OVPL and open ownership

[David Ryan]

I've been very quiet on the list recently. Thankfully, Alex has done a 
great job responding to the various questions regarding the OVPL.  The 
following are some various thoughts following the discussions.

During the development process I had Australian lawyers review the 
license.  It was their belief that the license was legal under 
Australian law.  There was some discussion earlier on the mailing list 
regarding copyright assignment.  To re-iterate Alex's earlier comments, 
the OVPL does not assign copyright.  The top of section 3.3 states "You 
hereby grant a perpetual, irrevocable, world-wide royalty-free, 
sub-licensable, non-exclusive license to the Licensed Modifications to 
the Initial Developer in respect of Future Versions".   The Initial 
Developer *can not* take contributions and hide them in commercial 
versions.  Section 3.3 also states that licensing back to the ID are 
made conditional that they "are made and remain generally available to 
the public at large under the terms of this License".

In regards to the idea that contributions be made under a BSD license.  
I'm not sure I see how this solves any problems. 

Obviously some people continue to be opposed to the OVPL.  I don't think 
this means that it is a bad license.  I think it means we've done a good 
job.  People are often opposed to various licenses.  I personally have 
problems with the GPL.  I also know of many others that find GPL code 
difficult to work with, and for this reason also dislike it.  These 
don't make it a bad license. It just means that I choose what software I 
use and contribute to.  As Alex has stated numerous times, and as we've 
put in the FAQ on the www.openvendor.org web page, the OVPL is not for 
all projects.  People will choose if they wish to contribute to an OVPL 
based open source project.  If they disagree with the terms they are 
free to start a new projects based on the license of their choice.

The power of choice is important.  I have managed a large open source 
project based on the Acedemic Free License(AFL) at www.ps2dev.org.  It 
is sometimes a struggle making sure all contributors understand the 
license and that GPL code can not be included in the project.  However, 
I and others made the choice to use AFL a long time ago.  We need to 
deal with the consequences. 

I have spent a lot of effort developing my own software and in that 
scenario I think the OVPL is a good choice.  It is not the right choice 
for everyone.

> --On 24 July 2005 13:03 +0200 Chris Zumbrunn <chris at czv.com> wrote:
>
>> Either the approval of the QPL was a mistake or it is the precedence for
>> approval of the OVPL. Which is it?
>
>
> The latter. You are clearly in violent agreement with me :-)

Of course, I assumed this to be the case aswell.  I would not have been 
involved in the OVPL if I didn't think this was the case.

I will attempt to be more active on the list, however, it sounds like 
most view points are known.  I look forward to hear the official word 
from the OSI.

Regards,
David.