[License-discuss] AFL/OSL/NOSL 3.0

[Lawrence Rosen]

Open Source friends,

I discovered in the past few days on other lists that there are several misleading descriptions of my AFL/OSL/NOSL 3.0 licenses on FSF and OSI websites. Neither site bothered to publish my own description of these licenses, and their own characterizations are incorrect.

Please see this: http://rosenlaw.com/OSL3.0-explained.htm. 

I would appreciate it if FSF and OSI would copy this document to their own websites instead of inventing their own.

Best regards, /Larry



-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Wielaard [mailto:mark at klomp.org] 
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2016 12:32 AM
To: License submissions for OSI review <license-review at opensource.org>
Subject: Re: [License-review] Approval: BSD + Patent License

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 10:03:33AM -0800, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
> McCoy is proposing a BSD license plus patent license. It is an okay 
> FOSS license. But AFL 3.0 did that very thing 10 years ago. The only 
> reason for AFL 3.0 not being accepted generally for that same purpose 
> is the FSF's complaint, "contains contract provisions." That kind of 
> quasi-legal balderdash is directly relevant to what McCoy and others 
> want to do.
> 
> And if AFL 3.0 isn't satisfactory for some random reason, then use the 
> Apache 2.0 license.

Sorry Larry, but these are impractical suggestions wrt reviewing the license submission and intent of the BSD + Patent License. The AFLv3 is GPL incompatible because it contains contract provisions requiring distributors to obtain the express assent of recipients to the license terms. The extra restrictions making ASLv2 incompatible with GPLv2 have already been discussed. Both are clearly documented cases of expressly incompatible licenses by the GPL license steward the FSF. I understand your desire to mention your disagreement with the license steward and discuss alternative legal interpretations of what it means to be compatible with the GPL then what might be generally accepted and used in practice. But it is offtopic and not a very constructive discussion in the context of this license submission, which doesn't contain any of those extra restrictions.

Cheers,

Mark
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