BSD-like licenses and the OSI approval process
Donovan Hawkins
hawkins at cephira.com
Wed Oct 17 00:19:42 UTC 2007
On Tue, 16 Oct 2007, Rick Moen wrote:
> Larry maintains that it's better-written and is a more certain guard
> against modern legal risks, while still matching precisely the intent of
> a simple permissive licence. I think he's right, for whatever it's worth.
I don't disagree, though I think some of the clauses make it unsuitable as
a replacement for BSDL (patent retaliation, venue specification, court
costs). However, if your aim is compatiblity (which is generally important
for permissive licensing), it's not a very good choice compared to BSDL.
>> I suggested following the Creative Commons model and using keywords to
>> add additional contraints like this (similar to the "attribution,
>> share-alike" wording)...combining upstream works into a single project
>> becomes as simple as ORing all the keywords.
>
> You know, that actually might work, with sufficient care about phrasing.
> Good idea, worth trying.
I mentioned the idea previously and discussed some of the things I was
trying to do with it myself (see
http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:13986 for more info). As I
said at the time, I'm no lawyer and don't claim to be the best person for
it, but someone has to start it up. Hopefully I can get a lawyer or two to
help out, or hire one if I can swing it.
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Donovan Hawkins, PhD "The study of physics will always be
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hawkins at cephira.com hazards of physics drop off as 1/r^2,
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