OSL 3.0: informing licensees of their rights

[Lawrence Rosen]

> So imagine A is the author, who licenses to B, who licenses to C.  B
> removes A's notice of licensing from the executable or the document,
> and doesn't tell C about the existence of source code, let alone how
> to get t.  How will C even know to ask for the source, let alone find
> out his or her other rights under the OSL?

I'm sorry that I do not understand the problem here. If you need source code
from any licensor, ask for it. If there is any right you want that you're
not sure you have, check with your licensor. Why impose notice burdens on
folks who (when asked) will have nothing to hide, especially when almost
nobody cares to read the notices anyway? Is there something specific I'm
missing? /Larry

Lawrence Rosen
Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com)
Stanford University, Lecturer in Law
3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482
707-485-1242  *  fax: 707-485-1243
Author of "Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and 
                Intellectual Property Law" (Prentice Hall 2004)

-----Original Message-----
From: news [mailto:news at sea.gmane.org] On Behalf Of August Zajonc
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 9:07 AM
To: license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: OSL 3.0: informing licensees of their rights

Sanjoy Mahajan <sanjoy <at> mrao.cam.ac.uk> writes:

> 
> The OSL 2.1 required the licensor to give the address of a source-code
> repository (unless source was provided along with the work), but the
> OSL 3.0 no longer requires that.  How will licensees know that they
> have broad rights to copy, modify, and distribute the work?  One way
> is from the notice of licensing, "Licensed under the Open Software
> License v3.0".  But there's no requirement to retain, in the original
> work, the notice of licensing.  The source code will still have the
> notice, but the licensee doesn't have the source.
> 
> So imagine A is the author, who licenses to B, who licenses to C.  B
> removes A's notice of licensing from the executable or the document,
> and doesn't tell C about the existence of source code, let alone how
> to get t.  How will C even know to ask for the source, let alone find
> out his or her other rights under the OSL?
> 
> -Sanjoy
> 
> 

I share this question.

In particular, I want to insure, very clearly, that licensees know their
rights. 

In the case of a webapp, the focus seems to include license details in the
source code. That is fine, as long as folks have a clear way to get from
using
the application to using the source code. 

I'd love to force that the license text appear at the bottom of each page
for
example, or is otherwise prominently noticed. The attribution notice
requirements appear satisfied in source code. Is there a standard approach
to
requiring prominent end user notice that the application is under the OSL?

Prominent notice might be one time on account creation or at footer of pages
in
my mind at least.