OVPL - wrap-up of objections

[Alex Bligh]

Chris,

--On 21 July 2005 15:30 -0400 Chris F Clark <cfc at theworld.com> wrote:

> Andy T Wilson (ATW) posted two objections to the OVPL, which he
> summarized and I have extracted from below:
>
>> The "contract" portion of OVPL creates a bi-lateral
>> agreement between the contributor and ID in which the contributor
>> (a) agrees to furnish the ID with all future contributor modifications
>> to covered code, and (b) agrees that the ID (and only the ID)
>> has rights to, at its option, re-license contributor
>> modifications on non-OVPL terms.
>
> I'm going to ignore the issue of the ID being able to relicense the
> code under other licenses.  From my point of view that is a desirable
> quality.  However, as discussed, it may not be doable as part of a
> license which is not a properly executed signed contract.  Even as a
> developer who would be tempted to use the OVPL, I would still want to
> have signed argeements for non-trivial submissions (and perhaps even
> agreements for trivial ones).

I'm not sure what you mean by "doable" here. I don't believe there is an
enforceability problem beyond that of ANY reciprocal license in bare
license form (Andy disagrees, if you do too, I'd like to know why; Larry
Rosen seems to agree).

However, I *do* agree with the last statement. Signed agreements (whether
in the form of license-backs, or assignments with re-license) will *always*
improve the situation in that they represent belt-and-braces. I fully
expect ID's to ask for them too in many circumstances; I don't expect
they will always receive them though.

> I think the important point here is the "all" modifications portion,
> which has been disputed.  The OVPL as far as I can see, is trying to
> prevent "shared secrets", that is donwstream versions that are shared
> by a community but are secret to that community.  It is not clear that
> preventing shared secrets is non-OSD.  (I think it fails one of the
> criteria for being "free", but that is a separate topic.)

That's only the back-end of 3.3. I'm very surprised that's the bit
of 3.3 which is causing indigestion (I don't think that's what Andy
was suggesting) not least because is was discussed on this list (though
I now can't find it).

I thought the front end of 3.3 was the problem (the license-back).

> If the OVPL did not give the ID rights to relicense the contributed
> software, would it still be objectionable?  Next, would it still be
> distinct from other licenses?  Is there another license that allows
> the ID to request modifications that have been distributed, but for
> which source is not "generally available"?

I would hope not - without 3.3, there I don't think there is anything
vaguely contentious (looks for something wooden to touch).

Alex