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

Wed Jun 4 07:49:10 UTC 2008

Hi Bruce, 

El Tuesday 03 June 2008 21:53:50 Bruce Perens escribió:
> Paul,
>
> Email notification has been discussed for years. I think there was a
> license, from Apple, that asked for the user to attempt to send email to
> a specific address, and also made it clear that their obligation would
> be discharged by making the attempt, whether the email was delivered or
> not. That makes your license continue to work when life changes, as it
> will. However, while this has been tried, I have no information that
> this sort of email notification has ever been worthwhile for anyone. Web
> searches are generally enough to find anyone who is actively modifying
> your program these days, if they haven't voluntarily chosen to tell you.
> But in reality they would be discussing on your email list and you would
> know them.
>

For us, web searches are not enought because we have developed some 
pieces of software that are being incorporated on a bigger ones and we 
only get informed through the support mailing list. The kind of projects 
incorporating our software seems not to be big or open enought in order 
to appear in web searches, however, we have found some of them really 
interesting in order to collaborate and promote its usage and distribution.

Perhaps the fact of mentioning the e-mail as the way to inform the author is a
mistake and we could be more general accepting any other way. I can say
that will be considered regarding to the final sumission. 

> Given the past history, it might be that OSI is loath to approve another
> license with that failed email experiment in it.
>
> Also, I suspect that the two licenses you have shown us so far have not
> had the attention of a lawyer. The wording just doesn't seem clear and
> unambiguous. 

The license has been written down by a very competent person on that field,
althought, as I stated before, the license is pending of an internal review of
a lawyers comite and the result of this internal review will be a report that 
we will attach to the final submission. We are open to modify the "license's
language"  in any way in order to clarify the objectives while them are the
ones we want to be applied.

> Such attention is no cure-all, but I think you could 
> potentially harm other developers if a license without the proper legal
> attention is given to Open Source developers who use it and depend on
> its various provisions being effective and enforcible. One recent case
> of this happening is the JMRI project. In that project the developers
> code was used in a commercial product, and the vendor of that commercial
> product then sued the developer whose work he was using for patent
> infringement. The developer had difficulty defending himself from that
> unsavory character, because he had used an old "Artistic" license from
> before any Open Source folks could get legal help. The license that
> should have protected the developer did not hold up in court.
>

Wow, I didn't know the case. I strongly agree with you that the license must 
have the attention of a lawyer or better the attention of a lawyer's group.  
That attention will be shown on the final report.

> There are many attorneys who would like to build credibility in Open
> Source, and are willing to work for free while doing so, or who are
> associated with colleges, or have other reasons to work for free like
> those of the Software Freedom Law Center in the U.S. You could find one.
> Or you could take a harder look at all of the approved licenses.
>

I will really thank for any contact on that field, despite of our license 
revision, we would like to have a second opinion before submitting the 
final license. 

Thank you very much for your time.
Paul.

>     Thanks
>
>     Bruce
>
> Paul Santapau wrote:
> > 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.
> >
> >
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >---------------
> >
> >                                  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.
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >---------------
> >
> > 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.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> [...]