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

[Henrik Ingo]

Hi Richard

I get your point now. Makes sense.

henrik

On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 8:48 PM, Richard Fontana
<fontana at sharpeleven.org> wrote:
> 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
>
>
>



-- 
henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi
+358-40-5697354        skype: henrik.ingo            irc: hingo
www.openlife.cc

My LinkedIn profile: http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/henrik-ingo/3/232/8a7