[License-discuss] Looking for a license agreement.

[Rudy Lippan]

Hello,

I'm working on a project and have been struggling with finding a
license for it.  I currently have a very restrictive one (courtesy
of my lawyer) but am aware that it very much would limit the interest in
further development from the community.

The bulk of the project is in place, and the license is all that is
holding back an initial release.

There will also  be a community aspect where individuals will
develop and contribute components, just like every other open source
project....  However, some of the contributed components may not be
eligible for copyright protections.  A component might be a simple
configuration file, a pure data set, or even a full description of a
server farm with data processing and management software.

So what I would like to do is tie the license of the software to the user
of the software respecting the licenses of the community-distributed components
they use, whether or not the individual component is eligible for copyright
protection.

I would also like to have a framework where components could require
automatic redistribution of modifications---a contributor could select
a mandatory/automatic redistribution license.

While I understand the desire for someone to remove/disable/firewall off
the automatic redistribution functionality for security or other
reasons, it would be nice to say "If you disable this part of the
system, you are restricted from using contributed components that
require this functionality as a condition of your use". At the same
time, I am a somewhat concerned about this being viewed as an attempt
at DRM or opening the door to DRM-enabled open source software.


Does anyone know of an existing license that achieves this?  If not what
would be a good license to start with?


-r