[License-review] For Approval: Scripting Free Software License, Version 1.3.6 (S-FSL v1.3.6)

Elmar Stellnberger estellnb at gmail.com
Fri Nov 15 08:55:38 UTC 2013


Of course I could register a trademark for my programs.
However the purpose of the license was to leverage a contributive 
software development model with open sources.
If it was just about having a trademark I would not have published as 
open source readable to the public.
I would have obfuscated at least all identifiers or used a non-script 
language (and believe me I have the tools to do that)
and would have published under a proprietary license. Note also that the 
term trademark appears because other
contributors may use their trademarks within my product not because of 
me using a trademark.

Greetings,
Elmar


Am 12.11.2013 23:00, schrieb Engel Nyst:
> I will point out two more misunderstandings you make on copyright (and 
> trademarks, patents) in your license and rationale. Please consider 
> previous disclaimers apply.
>
> "Intellectual property".
> I will keep short and polite. The concept and your usage of it in the 
> license confuse badly copyright law with trademark law, and rights 
> granted by a copyright license with apparent reasons related in 
> reality to trademarks use.
>
> You can trademark the name of your project, company, suite. Then make 
> a trademark policy for the use of names, for the products that satisfy 
> your team of initial developers. Make the names refer to the projects 
> of your team, with the rules you want and build the level/kind of 
> reputation you'll want and be able to for those *names*.
>
> This has practically nothing to do with copyright over the work, and 
> rights granted under copyright law, nor with the right to make 
> derivative works and distribute them. You can ask derivatives to 
> change name, but your license makes more rules that belong in a 
> trademark policy (and development process).
>
> Note that trademark policy should refer to correct identification of 
> the projects, I would not recommend to make over-broad rules that 
> interfere with copyright licensing.
>
> Your users can then identify your project unambiguously, and your 
> developers are responsible for maintenance of the project under those 
> names. That gives you the responsibility you're talking about. IMO, 
> this is a social issue and one of development process in your project, 
> more than a trademark issue, but you can also use legal tools for it.
>
> It will save confusion from you and your users, if you use the 
> appropriate legal tool on your *names use*, trademark law. Not copyright.
>
> On 11/10/2013 04:41 PM, Elmar Stellnberger wrote:>
> >> > 6. The license should be compatible with the usage of patents and
> >> > trademarks without unloading that burden to the end user.
> >>
> >> I don't think it is. "Branched versions can not [...] use patents
> >> [...] in a new context unless explicit consent from the maintainers
> >> of the parent branch is given."
> >> Should I understand that consent has not been given for patents,
> >> thus the user cannot know if the maintainers have given it, or if
> >> the context is new enough for the maintainers' liking, or if they
> >> can branch on their own without being sued by the maintainers for
> >> patents?
> >
> >    Well the things with patents is that if the owner of a patent
> > wants to contribute his patent to S-FSL software then he needs to
> > give the original authors usage rights on his patent. It does however
> > not mean to contribute the patent to the community which would make
> > it at best worthless for the patent owner. However code that is
> > already being used by the community that contains a patent may still
> > be maintained. It needs permission to use the same patent in 'another
> > context'. The original authors may be restricted to give you. You can
> > not simply write new code that involves patents held by the original
> > authors, you need to ask for permission to do so.
>
> This fails OSD. Look from the perspective of the recipient of the 
> code. Let us say I work on various projects, libraries, scripts under 
> open source licenses.
>
> You're saying that if I "branch" or even rewrite an algorithm that was 
> implemented under your license or under OSS licenses that "patch" code 
> under your license, then you *intently* expose me to patent lawsuits.
> (and you try to extend that to other OSS licenses)
>
> That's not an open source license. And, it's among the riskier I've 
> heard of. At least state up-front it's proprietary and tell people 
> they have no guarantees from it. Tell them that if they read that 
> algorithm and want to use that knowledge, then they're exposed 
> intently to lawsuits.
>
> Your license hides the lack of permission for patents use in a license 
> you claim to be open source. It is not.
>
>
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