[Fwd: FW: For Approval: Generic Attribution Provision]

[Craig Muth]

> > What I proposed was bad for open source was specifically when
> > companies rebrand and charge money without contributing back.

Matthew Garrett wrote:
> Given that the BSD license (one of the original open source licenses)
> explicitly allows this, and given the continued popularity of such
> licenses, I think it's unlikely that this belief is especially common.

I agree that no one wants to throw away the BSD license because of
this.  However if you released some software under BSD and someone
grabbed your code and simply replaced all instances of "YourProject"
with "Microsoft" (for example) and stuck it on their website and
charged for it, I doubt many would consider this particular act good
for open source, though I grant it wouldn't voilate the license.  I'd
buy calling it a necessary evil for certain licenses.

Nicholas Goodman wrote:
> I'm trying to figure out why these companies find the term
> "shared source" or "public source" or "community source" so offensive.
> I'm NOT dogging freeware.   Freeware is good for users, not as good as
> Open Source, but it's good for users.  :)

If we're talking about projects whose source is open - for
downloading, modifying, redistributing, and selling - and assuming
they get their license to reasonably conform to the OSD, who are we to
say it's not open source?

Chuck Swiger wrote:
> If a project isn't OK with people reselling their software, then the
> people writing the code don't actually want to put it under an open
> source license.  They should simply use a restrictive license with a
> "no commercial use" clause instead, and call it "source available",
> "freeware", "trialware", or some such....

But I don't think any project in question isn't OK with people
reselling their software (although I can only speak for myself).  It
is true that an attribution provision names terms which must be
conformed to upon sale/redistribution of a *modifed* version, but the
GPL and other licenses are a precedent for that.

--Craig Muth