[License-discuss] Thoughts on the subject of ethical licenses

[McCoy Smith]

From: License-discuss <license-discuss-bounces at lists.opensource.org> On Behalf Of Russell McOrmond
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2020 4:57 AM
To: license-discuss at lists.opensource.org
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Thoughts on the subject of ethical licenses

 

 

I recognise that this reminder will be annoying to some, but the FSF and OSI have a problem in that it has already approved licenses which seek to add restrictions on the mere USE of software versus the DISTRIBUTION of software.   The AGPL clauses specifically, and other aspects of GPLv3 (Tivoization), opened the door to this controvercial conversation.

The AGPL “ASP loophole” clause didn’t open the door to that conversation.  I can think of at least two other OSI-approved licenses that had that concept in them before AGPL was submitted for approval (although AGPLv1 might have preceded them to the concept —but AGPLv1 wasn’t ever submitted to OSI for approval).




My hope that this conversation won't just fizzle without the community documenting the primary goals (and that is plural, as there are a set of complimentary goals) of the Open Source community, the reasoning for the bare-minimum expressed in the OSD, and having an honest discussion about whether we should provide critiques of existing approved licenses that may be problemmatic for achieving the goals.

 

I share this belief.  Part of the issue, IMHO, is that the OSD is somewhat open-ended on certain points (although 5 & 6 are pretty clear), so there can be debate about whether certain licenses either on the list or proposed to be placed on this list fall within or without the OSD. Which is why these debates happen, and why there may exist a perception that the OSD is somewhat malleable depending on who is submitting the license for approval.

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