Free RewardRights License

[Matthew Flaschen]

Norbert Bollow wrote:
>> that allows relicensing under a particular proprietary license.
> 
> At least according to the FSF's definitions of the terms, the
> Non-Free RewardRights Licenses are not proprietary licenses.
> They're semi-free.

This is just semantics.  The FSF defines such a license as non-free, and
it's not OSD-compliant either.  Thus, OSI shouldn't be endorsing it even
implicitly.

> I've have fixed the two compatibility clauses which were a
> bit carelessly worded so that they could be misinterpreted
> in this way.

Your change appears to address the problems I identified, though a
combination with CC-NonCommercial couldn't be distributed commercially.

> That clause is not needed in FRRL due to the FRRL having an explicit
> linking permission for the Apache License.  (Linking with the Apache
> License adds the additional requirement of requiring indemnification
> in certain situations which would be a violation of the "no additional
> requirements" rule if it weren't for the explicit linking permission.)

I think you're right, because of the "provided that in doing so you
fulfil the conditions imposed by the Apache License" clause.

> For an example of how this could turn out to be more robust, imagine
> that a new category of "intellectual property rights" gets invented
> which is similar in effect to patents so that it would allow the
> equivalent of the Novell-Microsoft deal, but distinct from patents
> so that the patents provisions of the Dicussion Draft 3 and Final
> Call Draft of GPLv3 don't apply.

I'm kind of skeptical that a license could deal with this implicitly.  I
doubt it would hold up in court.

>> Besides, what's the point in strong copyleft it can still be
>> converted to a (single) proprietary license?
> 
> The point is that even the Non-Free RewardRights Licenses provide
> important freedoms.

I know the FRRL is OSD-compliant and I understand your perspective, but
I just think it's bad policy.

Matt Flaschen