License Committee Report for September 2008

[Matthew Flaschen]

Lawrence Rosen wrote:
>>> Recommend: reassure submittor that it's okay to give people extra
>>>   freedoms by voting to approve the practice of using an OSI-approved
>>>   license in conjunction with a licensing announcement that removes
>>>   restrictions on the licensee.
>> RTEMS is clearly OSI-compliant, as it really is just GPLv2 + extra
>> permissions.  However, if OSI makes a general statement about this it
>> should be clear that extra permissions may be automatically compliant,
>> but only if there are /no/ extra restrictions.
> 
> 
> Any official statement on this by OSI would have to define the terms
> "permissions" and "restrictions". 
> 
> The court in Jacobsen (and the Creative Commons brief that won us this case)
> used more traditional IP terms: The "scope" of the copyright license and the
> "conditions" imposed by that license. Perhaps we should try to echo that
> jargon?
> 
> The term of art for the removal of a condition is, I believe, "waiver".
> There may also be conditional waivers....
> 
> /Larry

Perhaps the OSI could say, "An OSI-approved license may be supplemented
by an additional permission statement.  The combination will be
OSI-compliant, providing that permission /only/ has the effect of
waiving conditions in the OSI-approved license, and that such waiver is
not conditional."?  But I agree OSI would have to be very careful.

Matt Flaschen