License Committee Report for September 2008

[Lawrence Rosen]

> > Recommend: reassure submittor that it's okay to give people extra
> >   freedoms by voting to approve the practice of using an OSI-approved
> >   license in conjunction with a licensing announcement that removes
> >   restrictions on the licensee.
> 
> RTEMS is clearly OSI-compliant, as it really is just GPLv2 + extra
> permissions.  However, if OSI makes a general statement about this it
> should be clear that extra permissions may be automatically compliant,
> but only if there are /no/ extra restrictions.


Any official statement on this by OSI would have to define the terms
"permissions" and "restrictions". 

The court in Jacobsen (and the Creative Commons brief that won us this case)
used more traditional IP terms: The "scope" of the copyright license and the
"conditions" imposed by that license. Perhaps we should try to echo that
jargon?

The term of art for the removal of a condition is, I believe, "waiver".
There may also be conditional waivers....

/Larry

cc: license-discuss


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matthew Flaschen [mailto:matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu]
> Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2008 1:17 AM
> To: lrosen at rosenlaw.com
> Cc: license-review at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: License Committee Report for September 2008
> 
> Russ Nelson wrote:
> > Title: RTEMS license
> > Submission:
> >   http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-
> cgi?17:mss:333:200808:doaakbfandadomcoblpl
> > License: http://www.rtems.org/license/LICENSE
> > Comments: They're using the GPLv2 plus extra permissions.
> > Recommend: reassure submittor that it's okay to give people extra
> >   freedoms by voting to approve the practice of using an OSI-approved
> >   license in conjunction with a licensing announcement that removes
> >   restrictions on the licensee.
> 
> RTEMS is clearly OSI-compliant, as it really is just GPLv2 + extra
> permissions.  However, if OSI makes a general statement about this it
> should be clear that extra permissions may be automatically compliant,
> but only if there are /no/ extra restrictions.
> >
> > Title: University Jaume I License (UJIL)
> > Submission:
> >   http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-
> cgi?17:mss:269:200806:bmcempcigbolmdlfehig
> > License: in the submission.
> > Comments: only licenses non-commercial use.
> > Recommend: rejection
> 
> He submitted a second version that allowed commercial use but required
> notification upon distribution
> (http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?17:mmn:270).
> 
> 
> Matt Flaschen