[License-discuss] Does this look like an open source license?

[Ben Cotton]

On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 10:32 AM, Maxthon Chan <xcvista at me.com> wrote:
> I have used a license like this for my open projects for a very long time. Does this look like a real open source license?
<snip>
> Is this a rephrase of the 3-clause BSD license?
It looks like a rephrase of the BSD 3-Clause, but there are some
concerns I have about it (I am not a lawyer, so my concerns may be
incomplete and/or irrelevant)...

>>     *   You distribute this software in its executable form with the copyright
>>         notice above, this license and the disclaimer below intact and display
>>         them in appropriate ways;
>>     *   You distribute this software in its source code form with the copyright
>>         notice above, this license and the disclaimer below intact and the end
>>         result of such source code displays them in appropriate ways;

These two clauses, pedantically interpreted, would require anyone who
uses the software to distribute it. Basically you'd want "If you
distribute...then you must include..." The BSD 3-Clause begins both
clauses with the word "Redistributions" in order to make it clear.

In addition, I'm not sure what is meant in the second clause by "the
end result of such source code". Does that mean any
compiled/interpreted code must display the license? What if it's a
program that generally produces no output (think `cp`, `mv`, etc.)?
The BSD 3-Clause requires the notice in the documentation, etc., but
not in the "end result of the source code". I would argue that it
violates item 10 of the Open Source Definition, but that's a debatable
point. In any case, it seems impractical.

>>     *   The name of the author and contributors are not used without previous
>>         explicit written permission by the author and contributors.
>>
This also seems impractical, as it would disallow attribution. This
license doesn't require attribution, so it's not a direct conflict,
but it would prevent a common courtesy (at least without
administrative overhead for both the original and downstream
developers). The BSD 3-Clause forbids the use of the author's name to
"endorse or promote products derived from [the] software", but not
attribution. This wouldn't technically violate any part of the OSD as
far as I can tell, but it's unwieldy.

>> THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED TO YOU ON AN "AS-IS" BASIS. NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER
>> COMES WITH THIS SOFTWARE, IMPLICIT OR NOT, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY THE LAWS.
>> THE AUTHORS, CONTRIBUTORS AND COPYRIGHT HOLDERS SHALL NOT BE HELD RELIABLE TO
>> ANY DAMAGE OR LOSS OCCURRED FROM USING OF THIS SOFTWARE.
>
"THE LAWS"? What laws?

It's not clear from your post if you've written this license or if you
got it from somewhere else, but if it's yours I wonder what the
motivation for this is as opposed to just using the BSD 3-Clause,
which seems to have the same intention but with more practical
wording.


Thanks,
BC

-- 
Ben Cotton