License for approval

Matthew Flaschen matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu
Sun May 25 22:56:23 UTC 2008


Bruce Perens wrote:

> Obviously, the intent is to prevent the Microsoft-style "Embrace and 
> Enhance". But it also stops people who are trying to continue the 
> viability of the standard in the face of sincere future changes in 
> user's needs. So, it ends up saying "thou shalt not innovate, whatever 
> your motivation, good or bad."

I agree.  Someone should be able to use the code even if they know 
longer want to support UOML.  They should however be up front that 
they're no longer compliant, and trademark law can enforce this.  Also, 
if your license is GPL or other strong copyleft, you may be able to take 
useful innovations they make in non-compliant code and port them back to 
the compliant version.

However, I think SISSL is as far as OSD #10 will let you go in using 
copyright for compliance.  It's correct that SISSL does not force 
compliance, and that's deliberate.

Matt Flaschen



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