motivation Re: For Approval: Transitive Grace Period Public Licence, v1.0

[Donovan Hawkins]

On Thu, 26 Feb 2009, zooko wrote:

> Thank you for posting about the possibility that the TGPPL could engender 
> greater production of open source software.  That is indeed exactly my 
> motivation.
>
> What I call "the capitalist feedback loop" is that under capitalism the 
> greater the magnitude of value created by something, then the greater the 
> amount of resources that tend to get directed to making more of that thing.
>
> I used to call this by the economics jargon term "incentive", but this is 
> misleading as it makes it sounds like people don't *want* to create open 
> source software enough, and we're going to make them *want* to by paying 
> them.  That's not it at all -- it's a question of resource allocation.

I had a similar idea a couple years ago for a time-delayed GPL license 
which would allow use in closed-source projects without source code 
release for a fixed term (I was toying with 2-3 years). I was primarily 
inspired by the fan projects trying to resurrect classic computer games 
without access to the source code. The code has little or no commercial 
value, but it is often lost or in ownership limbo because the company has 
folded. Even if the company still exists, they generally have no incentive 
to release it and will let it rot on a shelf rather than give it away. I 
was hoping that the license I was working on could offer those companies a 
body of software that would speed their own development in exchange for 
giving us their programs after they were no longer of value to them.

The posts you quoted were discussing source code escrow; I also decided 
that some sort of escrow would be needed if such a license was going to 
work. It's easy to agree to release your source code years in the future 
when you are first starting a project, but it gets a lot harder when the 
game you wrote turns out to be a blockbuster success and the source code 
is suddenly worth millions if you can keep it from your competitors. I 
tried to write some language that could force eventual release, but I 
ultimately abandoned the whole thing believing that it would be nearly 
impossible to ensure compliance. Towards the end I was considering having 
some open source websites that would be certified to act as escrow agents 
(for people who wanted the simplest and free option), together with very 
strict legalese in order to use an uncertified bank or law firm (for 
companies who want to be sure their code won't be released early). At that 
point, I realized this was changing from a project I could put together 
and get a laywer to read over and fix to something that would take a team 
of lawyers to write and a judge somewhere down the line to decide if they 
succeeded.

I stuck a copy of the last version of the text I wrote on 
http://www.cephira.com/Temp/CephiraLicense.txt for you to look at. As 
always, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. The license has 
never been looked at by a lawyer and is probably not usable, but maybe you 
will find something useful for your license. The text says it is version 3 
because it was intended to be compatible with GPL v3.

The license I was working on (which was to be called the Cephira Public 
License or CPL) was basically the GPL with additional permissions to 
release derived works under the CPL or a special license called the 
Cephira Temporary License (CTL). CPL code would sit between the permissive 
licenses and the GPL in terms of compatibility: CPL code could use 
permissive code but not the reverse, and GPL code could use CPL code but 
not the reverse. Developers extending CPL code would ideally release under 
CPL, but GPL developers could also use it. Closed-source commercial 
developers would use the CTL together with their own closed-source 
restrictions to release their programs, but the CTL automatically grants 
GPL rights after the temporary period has expired. That was the legal 
mechanism I was trying to create with the license, and it seems like it 
could work if you can figure out how to ensure compliance up front.

There is some language on source code escrow in my draft, but it's 
probably the weakest section. I'm not sure a bulletproof version is even 
possible, but I wish you the best of luck in trying to work it all out.

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Donovan Hawkins, PhD                 "The study of physics will always be
Software Engineer                     safer than biology, for while the
hawkins at cephira.com                   hazards of physics drop off as 1/r^2,
http://www.cephira.com                biological ones grow exponentially."
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