OVPL and open ownership

[Chris Zumbrunn]

On Jul 23, 2005, at 10:37 AM, David Barrett wrote:

> Chris Zumbrunn wrote:
>>> Well, think about it. An ID still gets a license-back for all the 
>>> modifications and additions to the original project and can use them 
>>> in its own proprietary product.
>> Let me reword this... An ID still gets a license-back for all the 
>> modifications and additions and can use them in its own proprietary 
>> product.
>
> So, am I correct in understanding the Copyback requires everyone to 
> make their changes available to the ID, but not necessarily to anyone 
> else?

Yes.

> If so, this might be sufficient for me, but only barely as it's a big 
> burden to police the world by myself.  The OVPL spreads the burden of 
> enforcement over a larger group by empowering many people (either 
> anyone who received the distribution, or anyone in the world -- I 
> can't recall; which is it?) to demand accesss to non-ID modifications, 
> not just me.

If someone breaks an open source license inside a closed source 
product, it's always difficult to police. It doesn't matter which 
license the original project was under - BSD, GPL, OVPL, Copyback - it 
doesn't make a difference.

> But overall, the novelty I'm looking for is an exclusive leg-up over 
> any competitors that spring up around my codebase.  This mitigates the 
> risk of some developer simply checking out my code on day one, doing a 
> search and replace with a new name, and setting up shop on near-equal 
> footing as me (but without having made the same investment).

They have a copy of your software, not your brain.

> Naturally, the Copyback still allows (and making OVPL's 3.3 opt-out 
> still enables) anyone to fork off the mainline.  But so long as I'm a 
> good steward and prove to the community my ID privilege is well 
> deserved (such as by contributing extensively to the project and being 
> a good manager), this risk is remote.

I don't know how remote the risk is, but that's generally equally true 
for the OVPL, the GPL and Copyback license. Even with the BSD license 
the forking risk isn't significantly bigger. How the project is 
maintained is certainly more important than the license it is under (in 
regards to the forking risk).

> Furthermore, by granting the privilege of *totally* proprietary 
> derivatives exclusively to the ID, it creates a commercial incentive 
> for the ID to keep contributing to the project, keep managing it well, 
> keep funding any resources on which it depends, and so forth.

Yes.

> If the Copyback supports this, it might work, though to be honest the 
> OVPL still seems a bit closer.  That, I would really prefer to use an 
> OSI-approved license.  Have you considered submitting it?

I just wasn't in a hurry and I first wanted to see what happens to the 
OVPL. For a non-verbose license, the OSI approval isn't as important as 
for a typical verbose and complex license, since everybody can pretty 
clearly understand what it says without the need to blindly trust the 
experts that put a seal of approval on it.

I would need to get the legal analysis done, that is required by step 3 
of the approval process. That shouldn't be to big of a deal since the 
Copyback license is so short and non-verbose, but it will certainly be 
a document that is several times bigger than the license itself :-)

Chris