OSI Approval process

Lawrence Rosen lrosen at rosenlaw.com
Wed Sep 19 13:51:29 UTC 2007


> AFL 3.0 does not seem to be compatible with either GPLv2 or GPLv3, due
> to the Attorney's Fees and External Deployment provisions (possibly
> others).  Is that your interpretation?

Not at all. The attorney's fees provision reflects the fee-shifting
arrangement that is prevalent in many countries, including the UK. It
doesn't affect the GPL, any more than the indemnity provision of Apache
License 2.0 affects the GPL. 

As for the external deployment provision, it doesn't affect the AFL at all,
since distribution doesn't matter under that license. Perhaps you're
confusing it with the OSL 3.0, which has the same language but there it
really matters.

/Larry


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matthew Flaschen [mailto:matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 10:34 PM
> To: License Discuss
> Subject: Re: OSI Approval process
> 
> Lawrence Rosen wrote:
> 
> > I agree with you that the old BSD license is not clear enough. But I
> don't
> > understand why people and companies keep submitting permissive licenses
> to
> > OSI when there are several licenses, including the generic and tested
> AFL
> > 3.0,
> 
> AFL 3.0 does not seem to be compatible with either GPLv2 or GPLv3, due
> to the Attorney's Fees and External Deployment provisions (possibly
> others).  Is that your interpretation?
> 
> Matt Flaschen




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