OVPL and open ownership

[David Barrett]

Nice to meet you David.

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

I agree with you.  However, I've been persuaded to believe that the OVPL 
as written conflicts with open-source principles in that it gives the 
community no "escape hatch" to ditch an ID and go their own route.

One proposal to address this was to mandate that contributions be made 
under BSD.  As I've argued, I think this is legally dangerous and 
logistically infeasible.

As an alternative, I've proposed that contributors be given the option 
of licensing their new code under a modified OVPL (which I'm terming 
OVPL') that does not include section 3.3.  Because this option can only 
be exercised explicitly, most contributions would simply submit under 
the terms of the full OVPL (with 3.3 intact).  But in the extreme case 
where the community chooses to abandon the ID, they can make the extra 
effort to explicitly contribute code under OVPL' (without 3.3), and 
thereby deny the ID's exclusive privileges on new code they contribute.

I believe my proposal satisfies the open-source requirements while 
ensuring that OVPL works as originally intended for all but the most 
extreme situations (and preserves the maximum value for the ID even then).

Does this proposal make sense?  Do you think it accomplishes what I 
claim it does?  If not, where do my claims and reality conflict?

Thanks!

-david