[License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development

[Lawrence Rosen]

Fred Trotter wrote:
> First, I would like for the OSI and FSF people on this list to consider 
> some kind of new status for a license, like "OSI tolerated"
> or "OSI Not Open Source But It Doesn't Suck" , or 
> "Not Free Software but tolerated for this purpose" or something like.

Hi Fred,

I actually like the Ghostscript/Aladdin license, which was essentially
GPL-after-one-year. I was their attorney at the time and I fully supported
their business and licensing model. (For what it is worth, so did my
client's friend, Richard Stallman, who apparently considered this a
reasonable way then to end up with GPL software.) That said, you should note
that the Ghostscript commercial licensor no longer uses the "time-delayed
open source" model. You should perhaps talk directly to the folks at Artifex
to understand their experience with it. In any event, you are free to use
this model if you want to!

Your suggestion for a special OSI/FSF license category suffers from another
problem: Several of the licenses on the current OSI list (including some
licenses recommended by automated license recommendation tools touted around
here) already are "Open Source But They Suck Anyway." OSI and FSF both have
proven to be sometimes bad judges of license suckiness.  Such categories
won't help much, given the wide differences of opinions and "business"
models around here.

/Larry

Lawrence Rosen
Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com)
3001 King Ranch Rd., Ukiah, CA 95482
Office: 707-485-1242
Linkedin profile: http://linkd.in/XXpHyu 


-----Original Message-----
From: fred trotter [mailto:fred.trotter at gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 2:12 AM
To: license-discuss at opensource.org; Michael Widenius; karen at gnome.org;
mark.atwood at hp.com; Eben Moglen; rms at gnu.org
Cc: nathan at gonzalezmosier.com; Roberto C. Rondero de Mosier
Subject: [License-discuss] Open Source Eventually License Development
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