  Thus, a merging of code based on the ECL, some
GNU code, and some newly written code would likely be subject to the
more restrictive GNU licensing rules.  A merging of code based on the
ECL, BSD 2.0, and some newly written code would invoke ECL requirements
outlined in section 4.1 above (change notice, distinguishing the
derivative work, and ban on use of copyright holder trademarks in
publicity).

4.3 Plain Text Version of Educational Community License:

Educational Community License 1.0

This Educational Community License (the "License") applies to any
original work of authorship (the "Original Work") whose owner (the
"Licensor") has placed the following notice immediately following the
copyright notice for the Original Work: 

Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>  

Licensed under the Educational Community License version 1.0

This Original Work, including software, source code, documents, or other
related items, is being provided by the copyright holder(s) subject to
the terms of the Educational Community License. By obtaining, using
and/or copying this Original Work, you agree that you have read,
understand, and will comply with the following terms and conditions of
the Educational Community License:

Permission to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, and
sublicense this Original Work and its documentation, with or without
modification, for any purpose, and without fee or royalty to the
copyright holder(s) is hereby granted, provided that you include the
following on ALL copies of the Original Work or portions thereof,
including modifications or derivatives, that you make: 

*      The full text of the Educational Community License in a location
viewable to users of the redistributed or derivative work.

*      Any pre-existing intellectual property disclaimers, notices, or
terms and conditions. 

*      Notice of any changes or modifications to the Original Work,
including the date the changes were made.

*      Any modifications of the Original Work must be distributed in
such a manner as to avoid any confusion with the Original Work of the
copyright holders.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,
TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

The name and trademarks of copyright holder(s) may NOT be used in
advertising or publicity pertaining to the Original or Derivative Works
without specific, written prior permission. Title to copyright in the
Original Work and any associated documentation will at all times remain
with the copyright holders.

------------------------------------------------------------------ 
IU Assoc Vice President for Research & Academic Computing and Dean of IT
     Assoc Professor of Information Systems, Kelley School of Business
Indiana University Office of the Vice President for IT & CIO, +1
812.855.3478 

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