[License-review] For Approval: Public Software License

[Carlo Piana]

On 10/03/2014 18:55, Josh Berkus wrote:
> On 03/09/2014 04:03 AM, Nikolaos-Modestos Kougioulis wrote:
>> 1) The Cryptix General License is the most similar OSI-approved license.
>> To my concern, that permissive, free software licence, does not make a
>> clear definition of Limitation of Liability. The Public Software License
>> is based on the Cryptix General License, with a clear disambiguation
>> between the Disclaimer of Warranty and the Limitation of Liability.
>> Moreover, at the end of the Public Software License, the agreement
>> between the licensor and the end software user is stated clearly, aiming
>> to emphasize the responsibilities of the user regarding the terms of the
>> License.
> Actually, what it looks very similar to is the PostgreSQL[1] license
> (and, by that token, the MIT license[2]).
>
> Given that we already have the extremely popular MIT and BSD[3] licenses
> which offer the kind of very permissive licensing you desire, can you
> explain in detailed technical language why you feel that the limitations
> of liability in those licenses is distinct from your proposal?  At a
> layman's reading, your license is identical to those.
>
> [1]http://opensource.org/licenses/PostgreSQL
> [2]http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
> [3]http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause
>
> --Josh Berkus

Speaking from a jurisdiction that has a weird attitude towards liability
disclaimer, may I add that unlike many other copyright-related aspects,
the liability disclaimer is by definition jurisdiction-dependent, and
therefore an imperfect tool that cannot be fine tuned for any given
situation without such effort being largely useless in many other
jurisdictions.

I don't see "better liability disclaimer" a good proxy to assess the
worthiness of a new license in terms of non-proliferation.

Best

Carlo