Definition of open source

[Brian Behlendorf]

On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, Alan Rihm wrote:
> Michael - We had a reputable firm in Philadelphia (PA) give us an
> opinion, and the resulting opinion was that current OSI approved
> licenses (single or dual strategy) do not serve our purposes "as-is". We
> did, however, base our license on the Mozilla 1.1 license since we are
> ok with many of the provisions. The changes were limited to do the
> following:

Please note that most Open Source licenses are themselves not subject to 
modification without the consent of the author of the licenses.  You may 
petition the Mozilla project (probably best by sending email to 
licensing at mozilla.org - if that bounces let me know and I can try to find 
a better address) for such permission, though if the intent is to try and 
grant your efforts legitimacy through brand conflation (confusing people 
that somehow your license actually is an Open Source license or 
approximates one, when it is in fact not, by comparing it to Mozilla's 
license) I would suspect you would not have success.

You may find it ironic, that Open Source licenses are usually themselves 
not under an Open Source license, or you could consider it a bit of 
foresight.

 	Brian