[License-discuss] Feedback on Open-Source Contribution License

[Tom Callaway]

This feels like a violation of criteria 5 of the OSD: The license must not
discriminate against any person or group of persons.

By restricting use to contributors of open-source works, you're actively
discriminating against a group of people (people who are either unable or
unwilling to contribute to open source).

There is also the point that "in some way" is painfully vague and trivial
to circumvent, but even if you added a lengthy treatise on what constitutes
a contribution to any open-source work, I think you'd still run back into
criteria 5.

Tom

On Wed, Oct 23, 2019 at 8:46 AM Simon Fridlund <simon at fridlund.email> wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> I'm looking for some feedback on a potential license I've been thinking
> about for the last few years. I've done some searching and I haven't found
> any open-source license that requires consumers of the software/source to
> contribute to any open-source project in some way.
>
> I've started out with a modified version of the ISC license and it is as
> follows.
>
> ```
> Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any
> purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
> copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies and that
> users of this software contribute to any open-source work in some way.
>
> ... rest of ISC license ...
> ```
>
> What do you think about a license like this and is the language in the
> changes even close to ok for a license?
>
> Any feedback is appreciated.
>
> Here's a link to the license repo I've setup.
> https://github.com/zimme/open-source-contribution-license
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Simon Fridlund
> _______________________________________________
> License-discuss mailing list
> License-discuss at lists.opensource.org
>
> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20191023/048abbf8/attachment.html>