[License-discuss] System 76's BeanBooks Public License v1.0

[John Cowan]

Luis Villa scripsit:

> Sec. 3.3 strikes me as odd; essentially a very strong CLA baked into
> the license. Not non-free/open, per se, at least at first glance -
> just... odd?

Section 3 as a whole is a CLA; it only applies to you if you make
a Contribution, which requires that you submit your work (whether a
Modification or otherwise) to System76.  Nothing in the rest of the
license requires you to submit anything to them, so Section 3 does not
affect the free/open nature of the license.

> Sec. 4.3 strikes me as actually conceptually somewhat interesting,
> inasmuch as many commercial lawyers have argued that this type of
> clause is often implicit in software that contains a protect trademark
> embedded in the software and not removed by a downstream licensee.

In this case, however, Section 4.2 prevents you from removing the
protected trademark.  Taking the two clauses together, you are effectively
prevented from making commercial use of the software without paying for
the trademark license, which obviously contravenes clauses 6 and 7 of
the OSD.  So this license is on its face not Open Source.

-- 
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