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

[Lawrence Rosen]

John Cowan asked:
> If Alice's proprietary software, which she distributes 
> in binary form only, includes the compiled version 
> of Bob's BSD-licensed source, does that mean that 
> the BSD license applies to the binary bits which 
> correspond to that source?

Remember typical practice: Alice goes to SourceForge, finds Bob's free BSD
program, copies it, compiles and links it, and distributes her software.
Bless her! This is precisely what the FOSS community wants to see.

One gets a copyright on "an original work of authorship." Nobody expects Bob
to point to some "binary bits" but to his work itself, presumably in source
code form so we can all understand what copyright he claims. Experts would
then need to evaluate whether those particular binary bits correspond to a
standard compilation and then linking of Bob's copyrighted work that Alice
had access to and then copied. All boring and very expensive technical and
legal work and totally irrelevant to the general FOSS licensing situation.
Nobody ever bothers to do that unless those are big binary bits!

This isn't about binary bits. By the time this gets anywhere near a
licensing dispute, Bob will have many things to prove including, most
important, that somehow he was damaged by Alice's actions and that this
isn't just a typical legitimate way that one copyrighted FOSS program is
built on top of another. Was Alice's only breach a failure to provide notice
of the Bob's BSD component? That's easily corrected.

Yes, Bob's BSD license still applies to his code. And if Alice is honest and
a FOSS supporter, she will provide notice of Bob's contributions even if the
BSD license doesn't actually require it. Of course, if it were a CC-BY or
Apache component, notice of some sort would be required.

I consider this decade-long discussion about license compatibility partly my
own fault. I spent so much time over the years explaining the differences
among FOSS licenses that I forgot that they are all the same: They all allow
-- indeed encourage -- combinations and collective and derivative works. All
it takes is appropriate notices and the publishing of licenses for each and
every open source component (and, for GPL and MPL, etc., the publication of
source code of derivative works). The process is pretty simple, actually,
much simpler than proprietary licensing.

This is not complex. No sublicensing or relicensing is required for typical
FOSS activities.

/Larry


-----Original Message-----
From: John Cowan [mailto:cowan at mercury.ccil.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2014 3:32 PM
To: lrosen at rosenlaw.com; License submissions for OSI review
Subject: Re: [License-review] Request for Approval of Universal Permissive
License (UPL)

Lawrence Rosen scripsit:

> If a distributor incorporates certain FOSS code it finds with a NOTICE 
> that a specific license applies (as decided or authorized by the 
> copyright owner) (e.g., the BSD or GPLv2 or CC-BY licenses), then that 
> is the license that applies for all valid copies of that code received 
> by anyone under the terms of that license. Is that axiom being questioned?

If Alice's proprietary software, which she distributes in binary form only,
includes the compiled version of Bob's BSD-licensed source, does that mean
that the BSD license applies to the binary bits which correspond to that
source?

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
    "Mr. Lane, if you ever wish anything that I can do, all you will have
        to do will be to send me a telegram asking and it will be done."
    "Mr. Hearst, if you ever get a telegram from me asking you to do
        anything, you can put the telegram down as a forgery."