For approval: MirOS Licence Template (and question about others)

Thorsten Glaser tg at 66h.42h.de
Mon Oct 11 19:32:53 UTC 2004


Hello!

With due respect, I would like the OSI to consider to
certify the "MirOS Licence Template" as shown on
http://wiki.mirbsd.de/LicenceTemplate or
http://mirbsd.bsdadvocacy.org/cvs.cgi/~checkout~/src/share/misc/licence.template?rev=HEAD
(the latter link is plain text), optionally (but not
recommended) with an advertising clause in the following
style:

 * All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this soft-                                            
 * ware must display the following acknowledgement:                                                              
 * <...>



Also, I would like to get a clarification if a part of
a work which is under one of the licences shown below
can be considered "OSI certified Open Source software", too.

a) any derivate of the original UCB/BSD licence, with
   clauses left out, or wording slightly changed (e.g.
   by putting in one's name)

b) the following:

# Copyright (c) 2003 ...
#                                                                                                                
# Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any                                          
# purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above                                         
# copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.                                              
#
# (disclaimer from BSD licence)

(see http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/~checkout~/src/share/misc/license.template?rev=HEAD
for where this is from)




The reason for all this is, that, if these three are acknowledged
by the OSI, all off-springs of the MirOS Project (except the full
base operating system itself, which is >700 MiB in sources and thus
too difficult to check for now) can wear the certification mark,
which is good for publicity.
The offsprings are namely (I checked that just now for all files
included in the tarballs thereof):
 * the MirPorts Framework (providing a defined way to install
   third-party software, works on OpenBSD, MirOS, ekkoBSD, maybe more)
 * our (pd) korn shell derivate, made portable
 * our (bsd) make derivate, made portable


As for the "MirOS Licence Template" (without advertising
clause), I'm also asking for publication on the OSI website,
under the "list of approved licences" section, since it is
more than just a variant of the BSD/X11/MIT/X.net licence - it adds
protection (in the disclaimer) to the licensor, which can be (under
non-US/commonwealth, but European law) a different person than the
authors (because "Urheberrecht" can only be hold by natural persons),
and because it enumerates all stuff pretty well and shortly.

I cannot speak for the OpenBSD developers, but you might want
to consider doing the same for theirs.


In any case, I would like to hear of an answer from you,
either in private, or taking the discussion mailing list
in Carbon-Copy.

Thanks in advance,
//mirabile (MirOS head developer)
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