[License-discuss] Proposed license decision process

[Lawrence Rosen]

Regarding "consideration":

 

The sharing of open source software among users worldwide is consideration enough for all of us to enforce our licenses!

 

Bruce Perens is right. Please comment on THAT. Kevin and Florian worry too much about simple concepts about "consideration" in U.S. and U.K. law. 

 

/Larry

 

 

From: License-discuss <license-discuss-bounces at lists.opensource.org> On Behalf Of Bruce Perens
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2018 8:38 AM
To: license-discuss at lists.opensource.org
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Proposed license decision process

 

We went over this in Jacobsen v. Katzer. I testified (and the court agreed) that there _was_ consideration in Open Source licenses, although it was non-monetary.

 

    Thanks

 

    Bruce

 

On Fri, Dec 28, 2018 at 4:39 AM Kevin P. Fleming <kevin+osi at km6g.us <mailto:kevin%2Bosi at km6g.us> > wrote:

One of my colleagues (who strongly prefers public domain dedications
and permissive licenses) recently indicated to me that in his opinion
as a software author, the obligation to distribute source code
qualified as 'consideration', since it requires a tangible (to some
degree) action on the part of the licensee. I had never thought about
it this way, but I can definitely see how someone could arrive at that
conclusion, and this seems to align with Florian's concern.

On Thu, Dec 27, 2018 at 9:14 AM Florian Weimer <fw at deneb.enyo.de <mailto:fw at deneb.enyo.de> > wrote:
>
> * Lawrence Rosen:
>
> > But let us nevertheless agree on a pragmatic definition of "open
> > source software".
>
> > “Open source software” means software actually distributed under terms
> > that grant a copyright and patent license from all contributors to the
> > software for every licensee to access and use the complete source
> > code, make copies of the software or derivative works thereof and,
> > without payment of royalties or other consideration, to distribute the
> > unmodified or modified software.
>
> I think “consideration” is a bad word, it's difficult to understand
> for those of us who were not brought up in the English legal
> tradition.
>
> I'd be worried that “no other consideration” would exclude copyleft
> licenses, or more broadly speaking, licenses that use copyright as a
> tool to get the licensee to perform any additional action that is not
> inherently tied to exploitation of the copyright itself.
>
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