Question and review (Was: Re: Request - University Jaume I License.)

[Paul Santapau]

Hi all, 

 I must apologize for the submited license on my first e-mail because 
that is not the license that we are using for "Open Source Software", a copy 
of the correct license is pasted below, this license does not limit the 
software in any way and it is the one we would apply to get OSI inclusion.
 
However, that license has some points in common, point that Bruce has 
mentioned in its argumentation so, I would like to clarify them: 

 >[...] Requiring e-mail permission 

That license we use for Open Source asks the modifier or redistributer of the 
code for an e-mail notification, the motivation of this notification is to
keep the track on the software in order to recontribute to the comunity and
the open knowledge.

University Jaume I is commited to spread and share the knowledge it generates 
in an open way so the possibility of being notificated when software under
this license is modified or distributed can turn the fact in a colaboration
for research or improve that software, always returning the results to the
open source community. That is the justification of demanding the e-mail
notification. Please note that it is not the same as asking permission, asking
permission would requiere a reply by the author, in that case, the modifier or 
distributer only has to send an email indicating the fact he is going to do
it.  

The author will treat that information only with informational and statistical 
scientific ends so in order to study the open source phenomenon and to propose 
research colaborations.
 
Finally notify the OSI comitee that a legal report will be attached to the 
final inclusion request in order to study and justify the OSD conformance.  

I would thank any feedback over this license.

Paul.



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                                 University Jaume I License. 


1. This program can be executed by the end user without any restriction.

2. Copying and distribution of this software is allowed to any purpose by 
    any means with the only limitation of  keeping on each copy a mention 
    to the author of the program and an exact copy of these license conditions
    and the disclaimer of the warranty. 

3. Modification and redistribution of the software is allowed while in the
    software is mentioned the original authorship (or the sentence “software
    modified from an original development of <<author's name>>”) and this
    mention does not make confusion with the original. Any person or entity
    that modifies and redistribute the modified code must inform via
    electronic mail of this circumstance to “xxxx at xxx.xx (author's email
    here)”.

4. The source code covered by this license is available for free download at
    http://xxxx.xx... (author's owned url here).

5. Copying, usage or distribution of this software implies the acceptance of
    this conditions.

6. Copying and distribution of this software, implies the application of the
    present conditions to the recipient. The distributor cannot establish
   additional conditions that limit in any way the ones stated here.

Disclaimer of Warranty.
This program is distributed for free. The author, neither offers any warranty 
on this software nor accept any responsibility for its use or inability to 
use it.

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El Tuesday 03 June 2008 10:29:22 Bruce Perens escribió:
> Hi Paul,
>
> Requiring email permission is the same as saying "no" and "never" in the
> license. If someone asks your permission through email and you give it,
> that permission is a separate license, not really connected with the
> license you sent to this list.
>
> So, the short answer would be "no, you can't do that in an Open Source
> license". In general, we've found that inclusion in distributions that
> cost money, like Red Hat or even Microsoft Windows, does not harm the
> software author or anyone else. There's always another way to get the
> software for free, so nobody's going to make a lot of money on your
> code. "Reciprocal" licenses like the GPL are a good way to keep a
> company from running away with your software, since GPL would require
> them to release their modifications with the same rights as yours.
>
> I feel your submission is best treated as a question about Open Source
> licensing rather than a license to be approved. If the OSI were to
> approve such casually submitted licenses, there would be harm to the
> community because software developers would have a tremendous legal load
> to analyze all of the available licenses and their combinations before
> the put together software under different licenses into a single
> program. That load is already much too large today.
>
> I don't speak for OSI, but I created the rule set that OSI uses, for
> another project, about 10 months before OSI formed.
>

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