<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"><head><meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"><meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 14 (filtered medium)"><style><!--
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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>A recent thread on the legal-discuss@ list at Apache asked whether someone could take the Apache License 2.0 and revise it for their own purposes. After a side trip I took into the esoteric question about whether a copyright license could itself be copyrighted, I bring the discussion to this license-discuss@ list at OSI along with a bit of history. (I’m copying the legal-discuss@apache list only for closing the circle.)<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>In the olden days, open source licenses usually contained a copyright statement and the identification of a “license steward”. This person or organization (e.g., RMS/FSF for the GPL licenses; IBM for the CPL; and Mitchell Baker at what was then the Mozilla Project for the MPL) reputedly had exclusive control over future license versions. Indeed, Mitchell took offense at that time because, without her permission, I had revised the MPL license into a version I thought was easier to read and understand (the Jabber license, since deprecated). <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Whether or not the license steward role was legally significant, it certainly raised control issues in the community and created animosity over license language purity even where personal offense was not intended. Even though the goal was to change the license for some presumably good legal effect, some people still took offense when their “own” words were changed.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>When I released the AFL/OSL licenses in early drafts, I omitted any declaration of license steward but I asserted with a copyright notice that I was the author of those licenses. Several people (including, I remember, Mitchell Baker) complained that I was claiming control over a license that people might want to enhance or change. Nobody trusted that I personally (or my heirs) would forever have the good of the community at heart. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I agreed with them. That was my incentive to write section 16 of those licenses, which declared authorship but disclaimed control over changes. This section 16 also carefully prohibited what was then characterized as “relicensing” of existing works; declared that the name of the license was exclusive; and reminded the world that only OSI could bless a revised license as “open source”.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Here’s what section 16 of the OSL says:<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'>16) Modification of This License. This License is Copyright © 2005 Lawrence Rosen. Permission is granted to copy, distribute, or communicate this License without modification. Nothing in this License permits You to modify this License as applied to the Original Work or to Derivative Works. However, You may modify the text of this License and copy, distribute or communicate your modified version (the "Modified License") and apply it to other original works of authorship subject to the following conditions: (i) You may not indicate in any way that your Modified License is the "Open Software License" or "OSL" and you may not use those names in the name of your Modified License; (ii) You must replace the notice specified in the first paragraph above with the notice "Licensed under <insert your license name here>" or with a notice of your own that is not confusingly similar to the notice in this License; and (iii) You may not claim that your original works are open source software unless your Modified License has been approved by Open Source Initiative (OSI) and You comply with its license review and certification process.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Most licenses nowadays omit declarations of license stewardship and don’t even mention the ownership of future derivative versions. For example – and this was the gist of the question on the Apache legal-discuss@ list – the Apache License 2.0 says nothing about the right to create derivative versions <u>of the license</u>. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>In this ambiguous situation, what is the default rule for derivative works of open source licenses? My assertion is that all open source licenses may freely be copied or modified into different versions; permission from a license steward is never necessary to do that because these are functional legal documents for which copyright protection is inappropriate. (In an email at Apache, I characterized my copyright notice on my own licenses as “chutzpah”.) Without OSI approval, however, nobody responsible will call the modified license an “open source license”. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Do you agree?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>/Larry<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt'>Lawrence Rosen<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt'>Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (<a href="http://www.rosenlaw.com">www.rosenlaw.com</a>)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt'>3001 King Ranch Rd., Ukiah, CA 95482<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt'>Office: 707-485-1242<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>