[License-discuss] SPDX License List v1.14 & OSI questions

Mon Apr 30 20:19:24 UTC 2012

> I can find no record of approval of the Academic Free License prior to 

> 3.0.  As of 2006-10-31, we were linking to "/licenses/afl-3.0.php", 

> and now of course we link to http://opensource.org/licenses/AFL-3.0.

http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://opensource.org/licenses/* is your
friend.  Filtering for "afl" on the page shows that afl-1.1.php,
afl-1.2.php, afl-2.0.php, afl-2.1.php all existed, so I think we can infer
that they were approved.  No evidence for 1.0, though.

Indeed, my internal wayback machine can assure you that all were approved by
the OSI board.

This was a license I re-wrote through several versions as the OSI board kept
asking for different forms of patent defense, only to see industry
representatives groan and complain. These patent-defense experiments -
drafted with full cooperation at the time of the OSI board and with their
comprehensive input  -- were finally concluded with the publication of
Academic Free License (AFL) 3.0 along with OSL 3.0 (and soon thereafter, at
the request of IETF, the Non-Profit OSL 3.0). 

I previously requested that the earlier versions of those licenses be
deprecated. There is probably still software in the wild under those early
license versions, and it is still open source! But I recommend that people
use AFL/OSL/NOSL 3.0. These most recent versions of the license are in
widespread use already. 

/Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: John Cowan [mailto:cowan at mercury.ccil.org] 
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2012 12:19 PM
To: Karl Fogel; license-discuss at opensource.org
Cc: Jilayne Lovejoy; Tom Incorvia; spdx-legal
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] SPDX License List v1.14 & OSI questions

Karl Fogel scripsit:

> I can find no record of approval of the Academic Free License prior to 

> 3.0.  As of 2006-10-31, we were linking to "/licenses/afl-3.0.php", 

> and now of course we link to  <http://opensource.org/licenses/AFL-3.0>
http://opensource.org/licenses/AFL-3.0.

 <http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http:/opensource.org/licenses/*>
http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://opensource.org/licenses/* is your
friend.  Filtering for "afl" on the page shows that afl-1.1.php,
afl-1.2.php, afl-2.0.php, afl-2.1.php all existed, so I think we can infer
that they were approved.  No evidence for 1.0, though.

>   > Was this [Apache 1.0] ever OSI-approved?

> 

> For the reasons given above, I can't tell, sorry.  I can find Apache 

> 2.0, but not 1.0.

The same search shows that 1.1 was approved, but again no evidence for 1.0.

> Regarding Apple Public Source License 1.0 (APSL-1.0) you ask:

> 

>   > Was this ever OSI approved?  Note at top of fedora url says: This

>   > license is non-free. At one point, it could be found at

>   >  <http://www.opensource.apple.com/apsl/1.0.txt>
http://www.opensource.apple.com/apsl/1.0.txt, but that link now

>   > redirects to APSL 2.0. A copy of the license text has been taken

>   > from archive.org's October 01, 2007 revision.

The Archive shows that APSL 1.2 was approved.  Wikipedia claims that APSL
1.0 was also approved, but gives no authority for this statement.

That also matches my recollections (there was a considerable fuss at the
time, because it was OSI-approved but not FSF-free, the first of the new
licenses with that property).

> That's great, except s/commercial/proprietary/ :-(.

When the Artistic 1.0 was written, the distinction was not well understood.
I don't think that's a problem.

> Regarding old BSD 4-clause (or "original" BSD) you ask:

> 

>    > Was this OSI approved?

> 

> Again, I don't know.

No evidence that it ever was, nor do I have any recollection of it.

> 

> Regarding the "CNRI Python GPL Compatible License Agreement"

> (CNRI-Python-GPL-Compatible), you ask:

> 

>    > not on OSI site, but was OSI approved??  Please clarify will need

>    > link from OSI site once (if) updated

No evidence for it.

> Regarding GPL-1.0, you ask:

> 

>    > was this ever OSI approved?

> 

> Good question.  I'm not sure, but I doubt it, as by the time OSI was 

> formed, GPL 2.0 had been published for years already.  Thus 1.0 might 

> never have been considered.

That agrees with my recollections.

> Regarding GPL-2.0 (and sometimes GPL-3.0) "with Autoconf exception", 

> and "with Bison exception", and "with classpath exception", and "with 

> font exception", and "with GCC exception", you ask:

> 

>   > if the underlying license is OSI approved, then is the exception

>   > also approved?

> 

> In my opinion, yes, and there's no need for a separate license 

> approval process.  If a license is approved, then that license + an 

> exception should be considered approved when the exception clearly 

> adds no restrictions or requirements for the licensee, as is the case 

> here.

I agree.

> Regarding GNU Library General Public License v2 only (LGPL-2.0) you

> ask:

> 

>    > Was this ever OSI approved?

> 

> I don't know.  I suspect the answer to that one would not be so hard 

> to find, but I want to plough to the end of this spreadsheet right now 

> and get these responses posted.  I did a cursory search on the OSI 

> site and didn't find any evidence of approval.  Anyone here know about 

> LGPL-2.0?

The differences between 2.0 and 2.1, other than the name (GNU Library vs.
Lesser Public License) are entirely editorial.  I can provide a list of them
for anyone who wants it.

> Regarding OSL-2.0 and OSL-2.1, you asked:

> 

>    > is this OSI approved? (versions 1.0 and 3.0 are, but this one not

>    > listed anywhere on site)

> 

> I don't know.  Anyone?  Bueller?

OSL 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, and 2.1 are all on the Archive.  Since AFL and OSL were
always developed together and submitted together, I think it's safe to
assume that AFL 1.0 and OSL 1.2 were both approved, despite the lack of
direct evidence.  See my .sig.

-- 

John Cowan   <mailto:cowan at ccil.org> cowan at ccil.org
<http://ccil.org/~cowan> http://ccil.org/~cowan

"The exception proves the rule."  Dimbulbs think: "Your counterexample
proves my theory."  Latin students think "'Probat' means 'tests': the
exception puts the rule to the proof."  But legal historians know it means
"Evidence for an exception is evidence of the existence of a rule in cases
not excepted from."

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