License Committee Report for December 2009

[Russ Nelson]

I'm the chair of the license approval committee.  This is my report
for the current set of licenses under discussion.  The OSI board will
be meeting December 2.

Proposition #1: that we turn all approved licenses into generic
templates even if submitted as party-specific licenses.  This will
immediately convert a number of licenses which are Mozilla instances
into "See Mozilla Public License" references.  It will also allow
submittors of legacy licenses such as PostgreSQL and BlackBox to
submit a license which they are merely users of, and allow us to
accept that license as they received it, but approve it for use by the
rest of the open source community.

Note that Proposition #1 is of my own invention and has not bee
discussed on the mailing list.  This email is going out long enough
before the board meeting for sufficient discussion of its wisdom to
happen.  I will convey the result of that discussion to the board.  It
needs to be in the report because approval of BlackBox is dependent
upon it.

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Title: The PostgreSQL Licence 
Submission: 
  http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?17:mss:931:nooneedaahagajmpehif
Original-Submission: 
  http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?17:mss:874:200909:kodinndfijkmchmflood
License: In the submission
Comments: Re-submitted as a general license. Asking for legacy approval.
Recommend: approval

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Title: The BlackBox Component Builder Open Source License
Submission: 
  http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?17:mss:887:200911:nlcjlommcajfndpfkoni
License: In the submission and http://www.oberon.ch/BlackBox.html
Comments: As Cowan says, it's sleepycat with redundancies removed and
  the names replaced.
Recommend: approval if Proposition #1 passes; send back for
  resubmission as generic template if #1 not passed.

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Title: Falcon Programming Language License
Submission: 
  http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?17:mss:826:naokadpjdjicihdgloog
License: http://www.falconpl.org/index.ftd?page_id=license_1_1
Comments: Clearly OSD-compatible but ... it's the GPL with an added
  freedom to embed the language interpreter creating a single work
  without invoking the terms of the GPL.  If that were it, then we
  could leave it there, but Giancarlo adds required attribution above
  and beyond that required by the GPL.
Recommend: Not different enough from the LGPL to warrant approval.

-- 
--my blog is at    http://blog.russnelson.com
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