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

[ChanMaxthon]

I was once using straight 3c-BSDL but one incident (I am not from an Anglophone country) proved to me that it's language is too complex in local courts. Now I am sort of forced into creating a functional equivalent using only simple English (definition: restrict word usage to the 3000 basic English word defined by Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary) so this is my first attempt.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 23, 2015, at 02:00, Ben Cotton <bcotton at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> 
>> 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
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