For Approval: Common Public Attribution License (CPAL)

[Matthew Flaschen]

David Woolley wrote:
> The problem is that the "commercial use" in the above paragraph has a
> different meaning (a common sense one) from the one defined in the
> licence.  That, at best is confusing.  It would be easy to subvert the
> OSD if licensors could chance the definition of "commercial use" used
> within the wording of the OSD.

OSD doesn't actually use the phrase "commercial use".  Even if it did,
licenses couldn't modify the meaning.

> Incidentally, it seems to me that, in their definition of "commercial
> use", it discriminates against non-commercial use, and, arguably, it
> discriminates against non-commercial use in the sense intended by OSI.

How so?  If anything, it discriminates against private modification and
use both commercially (e.g. within in a business but without
distribution) and personally (by a private individual).

> Doesn't the OSI actually say "field of endeavour", which
> would include personal not for profit use.

Yes.  I don't see any right a business gets that a consumer doesn't here.

> Also, it explicitly includes "Use" under the uses permitted by the
> licence.  That has an implication that, to the extent enforceable by
> law, Use is not allowed without a licence.

That is perhaps the implication, but I don't think it's valid, at least
under U.S. law (but IANAL).

> Even if MPL is grand-fathered in and there is precedent that any implied
> field of endeavour restrictions are not real, I don't think one should
> be encouraging the inclusion of questinable wording in deri

I agree that this wording is somewhat poor, but I think MPL does comply
with OSD and making piecemeal modifications to the MPL-based parts of
CAPL would be more confusing than beneficial.

Matt Flaschen