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

[Hillel Coren]

Hi Henrik,

Thank you as well! I appreciate that everyone here is just trying to
determine what's best for OSS as a whole.

> The specific text of the AAL that is problematic...

100% agreed, the current AAL license is outdated to the point where it
doesn't make sense any more. We chose it because it was the closest OSI
approved license to achieve our objectives.

> would you be willing to upgrade to such AAL 2.0

Most likely yes, we'd gladly switch to a 2.0 AAL which was more up to date.
We don't need a badge which is always visible on screen, just a visual
indicator (ie, in the page footer) showing who originally developed the
software.

Kind regards,
Hillel


On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 12:15 PM Henrik Ingo <henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi>
wrote:

> 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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