Three new proposed OSD terms

[Steve Quinn]

Wouldn't it be easier to structure all public licenses similar to the Mozilla Public License 1.1 that includes an Exhibit A for company specific information.  This Exhibit could include the company copyright statement, legal jurisdiction verbiage, and possibly other company specific information.  The Exhibit should not be allowed to used to add complexity or substantive terms, but be limited only to those items that are necessary to make the license their own.   

In this way, the number of approved licenses could probably be greatly reduced and making it so that a new license being submitted must truly be different in its substance.

----Original Message-----
From: Russell Nelson [mailto:nelson at crynwr.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 3:44 PM
To: license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: Three new proposed OSD terms

Alex Bligh writes:
 > This seems a little ill-defined. For instance, is a license which  > is identical to an existing license apart from a jurisdiction clause  > duplicative? There are all sorts of reasons why (say) non-Californian  > companies might not want exclusive jurisdiction in (say) California USA.
 >
 > On the other hand, clearly no license will be entirely duplicative  > (i.e. verbatim identical) because noone would bother to apply.

You're right, it's going to end up being a judgement call.

 > I would suggest this is rephrased as something like "No new license  > shall be approved which is similar to an existing license unless  > the submitter can show substantive differences between the new  > license and each similar existing license."

The wording might be better (I won't argue), but there's still a judgement call needed.  There's no magic wand.

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