[License-review] For Approval: Scripting Free Software License, Version 1.3.5 (S-FSL v1.3.5)

Rick Moen rick at linuxmafia.com
Sat Nov 16 06:43:34 UTC 2013


Quoting Elmar Stellnberger (estellnb at gmail.com):

> I understand that most open source developers think of 'open
> source' as something that is clearly settled 'outside of copyright
> law'. i.e. they will be able to do anything with the sources without
> even having to ask.

This seems an odd assertion.  All open source licences are explicitly
based in and dependent on copyright law.

I will readily believe that a depressingly large percentage of open
source coders are extremely ignorant of copyright law, but think it
very likely that the percentage among coders of proprietary codebases is
much larger still.

> However please note that this is not enforced by the OSI OSD criteria
> and I doubt it is in the sense of OSI.

I'm unclear on what specifically you mean by 'having to ask', but note
that usage of software is not among rights reserved to the copyright
holder under copyright law.  Once a person has lawfully received a copy
of a codebase, the copyright owner has no ability -- based in copyright
law -- to control the recipient's usage (absent redistribution or the
distribution of derivative works, which _are_ reserved rights).




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