OVPL - wrap-up of objections

[Alex Bligh]

Kelly,

I'm just curious...
>
> Suppose that you have two separate OVPL projects that have been lovingly
> cared for by their respective developers for years, and they decide to
> merge.
>
> Who gets to be the Initial Developer after the merger of the code bases?
>
> How do people using the license find out who the new Initial Developer
> is for the project that got merged away?
>
> The most interesting questions are how this license would interact with
> other Open Source licenses... I suppose one couldn't grab GPL code and
> slam it into an OVPL project... so one of the greatest advantages of
> open source (the ability to swipe code from other projects) is gone...
>
> Just some questions that came up... but all in all, I really like the
> license quite a bit!

Very interesting question. With licenses which are only SLIGHTLY
assymetric (including CDDL and MPL) this is problematic - there is
no procedure to do this. There is no way (as far as I can see) that
(say) code issued under the MPL with A as ID can be merged with code
issued under the MPL with B as ID, because the MPL gives specific
rights to the ID that it doesn't give to developers (it is possible
it could work on a file by file basis).

With the OVPL it is easy. Either ID can (by using the sublicensability
under 3.3) decide that the other should be the ID, and sublicense the
entire codebase under the OVPL with that other as the ID. Equally,
and ID can take the whole thing GPL.

Alex