OVPL and the OSI Board on Thursday

[Alex Bligh]

Pablo,

--On 19 August 2005 16:11 -0300 Pablo Barrera Franco 
<pablo at barrerafranco.com.ar> wrote:

>> So there's a need for an additional license ANYWAY. Nothing does what the
>> OVPL does (like it or loathe it) in terms of the ID license-back, apart
>> from the QPL (which is deprecated and clearly unsuitable for a number of
>> reasons). So (assuming the OVPL meets the OSD as I think it does) it
>> fulfils a unique need and thus is not duplicative.
>
> However, if this doesn't happen, I don't see it's a reason not to approve

Agree.

>> the OVPL (for reasons of preventing license proliferation).
>
> Because even if all the "drafting" changes were incorporated into the
> CDDL, there would
>
>> STILL need to be two licenses.
>>
> If CDDL make the changes you expect, was the CDDL fullfiling your needs
> developed  in OVPL?.

To make it clear, our main requirement was the license-back provision.
I do NOT expect the CDDL folks to put in a license-back provision.
In the unlikely event that the did, then I'm sure the rest of it could
be worked out, but I'm pretty certain they won't.

> I think that a Second version of CDDL wouldnt generate a License
> Proliferation.
>
>> Moreover, if they are reasonably happy with the CDDL, I would entirely
>> sympathize with them not wanting to have a CDDL 1.0 and a CDDL 1.1
>> hanging around which are in essence different only to the degree of
>> drafting changes. If anything, *that's* unnecessary proliferation.
>
> But an improvement in CDDL wouldnt be better than a new license?

What I am saying is
* there is a need for a new license (that has license-back in) anyway.
  Assuming something very unexpected doesn't happen and the CDDL
  folks want to put license-back in, no amount of CDDL tweaking is
  going to produce that (assuming something unexpected doesn't happen).
  Given the really sinful proliferation is about licenses that are
  NEEDLESSLY incompatible (rather than which are are necessarily
  incompatible because they are trying to do different things) it
  seems to me proliferation is not an issue.

* Doing tweaks to the CDDL that are "merely" drafting tweaks (i.e.
  don't change "core features", don't insert license back) may or
  may not be attractive to the CDDL folks, but would in any case produce
  two versions of CDDL out in the wild. As it is possible with the
  existing CDDL to tie a work to a specific CDDL version (I don't know
  whether anyone has done this), this could result in two incompatible
  CDDL versions being out there which merely differed in drafting. This
  is a kind of proliferation. Not my call (the CDDL folks are more than
  capable of speaking for themselves) but if I were them, I would want
  to consider whether the pain of this exceeded the gain of some
  drafting cleanups. Hence my line that I would completely understand
  if they didn't want to take my cleanups (even if they thought they
  were improvements) or if they wanted to wait until further changes
  went in.


Alex