[License-review] Request for Approval of Universal Permissive License (UPL)

[Tzeng, Nigel H.]

On 4/13/14 10:09 PM, "Richard Fontana" <fontana at sharpeleven.org<mailto:fontana at sharpeleven.org>> wrote:

On Thu, 10 Apr 2014 17:39:42 -0700
Jim Wright <jim.wright at oracle.com<mailto:jim.wright at oracle.com>> wrote:

License Proliferation Category
I believe it falls into the Other/Miscellaneous category

This issue itself is interesting to me, even if we should regard it as
a mere detail of OSI license submission procedure.

I would have grouped it under "Special Purpose Licenses" like EPL.  There are similarities…it's a permissive license with explicit but limited patent grants designed to address the concerns of a subset of the open source community (in this case those that provide open source reference implementations).  The limitation in this regard isn't based on patents of the actual contributors (vs that of the institution) like in EPL but limited to derivative works of the original project.

To me this seems reasonable.  If the patent holders wish to provide a wider grant they aren't precluded from doing so via dual licensing but at the minimum anyone that uses that reference implementation or that larger work is explicitly covered.  This reduces the possibility of any shenanigans on the part of the provider of the reference implementation.  Which from my perspective as a user of reference implementaitons this is a good thing.  All I need to do is make sure it's UPL licensed and the LARGER_WORKS file is provided.

>From the perspective of writing reference implementations it's easier too.  The organizational checkpoints should be less if, like in EPL, the risk and severity of an accidental patent grant is reduced.  Presumably I have already been approved to provide a reference implementation and if there is some patent in the works elsewhere my part of the organization was unaware of then at least the grant is limited.  There are also no CLAs that need to be approved and signed off on and that makes it more streamlined as well.

>From the perspective of the organizers of the larger work the advantages are clearest.  There are no CLAs to manage.  As long as the provider of the reference implementation has submitted under UPL and my project shows up under that LARGER_WORKS file we're all good.  The source code is open and there are no patent worries.

The downside is that the explicit grant is limited to just that reference software and the larger work it was meant for.
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