License Committee Report for September 2008

[Wang Donglin]

Dear  Russ,

Thanks for your prompt reply and kindly advice.

Unfortunately, your suggestion can not wok. It requires that the trademark
has become a famous brand and the end users only use the software with this
brand, therefore the modified version provider need this brand. But UOML is
not in this case.

Is there any other option? If not, I suggest to modify the Open Source
Definition. It seems that this kind of rule is serviced for big company
which owns great influence and famous brand, not suitable for small-medium
companies. In additional, the trademark-solution allows only one company to
control the license, this is also a big-comapny-centric model. If we want to
make open source community a really open community, instead of open-source
close-community, we must accommodate as many as small-medium companies and
individuals to do contribution.

You concern the possibility that if somebody wants to use reuse the licensed
code for a general purpose parser of something which isn't UOML, doesn't
claim to be UOML, but for which the code is ideally suited. Do you know this
kind of rule(Open Source Definition) will prevent potential contributer like
us to participate the open source community? It is similar as the rule that
if somebody wants to donate he must donate every dollars he owns, I don't
think this kind of rule will promote donation.

The software that requires to conform a specific standard is one of
important source of open source code. The open source community should NOT
to exclude this kind of open source software, unless you want to rename to
open-source close-comminity.

Sorry for my poor English. Looking forward to hear your response.

-Alex

-----Original Message-----
From: Russ Nelson [mailto:nelson at crynwr.com] 
Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2008 5:07 AM
To: allison shi
Cc: license-review at opensource.org; ???; liumingjuan
Subject: Re: License Committee Report for September 2008

allison shi writes:
 > Based on your September's report on the reject reasons to our UOML
License,  > we had modified our license and would like to issue our request
again,

What if somebody wants to use reuse the licensed code for a general purpose
parser of something which isn't UOML, doesn't claim to be UOML, but for
which the code is ideally suited?  Your license does not permit this, but
the Open Source Definition requires that you allow it.

I appreciate your desire to have a body of UOML parsing code which is not
mutated.  This is an honest and a genuine desire, and a worthy goal.  The
best way to do that is to have a trademark.  You only grant permission to
use it after the code passes a UOML conformance test.

Have you considered the Artistic License?
    http://www.opensource.org/licenses/artistic-license-2.0.php
Look at its sections about Standard Version vs. Modified Version.

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