[License-discuss] Query on "delayed open source" licensing

[Kat Walsh]

Creative Commons did some research on "springing licenses" several years
ago that may be of interest:
https://creativecommons.org/about/legal-tools-licenses/springing-licenses/

-Kat

On Wed, Oct 25, 2023 at 6:44 PM Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>
wrote:

> Hi license-discuss members,
>
> I'm working on a research project with Open Tech Strategies and the Open
> Source Initiative, on the topic of delayed open source licensing.
>
> This refers to licensing models where a project is initially published
> under non-open-source terms, but with a promise that the code will be
> relicensed as open source, with some delay or under some conditions, in
> the future.  In some cases this may be a recurring practice where
> updated versions are continually relicensed on a specific schedule over
> time.
>
> Of course, license instruments that implement this strategy are not
> themselves open source licenses.  But we thought it was likely that
> subscribers of this list would be familiar with examples of this
> practice and might be able to suggest some that we haven't identified
> yet.  As Karl Fogel writes,
>
> > We’d like to gather as many examples as we can, both historical and
> > modern, for a whitepaper that will examine the effects of DOSP on open
> > source projects and on open source as a whole. The paper will take no
> > position in the paper on the desirability of DOSP; its purpose is to
> > provide accurate historical description and objective analysis.
>
> You can see examples that we already know about at
>
> https://code.librehq.com/ots/dosp-research/-/blob/main/notes.md
>
> and you can contribute any additional pointers by e-mail at
> <dosp-research at opensource.org>.  Most replies should probably not
> be sent on-list to license-discuss, as we are not intending to suggest
> that these are examples of open-source licenses.
>
> (In my interpretation, one-off relicensing of formerly proprietary
> software under an open source license, that was not planned in advance,
> isn't the phenomenon that we're looking at.  So, famous cases like
> Netscape Navigator, StarOffice, or Blender are probably not included
> here -- they simply weren't working with an intended "delay".)
>
> Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
>
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