For Approval: Transitive Grace Period Public Licence, v1.0

[Bruce Perens]

Isn't it possible to write this in "exception" form rather than as a 
direct modification of a license? Like this:

You may apply the terms of the Open Software License, version 3.0, to 
this work, with the exception that [your text inserted here] You must 
convey this text, the right to use this exception, the OSL 3.0 and the 
rights to apply that license, to any entity to which you distribute the 
work.

This is not lawyer-vetted text. Doing something like this would avoid 
making you a contributor to the horrible license propagation already 
evident here.

    Thanks

    Bruce

zooko wrote:
> Dear license-review at opensource.org:
>
> Please approve the Transitive Grace Period Public Licence, v1.0, as 
> compliant with the Open Source Definition.
>
> Rationale for a new licence:
>
> If Alice gives Bob a work under a permissive licence such as a 
> BSD-style licence, then Bob may create a proprietary derived work and 
> to make his derived work available to others without revealing the 
> source code to them.  One could say that the "grace period" during 
> which he is allowed to distribute proprietary derived works and before 
> he is compelled to open source his derived work is endless.  If Alice 
> gives Bob a work under a transitive licence such as the GPL or the 
> OSL, and Bob makes a derived work available to others, then he is 
> obligated to share the source code of his derived work with others 
> immediately.  One could say that the "grace period" offered to him is 
> zero minutes.
>
> I hypothesize that some duration of grace period more than zero and 
> less than infinity might yield greater social good.  By being less 
> than infinite (in fact, 12 months), it compels the producers of 
> derived works to share their source code.  By being greater than zero, 
> it facilitates the use of the capitalist feedback loop, in which part 
> of the value that the work produces for others is directed to making 
> more resources available for producing more of such work.  Hopefully 
> the combination of these two properties will yield greater aggregate 
> social good than either property would alone.
>
> Please see Ping Yee's eloquent summary, which expresses the rationale 
> in a few sentences and pictures:
>
> https://zooko.com/tgppl.pdf
>
>
> Compare and contrast with the most similar OSI-approved licence:
>
> The Transitive Grace Period Public Licence, v1.0, is almost identical 
> to the Open Source License, v3.0, except for the following change 
> (ignoring naming and meta-licensing changes):
>
> Tue Nov  6 21:36:49 MST 2007  zooko at zooko.com
>   * add grace period
> diff -rN -u old-tggpl/tggpl.txt new-tggpl/tggpl.txt
> --- old-tggpl/tggpl.txt 2008-12-14 19:51:13.000000000 -0700
> +++ new-tggpl/tggpl.txt 2008-12-14 19:51:13.000000000 -0700
> @@ -11,7 +11,7 @@
>
>           2. to translate, adapt, alter, transform, modify, or arrange 
> the Original Work, thereby creating derivative works ("Derivative 
> Works") based upon the Original Work;
>
> -         3. to distribute or communicate copies of the Original Work 
> and Derivative Works to the public, with the proviso that copies of 
> Original Work or Derivative Works that You distribute or communicate 
> shall be licensed under this Transitive Grace Period Public Licence;
> +         3. to distribute or communicate copies of the Original Work 
> and Derivative Works to the public, with the proviso that copies of 
> Original Work or Derivative Works that You distribute or communicate 
> shall be licensed under this Transitive Grace Period Public Licence no 
> later than 12 months after You distributed or communicated said copies;
>
>           4. to perform the Original Work publicly; and
>
>
> Provide results of any legal analysis available:
>
> I asked a friend who is a lawyer (and a long-time hacker and open 
> source proponent) what he thought and he thought it was a good idea.
>
>
> Recommend which licence proliferation category is appropriate:
>
> Other/Miscellaneous licenses
>
> (I hope that someday it will be popular and widely used and with 
> strong communities.)
>
>
> Thank you for your time.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Zooko O'Whielacronx
> ---
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