For approval: MXM Public license

[Tzeng, Nigel H.]

>From: Chuck Swiger [mailto:chuck at codefab.com] 

>However, just because I have the above opinion, does not mean that a  
>diligent lawyer who wishes to make things clear, would not want to use  
>more explicit terms of the legal art-- such as the Academic Free  
>License clause 2, "Grant of Patent License" or similar....

I don't disagree in substance.  I'm just saying that there was either
ambiguity or perceived ambiguity that folks resolved in later licenses.

>The main examples Google can find are the Eclipse Public License, and  
>the Common Public License.  (And Plan9.)

My vague recollection was related to when Apache was writing 2.0 and
folks wrote about it.

>Well, I think that the FSF http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/ page  
>is helpful, although it is written from a perspective that I'm not in  
>a position to always agree with, at least as far as my day job is  
>concerned.  :-)

Yes.

>> That's probably almost as good for them as OSI branding.  Yep, they  
>> sure
>> are free to leave.  Do you really want them to?

>Branding is mainly valuable for the sake of product identification and  
>labeling, so that people know what to expect when they see something  
>like the OSI logo, but the value of branding is compromised if it is  
>used for things which don't actually meet the standards which users  
>expect.

Sure.  I do think, though, if you let someone else start defining
the general categories of software licenses then you run the risk
reducing your own ability to define the term "open source".

I don't think the risk is very high but take this case as an example.
ISO comes to OSI, OSI says, sorry not open source and therefore not
our problem they can either just live with that, find someone else
to "certify" their license as SOME kind of "open" or software 
license, "certify" it themselves (they are ISO) or use another term like 
"shared source".

I can just see Michael jumping up and down with joy...or something...if 
that last happened and got canonized by ISO.