[License-discuss] REMOVE AAL from list of approved licenses

[Richard Fontana]

For the curious, this would seem to be the original license submission:
http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2002-May/005308.html
with apparently only one (positive) comment, from John Cowan:
http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2002-May/005309.html

FWIW I disagree with the 2002 John Cowan wrt his assertion that the
AAL is "essentially equivalent to the Old BSD license". The badgeware
requirement in AAL applies whenever the program is launched and is a
direct restriction on modification, which seems substantially more
burdensome in practice than the BSD advertising requirement which only
kicks in if you generate "advertising materials mentioning features or
use of this software" and thus is likely to remain theoretical in most
cases.

Richard



On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 10:06 PM Richard Fontana <rfontana at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 5:18 PM Josh Berkus <josh at berkus.org> wrote:
> >
> > All,
> >
> > A submitter to License-Review just pointed out that we actually approved
> > this license back in 2002:
> >
> > https://opensource.org/licenses/AAL
> >
> > There is absolutely no question that the AAL would not meet our license
> > requirements today.  Both the badgeware requirements and the presumption
> > of single authorship are prohibitive.  Fortunately, the AAL is also not
> > popular; in fact, I can't even find it in the Github survey stats.
> >
> > As such, I move that the license be submitted to the board for removal
> > from the list of approved licenses, possibly by creating a new category
> > of "suspended and nonreusable licenses".
>
> I also support removal of this license from the approved list.
>
> I'm somewhat curious to look into the archives to see whether AAL was
> discussed in the later badgeware-heyday timeframe (~2006/2007 or so),
> or whether it had been forgotten by then.
>
> Richard



-- 
Richard Fontana
He / Him / His
Senior Commercial Counsel
Red Hat, Inc.
+1 212 689-4350 (mobile)