[License-discuss] OSI definition

Mat K. Witts email at dheep.net
Thu Jan 21 00:20:18 UTC 2021


There is a lot of latitude around how licenses work in the wild, how
people work in teams, how judges come to decisions on licensing, how
lawyers write licenses and the legal implications of companies and so on
and so forth. Sticking strictly to the license texts and then comparing
them to the OSI's OSD though, it's very hard to find anything that makes
leftcopy.org non-compliant.

A persuasive argument that demonstrates a reasonably consistent
rationale I suspect would rely on either s.5 ('persons') or maybe s.6
('field of endeavor') but the definition is a little bit woolly in these
sections. The main confusion seems to be with the way the words
'discrimination', 'persons' and 'groups' are used which makes it much
harder to get a definitive answer on compliance than it could be in this
case.

Just to be really clear, leftcopy does not discriminate against human
beings from using the licensed code, and it doesn't restrict the
licensed code from any field of endeavor either. That makes it very hard
to find a convincing reason why it doesn't comply.

On 19/01/2021 20:46, Russell Nelson wrote:
> On 1/19/21 2:58 AM, Thorsten Glaser wrote:
>> No, the engineers acting on behalf of the company are agents of the
>> legal person (“juristische Person” in Germany), and as such it’s the
>> company that’s doing the using.
>
> They *could* be programming in their spare time?
>
> https://youtu.be/ohDB5gbtaEQ?t=176
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> The opinions expressed in this email are those of the sender and not
> necessarily those of the Open Source Initiative. Official statements
> by the Open Source Initiative will be sent from an opensource.org
> email address.
>
> License-discuss mailing list
> License-discuss at lists.opensource.org
> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org
>

-- 
DHEEP LLP.
Digital Health, Education & Environmental Partnership
www.dheep.co.uk
email at dheep.net

Registered in England and Wales No. OC427528. International House, 12, Constance Street, London, England, E16 2DQ

Partners: Mat K. Witts, Sati Witts




More information about the License-discuss mailing list