[License-discuss] Developing a new open source license

Bruce Perens bruce at perens.com
Thu Jan 31 17:51:38 UTC 2019


Van,

With all respect and understanding of the motivations of the group behind
this, I have a really big problem with this part:

Unlike other current open source licenses, the Autonomous Agent License
will require software that implements a compatible API or publicly performs
the API to also be open source.

I am the standards chair of the Open Source Initiative. *If the provision
you propose in this license was used by standards associations, they could
trivially prohibit Open Source implementations of their standard APIs.*
This is obviously something that OSI would have to fight in court.

Thus, it's a really, really bad idea for OSI to stand for such a provision
by approving a license containing it.

Also, almost trivially compared to the above issue, this obviously violates
OSD #9.

So, unfortunately I really have to recommend in the strongest way that a
license incorporating that term not be approved.

     Sorry

     Bruce

On Thu, Jan 31, 2019 at 9:17 AM VanL <van.lindberg at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I have been retained to help develop a new, strong copyleft open source
> license for a client, Holo Ltd. We have been going back and forth
> internally for a little while and we will shortly be putting out a draft
> for public comment. After the public comment period, we will be submitting
> the license to the OSI for certification.
>
> I will also be discussing this license in my presentation at CopyleftConf
> on Monday.
>
> In the meantime, some of the underlying reasoning for why we need a
> different open source license is being presented on Holo's blog. The first
> post is up now, and the second will be up in a couple days:
>
>
> https://medium.com/h-o-l-o/why-we-need-a-new-open-source-license-c8faf8a8dadd
>
> Comments are welcome.
>
> Thanks,
> Van
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> License-discuss at lists.opensource.org
>
> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org
>
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