[License-discuss] plain text license versions?

[Luis Villa]

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:55 PM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> Quoting John Cowan (cowan at mercury.ccil.org):
>
>> The difficulty is that text often winds up in printed books, and then
>> you either have to distribute a CD with the book containing the editable
>> source, or be prepared to issue such CDs for no more than the cost of
>> distributing them.   Both are expensive and awkward activities, and
>> neither is well-supported by the printed-book sales channels that exist.
>
> Emphasis added:
>
> _Um, hello?  Waiver._

As a practical matter, indicating, tracking and relying on waiver is a
bit of a pain. e.g., lets say upstream says:

"I give you a copy of the license this work is licensed under by
pointing you at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html"

Downstream now has a problem: does this text constitute a waiver? Is
this indication that we can "give any other recipients... a copy"
(Apache 4.1) in the same manner? The easiest solution to this
(admittedly small) problem is... to include a full copy of the
license.

Or to put it another way: OSI spent a lot of time and energy
discouraging people from using custom licenses. Custom waivers
(particularly for something trivial like this) are just another form
of the same mess.

Luis