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

[Jim Wright]

This is mostly right, but I would say that I *am* hoping that folks pick it up and use it as a regular open source license as well as a CLA, and it's not at all out of the question that Oracle would do this itself.  

More than one person has also commented to me off-list that they like it and hope to see it broadly adopted, though I won't speculate as to whether that will actually happen.

My intent here really *is* dual-use - I, like many other IP lawyers, prefer not to rely on implied licenses when I can avoid it, and the differences in understanding on those are demonstrated in this very thread, so even as a straight replacement for MIT I would like to think (hubris perhaps :-) that this is an improvement. 

 Best,
  Jim

On Apr 14, 2014, at 7:05 AM, Richard Fontana <fontana at sharpeleven.org> wrote:

> On Sun, 13 Apr 2014 10:41:11 -0700
> Jim Wright <jim.wright at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
>> The intent here is to allow the authors to grant a license, including
>> patent rights, in a particular, listed larger work to which they're
>> contributing.  I wrote it with various uses in mind, but the most
>> immediate use case is in the Java Community Process for the
>> development of JSR reference implementations in other forges like
>> Eclipse.  Folks have been complaining for a long time that everyone
>> needed to sign an assignment to contribute, which won't work on other
>> forges (who don't want to require or inquire about Oracle assignment
>> agreements), and this way people will be able to contribute without
>> that.  
>> 
>> I also see a lot of other people's contribution agreements in my role
>> at Oracle (I have to approve all of them), and am hoping that a
>> standard form could help harmonize practices in this area. 
> 
> This is key for the OSI and license-review community to understand,
> and (based on the comments already made) what I'm not sure is going to
> be well understood unless it is spelled out really clearly here. 
> 
> Jim is asking OSI to approve, as an Open Source license, something that
> Oracle intends primarily to serve as a CLA, or rather a
> CLA/copyright-assignment substitute. Unlike typical CLAs, the UPL is
> written in a way that makes it entirely possible to use as a normal,
> outbound open source license. But that is AFAICT not how Oracle intends
> to use it and for all we know it may never be used in that way by
> anyone. 
> 
> So think of this as somewhat like the ASF submitting the Apache ICLA for
> approval as an Open Source License. Or Project Harmony submitting its
> contributor agreement suite for approval as an Open Source license. The
> only real difference is that there's a *chance* that the UPL might see
> some uptake as a *normal* open source license -- a chance that, say,
> the Ruby community or the JavaScript or Python communities might start
> using the UPL in place of their current tendency to use the MIT
> license (the license this resembles most closely). 
> 
> I would rate the chances of that happening as very low. I assume Oracle
> is not going to try to evangelize use of the UPL as an open source
> project license and even if it did it would be about as successful as,
> I dunno, Red Hat trying to evangelize some new open source license I
> might draft, which is to say probably not at all. :) The likelihood of
> open source communities or individual developers discovering this
> license on the OSI website (were it approved) and deciding to use it
> because they like the idea of an MIT-like minimalist permissive license
> that treats patents explicitly seems very low. 
> 
> None of that necessarily goes to the merits of the UPL or whether it
> should be approved by the OSI. But it's important to understand the
> unusual and unprecedented nature of this submission: Oracle wants the
> OSI to approve a license that it primarily intends to serve as a CLA for
> codebases that will *not* use this license on the outbound side. Jim
> has been very transparent about that -- he specifically noted the use
> case of commercial developers of copyleft and commercial (proprietary)
> software.
> 
> This is, I believe, the first time that the OSI has ever been asked to
> approve a new license that is primarily intended by its license
> steward to serve as a CLA (loosely defined), an inbound contributor
> license, not as an outbound open source project license. In all past
> license submissions, to my knowledge, the license was contemplated as an
> *outbound* license. That is what is (nonsubstantively) new here.
> 
> (Jim if you think I am wrong about any of the foregoing, please
> comment. :)
> 
> - RF
> 
>