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

[Gervase Markham]

On 15/04/14 17:39, Jim Wright wrote:
> Because you licensing the code under both Apache and GPLv2-only means

Ah! The misunderstanding is revealed! :-)

I am not talking about a dual-licensing system. I am talking about the
Apache License 2.0, with an additional clause which makes clear that you
do have a right that some people think you do and some people think you
don't. To wit:

"For the avoidance of doubt, the authors of this software expressly
permit its inclusion in a larger work licensed under the GNU General
Public License version 2.0."

> that what is going into my GPLed package is a piece of code licensed
> from you under the GPLv2, and subject to those rights and
> restrictions.  

No - in my proposed scheme, the code is licensed under the Apache
license with an additional permission.

> I would suggest that trying to edit the file to be different as to
> later contributors, with differently scoped patent licenses for
> different contributors, is not the idea.  It is not ideal for anyone
> to be getting differently scoped licenses from different authors to
> the same piece of code to the extent this can be avoided, and I would
> discourage people from doing that.  But if someone really wants to
> expand the scope of the license as to themselves, they should just
> create a separate LARGER_WORKS.TXT file, and distribute it alongside
> the original noting that this one is from them and not the original
> authors, or perhaps craft their own additional permission.  Again,
> though, I think this is *not* a practice I would encourage or
> endorse, the idea was not to allow people to make multiple
> differently scoped grants using this vehicle.

So then, I think my original critique stands - this license does not
take into account the way software is developed in 2014, which (due to
things like Github) involves more forking, excerpting, remixing,
recombining and rejigging than ever before.

For a single standalone library that will never have any of those things
happen to it, and whose primary use is in a particular larger work, and
whose development is /de facto/ controlled by a central entity, I can
see it perhaps working.

Gerv