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

[zooko]

Dear license-review:

Thank you for your comments.

Matthew Flaschen said that it might be easy for people to violate the  
terms of this licence and withhold the source code of their derived  
works when they have not been granted the right to do so.  I agree  
that it is possible that people might try to do that.

Matthew Flaschen also said that the TGPPL v1.0 doesn't require the  
producer of a derived work to provide source code, but I don't think  
this is correct -- TGPPL v1.0 should have the same effect as OSL 3.0  
on that issue.  Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Bruce Perens suggested that the goal of the TGPPL could be  
accomplished by writing an exception to the OSL instead of a new  
licence.  Lawrence Rosen concurred, explaining that waivers of rights  
are easily added by the rights holders, but of course that added  
burdens are not.

This is the reason why TGPPL needs to be a separate licence: it  
imposes the added burden that once the grace period has expired then  
the producer of a derived work needs to release the source code of  
the derived work under the terms of the TGPPL.  The licence does not  
offer the producer of a derived work the option of distributing the  
derived work for a grace period and then open sourcing the derived  
work under some other licence such as GPL or OSL.

Bruce Perens wondered whether it was the OSI's mandate to protect the  
writers of open source licences from their own foolishness.  While I  
appreciate criticisms and suggestions -- especially when they are  
delivered respectfully -- my primary aim in submitting this licence  
for approval is to certify that the licence is open source, not to  
certify that it is a good idea.

Regards,

Zooko
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