Question on OSD #5

[Tzeng, Nigel H.]

Look guys, there's no difference between what I was thinking about and what was already approved under the Jabber Open Source License Section 5:

		5. Inability to Comply Due to Statute or Regulation. If it is impossible for you to comply with any of the terms of this License with respect to some or all of the Licensed Product due to statute, judicial order, or regulation, then you must (i) comply with the terms of this License to the maximum extent possible, (ii) cite the statute or regulation that prohibits you from adhering to the License, and (iii) describe the limitations and the code they affect. Such description must be included in the LEGAL file described in Section 4(d), and must be included with all distributions of the Source Code. Except to the extent prohibited by statute or regulation, such description must be sufficiently detailed for a recipient of ordinary skill at computer programming to be able to understand it.

Try as I might, I don't see anything too horrific about letting folks continue to use your code even if they can't comply with your terms because of a statute (law), judicial order or (government) regulation.  The software effectively reverts to a permissive license when the user cannot legally comply with the requirement to provide source downstream.  This is only a problem if you have a problem with permissive licenses in the first place.
 
Any corporate or government project that can get a statute or government regulation enacted to steal my code is part of the Illuminati and is welcome to do whatever they want with it.  I'm not messing with them or their orbital mind control lasers.
 
Those projects that aren't part of the Illuminati but are constrained by statutes or government regulation are still free to use my code as long as they comply as much as they are allowed.
 
Of course, it's not exactly MY code or it would just go out under a permissive license.
 
Usual disclaimers apply, NSFME, IANAL, etc.
 
Regards,
 
Nigel
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