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

[Richard Fontana]

On Mon, 14 Apr 2014 18:03:04 +0300
Henrik Ingo <henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi> wrote:
  
> All this is just to say that I don't see this as such a special case
> after all. There is precendent of a similar arrangement and it's just
> another normal use for a permissive license. The UPL would be just yet
> another license that could be used that way - in fact I'd read it in
> favor of this license that there at least is some intended use for it
> known by the time of submission. That's not always the case.

Oh, I realize that there's ample precedent for using an existing
permissive license as a contributor license (specifically for projects
or codebases that are licensed under copyleft or proprietary terms
outbound). Red Hat's done that in a few cases, most of which were at
my suggestion. At one time I saw this as a significant improvement on
the use of things like the Apache CLAs. (Today I certainly wouldn't say
'significant' and might say I no longer have this view at all, but all
that is irrelevant.)

But what's different here is that the principal use case at the outset,
for this license that no one is using at all right now, is as a CLA
substitute. That's what I'm saying has no precedent. You might argue
that that distinction doesn't really matter. 

I agree with you that the fact that Oracle has some specific things it
wants to do with the UPL already in mind is better than someone merely
submitting a license 'on spec' as it were, though I wouldn't want to
discourage the latter.  

One reason why I'm highlighting the fact that the UPL is intended by
the license steward as a CLA substitute is that this (maybe) makes it
more difficult to analyze for purposes of OSI approval. Ordinarily the
problem of purported FLOSS licenses is that they have some restriction
imposed on the *licensee* that is unreasonable. That occurs because
open source licenses have generally been drafted by intended
*licensors* (or, say, entities in the license stewardship business
creating licenses intended for use by licensors). 

With a contributor agreement the situation is reversed. Here we have a
license drafted by Oracle seeing itself (I believe) primarily as an
intended *licensee*, submitted for OSI approval. That has never
happened before. I am not sure if that's something the OSI is supposed
to consider when deciding whether to approve a submitted license, or if
it's just an extrinsic political fact the OSI is supposed to ignore.

- RF