Change ot topic, back to OVPL

[Alex Bligh]

Russ,

>  > * Revision of limitation of liability clause
>  > * Revision of warranty disclaimer clause
>  >
>  > The latter two ARE made from a legal perspective and we have
>  > already supplied the reasons for them to this list
>
> Nobody suggests anything different.  They're changes to the CDDL,
> however, and are not unique requirements to the OVPL.  You could leave
> them off and still gain the benefits of the OVPL-specific terms.

But end up with an OVPL license that wouldn't be used (at least by the
people who proposed it) because it would not contain the necessary changes?
What would be the point in that?

To be clear, even if my client DID NOT want what you call the OVPL-specific
terms, the changes to the CDDL would be necessary.

>  > I therefore think we have satisfied what you have requested.
>
> I've asked you to contact the CDDL folks to see if they're willing to
> take these changes.  You haven't done that.

I have done that. I have even done it on a public list (this one).

> I've done it for you.
> We'll give them a bit of time to respond, and if there is no response
> I'll assume that they don't want the changes to go into the CDDL, and
> they can go into the OVPL.
>
>  > > No, we've always felt free to reject licenses which are not in the
>  > > best interest of the open source community.
>  >
>  > Against what criteria to you judge that?
>
> If a license is substantially similar to an existing license we have
> asked the submittor to use the existing one.

Define "sufficiently". I would have thought two licenses are insufficiently
similar if they contain differences sufficiently material that the users
of license A would have valid reasons not to use license B and vice-versa.
I think it self-evident that the OVPL and the CDDL are not sufficiently
similar for this purpose.

With that clarification, I agree.

> If the license is hard
> to read, we've asked for clarifications.

Yes, I agree. Note you've written "hard to read" rather than "hard to
compare against previous licenses". This is why we concentrated in making
it easy to read. So I would say if I was in your position the (long) clause
3.3 is the main "hard to read bit", not numbering changes.

> If the license contains
> terms that other parties in the open source community would object to,
> we'll tell the submittor.

If that means in practice that it would have no users, I agree. However,
the fact that some people object to terms (or more accurately would
object to using the license because of those terms) doesn't seem to me
a ground for rejection. There is a long history of BSD people objecting
to GPL license terms and vice-versa.

> If the license is not reusable we have
> asked that it be template'd.

Agree.

> If we have asked for reasonable changes,
> and the submittor refuses to make them, we have rejected the license.

Even that sounds fine. The only difference I seem to have here is what
is a reasonable change, and who is "we" - I've asked the board to consider
it as is.

> Over time the process has become more and more transparent,
> regularized, and open to community input.  I expect these changes to
> continue.

This can only improve matters.

Alex