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

[Lawrence Rosen]

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

That's a fine suggestion, Bruce.  This avoids license proliferation.

So long as the Licensor *waives a condition* of the OSL 3.0 license that
otherwise burdens the licensee, no formal OSI approval should be needed.
After all, the Licensor is making license conditions less burdensome, not
harsher, on his down-stream licensees.

To provide a grace period before disclosure of source code, waive section
1(c) of OSL 3.0 for a fixed period of time after distribution starts.

As another example, to exempt licensees from the ASP provision of OSL 3.0,
waive section 5.

Such waivers can be conveniently stated in an Attribution Notice in the
Source Code as provided by Section 6 of OSL 3.0. Licensing notices that are
waivers of license conditions will be as binding on the Licensor as the
original license is. (Because a waiver relieves a burden on the licensee, it
is the Licensor who must be bound to that waiver by putting it in writing,
and then the licensee can rely on it.)

Of course, the Licensor must own the copyright or have permission from his
up-stream licensors in order to waive any conditions of OSL 3.0. You can't
waive someone else's license conditions!

Note that you cannot use a waiver to *add a burden* on a licensee. That
would require a new license and OSI approval. I interpret OSD #7 as
prohibiting such additional burdens not otherwise in the OSL 3.0 license
itself.

/Larry



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bruce Perens [mailto:bruce at perens.com]
> Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2008 8:08 PM
> To: zooko
> Cc: license-review at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: For Approval: Transitive Grace Period Public Licence, v1.0
> 
> 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
> > ---
> > http://allmydata.org -- Tahoe, the Least-Authority Filesystem
> > http://allmydata.com -- back up all your files for $10/month