For Approval: MLL (minimal library license)

[Matthew Flaschen]

Chris Travers wrote:
> I agree that this needs no separate approval provided that you are
> only conditionally dual-licensing the software based on approved
> wordings by the OSI (i.e. using the license texts listed on the web
> site).

I don't think that's necessarily true.  It depends what the exact effect
of the conditional licensing is.  If, for instance, you say the code is
GPL when linked to proprietary code, and MPL when linked to GPL code
that's probably not going to get approved.

> For example, I am entirely unsure how these
> specific variants were chosen in the first place 

Some (such as 3-clause BSD) are the canonical, and only license by that
name.  That doesn't stop people from making BSD-style licenses and
calling them BSD.

> (the Kerberos license
> from MIT is further from the "MIT License" on the OSI site than the
> Intel Open Source License is from the BSD License on the web site).

Unfortunately, there are many licenses called MIT license.  The OSI site
has an exact copy of one of them.

> Otherwise you don't have a common point of reference for the actual
> wording of the licensing and someone could easily grab the wrong
> variant (intentionally or by accident) and that might be bad.

I agree that referencing a license without including it is a bad idea.

Matt Flaschen