For Approval: Open Vendor Public License (OVPL) and Open Vendor Lesser Public License (OVLPL)

[Wilson, Andrew]

David Ryan wrote:

> If you believe there is any value to having these licenses approved by

> the OSI, can you *please* reply to the list casting your vote to have 
> them approved.  This will greatly help to speed up the approval 
> process.  Similarily, if you do not believe these should be approved, 
> please respond with reasons.

Well, you asked for it: I'm going to vote -1 for the following reason.
I think the originators of OVPL and OVLPL have done an admirably
conscientious job of drafting these licenses; I just don't accept the
basic premise that new licenses are needed to accomplish the stated
goal,
viz., to provide a way to release code into open source while
maintaining
a parallel, commercial version.

The BKM for doing this is to release the code under an OSI-approved
license
and have a contributor's agreement granting the Initial Developer the
needed
rights to relicense Modifications under a commercial license.  Think
Sun, Open Office, and Star Office.

Again, I want to commend the authors of OVPL and OVLPL for the care and
thought they've put into these drafts, but I'd really like to see them
create a templatized, jurisdiction-neutral contributor's agreement that
could be combined with an existing license to accomplish their goals,
rather than loosing YAOSL (Yet Another Open Source License) upon the
world.  It can be done.

Andy Wilson
Intel Open Source Technology Center