Fwd: OSI approves CPAL at OSCON 2007

[Forrest J. Cavalier III]

Michael Tiemann wrote:

> among those who subscribe to license-discuss, but we felt that there
> was reasonable consensus that the safe harbor of the license was
> sufficiently broad to meet the requirements of the OSD and therefore
> approve the license.  Whereas there was significant and broad

This is a very significant point.

Imagine Microsoft submits a Microsoft EULA, and then tacks on a safe
harbor of "These terms or the BSD but not the GPL."

It gets OSI approval due to that safe harbor?  What if the safe harbor
is "These terms or the BSD but not if you license any other code under
the GPL."   That isn't discriminatory against any field of endeavor,
is it.  But why approve it?

Allowing safe harbor seems to be a risky approval criteria if you wish to 
maintain a semblence of descriptive trademark, don't you agree?

When an attorney comes along later and wants to discover what terms
are allowed in OSI approved licenses, they look at this precedent
of approval and then conclude what?

Perhaps licenses approved only due to a "safe harbor" provision must be 
automatically "Not recommended" or asterisked with a footnote or
in their own category as not precedent or something.

Or maybe disallow safe harbor provisions.