[License-discuss] For Public Comment: The Libre Source License

[Brendan Hickey]

On Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 00:18 Howard Chu <hyc at openldap.org> wrote:

> I don't believe this test is conclusive. Sending modifications back to the
> code's original author doesn't immediately publish them.


"Original author" is frought. We've seen a number of licenses that
privilege this hypothetical person. None of them will be free or open
source software under any standard. Who's the original author when you
combine two pieces of software? We can require that you notify everyone who
has contributed. This sounds like a more horrible form of badgeware.

And, publication
> of a modification doesn't necessarily identify anybody. For example -
> some of the contributors to rtmpdump used a cryptographic hash to
> assert their copyrights.
>
>
> http://git.ffmpeg.org/gitweb/rtmpdump.git/blob/c5f04a58fc2aeea6296ca7c44ee4734c18401aa3:/README


Publication may not necessarily identify someone, but that doesn't make it
a good idea.

> and Desert Island test (a person stranded on an
> > island, no matter whether alone or with other deserted people, but
> > cut off, must be able to exercise all DFSG-conformant works inside
> > their limited-connectivity society).
>
> The requirement to send modifications back doesn't prevent anyone from
> using the code. You
> could call it best-effort, or at earliest opportunity.
>

Best effort can be very, very lazy.

I simply don't think requiring the publication of private changesets will
accomplish what you want. At best you'll get a mountain of half done
patches or nothing at all

This assumes that anyone would be willing to use this license. I haven't
heard of any serious project that uses the RPL. Why would users flock to
this?

As for an overall goal of this license it sounds like you want to exert
control over end users, right? Proprietary software gives you tools for
this.

Brendan
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