License Committee Report for May 2007

[Russ Nelson]

Jim Sfekas writes:
 > Russ Nelson wrote:
 > > > The OSI board met yesterday, and the board accepted all
 > > > recommendations except the first.  We:
 > > > 
 > > > Rejected the SimPL because it intends to solve the same problem as
 > > > the GPL yet is incompatible with the GPL.  If the authors want to
 > > > revise their license so that it is GPL-compatible (as is the Artistic
 > > > License), then we will be happy to reconsider.
 > >
 > > It is.  I made sure of it; the latest version posted to the list says,
 > > "Licensing it to everyone under SimPL, or substantially similar terms
 > > (such as GPL 2.0);"
 > 
 > We think GPL 2.0 compatibility is an important feature for the SimPL, so
 > we've tried to incorporate suggestions from the list to make sure that the
 > SimPL is compatible.  We thought we were there per Matt Flaschen's feedback;
 > if not, please let us know what else might be needed to achieve that goal.  
 > 
 > Just to be sure we're talking about the same version, I've attached the
 > latest version of the license, as posted to the list last week.

Ahhhh, I think I see the problem.  In my report to the board, I linked
to the revised submission here:
    http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:msn:12796:ljlcebgacpjodogfcegi
and your copy of the license here:
    http://www.law.washington.edu/CASRIP/License/SimplePublicLicense.html

I did a once-over on the two and they seemed to match, however, I
didn't read it carefully enough, because the latter says "Licensing
any Derived Work under the SimPL," which caused us to reject the
license. That's obviously not GPL compatible, however the license in
the revised submission says "Licensing it to everyone under SimPL, or
substantially similar terms (such as GPL 2.0);" which clearly intends
to be GPL compatible.

I'll bring this back to the board.

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