[License-discuss] Thoughts on AAL and OSS vs FOSS

[Henrik Ingo]

Hi Hillel

First of all, thanks for taking the time to join this discussion. A key
question for us is whether and how we can find projects using a license
that is being suggested for removal / de-certification. It's encouraging to
see news about this discussion reached you and you we willing to engage in
this discussion.

On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 8:39 PM Hillel Coren <hillelcoren at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi again,
>
> To follow up on my email yesterday... to start there many AAL projects on
> GitHub.
>
> https://github.com/search?q=attribution+assurance+license&type=Code
>

That's interesting. One would hope a formal OSI process (where this
discussion may be headed) would have found this too.

If attribution based license are no longer considered OSS we'd need to
> change our model to offer our core app as OSS and sell closed-source
> modules to generate income. This is worse for everyone involved.
>
> With our current approach users have all the code, if they don't want to
> pay to remove our branding they can simply comment out the code. With
> separate modules that would no longer be possible.
>
> I would guess one of the goals of your organisation is to give more people
> access to more code, removing these license could have the opposite effect
> by making less code open-source.
>
> I have to add, I find it pretty ironic that your own site uses an
> attribution based license, the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
> International License :)
>
>
Note by the way that I'm not the one actively for or against the AAL at the
moment. But I do understand the objection people have raised against it. So
I have a question for you, so that we could better understand your
motivations:

The specific text of the AAL that is problematic is this:


*"each time the resultingexecutable program or a program dependent thereon
is launched, aprominent display (e.g., splash screen or banner text) of the
Author'sattribution information"*

Attribution as such is not a problem for open source licenses. In fact it's
quite common that some form of attribution is required! The problem here is
that the license requires attribution in a too specific way. The Open
Source Definition <https://opensource.org/osd-annotated> requires that
licenses must not restrict the software to a specific technology. So for
example, I should be allowed to copy your software and use it for
technology that doesn't have a display at all. (A robot, or network
router...)

To compare, the GPL (which nobody is suggesting to remove) has a similar
requirement without running into this problem:* "If the work has
interactive user interfaces, each must display Appropriate Legal Notices;
however, if the Program has interactive interfaces that do not display
Appropriate Legal Notices, your work need not make them do so."*

If there were an AAL 2.0 that had an attribution requirement like the GPL
(and I could even imagine going a bit further without it being a problem
for the OSD) then would you be willing to upgrade to such AAL 2.0?

henrik



-- 
henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi
+358-40-5697354        skype: henrik.ingo            irc: hingo
www.openlife.cc

My LinkedIn profile: http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/henrik-ingo/3/232/8a7
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