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

[Rick Moen]

[Sorry about several typos and omitted words in my reply to Andrew Buni,
just posted.  7:30 AM is a appalling and uncivilised time to be up;
I probably should have saved my draft for review when my brain's unfrozen.]

Quoting Ben Tilly (btilly at gmail.com):

> >About as far as a reasonable interpretation of OSD #6 (in particular,
> >the freedom to reuse in commerce) suggests.  Nicholas Goodman has
> >pointed out, in that connection, that "Exhibit B" firm MuleSource has
> >recently stated bluntly that its licence's _aim_ is to induce commercial
> >users of its MPL + Exhibit B codebase to buy a "commercial licence",
> >instead:
> >http://www.nicholasgoodman.com/bt/blog/2006/12/22/badgeware-ceo-to-community-buy-a-commercial-license/
> 
> While I agree fully with the OSD #10 complaints, I don't buy this OSD
> #6 complaint at all.

I agree that you don't buy it.

> A number of companies (eg MySQL) have pursued dual-license strategies
> using the GPL in a similar way.  Does that make the GPL not open
> source?  Of course not!

It appears that licence-discuss must go through remedial licence
analysis from time to time, e.g., the frequently re-explained point
that, no, copyleft licensing is not construed to be "discrimination
against a field of endeavour", as creation of proprietary derivative
works is not a right necessary to fully _use_ the codebase for any
purpose whateover, and since copyright obligations, if reasonable in
nature, don't impair that use either.

Please see my separate reply to Andrew Buni.  It's _basic_ to the notion
of open source that all users of a codebase are supposed to be granted
the right to exploit its use fully in all usage scenarios, specifically
including commerce.  OSI makes a particular point of stressing those 
commerce rights in OSD #6 and elsewhere, because of the past popularity
of "Hey, you can look at the source code; why on earth do you insist on 
commercial rights, too?" licences like NCSA Mosaic's.

Anyway, it's utterly unquestionable that the Exhibit B licences are
aiming to make it so unattractive to use the code for commercial use
that nobody but the copyright holder does so.  They even say so, as
Nicholas Goodman pointed out!

> People are ALLOWED to use the software, they just don't WANT to.

Sorry, this is a sham notion of open source.  I'm not even going to
spend time pointing out your error.  Figure it out for yourself.

-- 
Cheers,     "There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a 
Rick Moen   little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider
rick at linuxmafia.com  price only are this man's lawful prey." - J. Ruskin (attr.)