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

[Russell McOrmond]

What you are looking for is a mandatory, legally enforceable, "powered by"
visual indicator to exist when "the software" is run. You also wish that
license to be approved by the OSI as Open Source.  While I can't and don't
speak for the OSI, I don't consider what you are looking for to be open
source.


If I take a snip-it of the code from this program source that doesn't
itself produce visual indicators, and include it in my program, am I still
compliant with this new license if I don't add a new "based in some small
part with code from <insert list of badges>" in any separate output my
separate program has?

I believe your mindset is how people would use this program as a whole, and
not how people would use any of its parts in any other way.  That sounds
like the delivery of a specific product that happens to have source
available, not the sharing of open source.  Microsoft and other primarily
proprietary companies have made source available to product licensees for
quite some time, and this provides some transparency that many of their
customers demand.   It seems that what you want to deliver is a source
available proprietary product, so why not just do that?


I am aware of many companies wanting to do the same thing as you are.  I
know of a few companies that are using the AGPL to accomplish this type of
goal, where they make source code available but licensed in a way that
discourages competitors and other third parties from participating with the
codebase.  I believe even Bradley M. Kuhn who has been the most vocal
promoter of the license clause has noticed this common used of the AGPL.
While I don't agree with some of his policy goals (I believe the Affero
concept is harmful to software freedom), I suspect you might want to read
http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2020/01/06/copyleft-equality.html for some of the
unintended consequences that come from trying to solve alleged business
model "loopholes".  In the case of the Affero clause it was from someone
who truly has software freedom as a goal, but created a license clause
which for a variety of reasons didn't end up working out the way he
expected.



On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 11:35 AM Hillel Coren <hillelcoren at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Russell,
>
> Thank you for your response!
>
> It's clear we're approaching this from different perspectives, I think the
> best next step is to work towards an AAL 2.0 which will enable more shared
> code AND better licenses.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 6:24 PM Russell McOrmond <
> russellmcormond at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 1:39 PM Hillel Coren <hillelcoren at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> It's easy to assume that by deprecating attribution based licenses
>>> developers will either choose a different OSI approved license or change
>>> their software from being labeled 'OSS' to 'Source-available software'. I'd
>>> argue in practice many developers (ourselves included) would instead choose
>>> to share less code.
>>>
>>
>> Can you explain to me why it should concern us if people wishing to
>> discriminate decide to publish less code rather than adopt a
>> non-discriminatory OSI approved license?
>>
>> While I don't consider publishing software or its source code to itself
>> be a public good, I believe reducing the harm (though waiving of rights
>> implied by most OSI approved licenses) from the excessive control software
>> authors have over society is a public good.
>>
>> Discriminatory software (IE: proprietary software) , with or without
>> source code being available, has existed for a long time.  If you wish to
>> adopt a proprietary business model and associated licensing that is your
>> choice.
>>
>> BTW: I have no idea how you are trying to define OSS such that it is
>> different from FOSS or FLOSS or other acronyms to describe the same thing.
>>
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-- 
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>

"The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware
manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or portable
media player from my cold dead hands!" http://c11.ca/own
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