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

[Lawrence Rosen]

Responses inline. /Larry

 

-----Original Message-----
From: John Cowan [mailto:cowan at mercury.ccil.org] 
Sent: Friday, September 12, 2014 8:49 AM
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:

 

> 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.

 

Actually, we don't know if that's truly typical or not.  It's quite likely
that "Alice goes to SourceForge etc. etc. and distributes her software in
binary form under a proprietary license" is the more frequent scenario, it's
just that we don't see it or hear about it.

 

<LR> And when her system administrator reports her to the FOSS police, or
more likely when Ameriprise sues her for some unrelated reason, we'll see
and hear about it. What then?

 

> Bob will have many things to prove including, most important, that 

> somehow he was damaged by Alice's actions

 

Statutory damages makes that unnecessary, no?  In effect, copyright
violation is almost a matter of strict liability, though of course the
amount of the damages are affected by scienter, and the definition of fair
use somewhat alleviates the burden.  (Arguably, unfair use should be an
element of the tort rather than fair use being a defense, but that's not the
way the law is applied today.)

 

<LR> I refuse to play hypothetical games with damages calculations. Better
on these lists to use the term with its colloquial meaning, which is "How
was Bob harmed?" Treat it here as a question of equity rather than of law.

 

> and that this isn't just a typical legitimate way that one copyrighted 

> FOSS program is built on top of another.

 

But Alice's program is not FOSS in my hypo here.

 

<LR> True. But it could have been such, under any FOSS license whatsoever,
without an ounce of license incompatibility.

 

-- 

John Cowan           <http://www.ccil.org/~cowan> http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
<mailto:cowan at ccil.org> cowan at ccil.org

Man has no body distinct from his soul, for that called body is a portion of
the soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of the soul in this
age.  --William Blake

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20140912/9e379dd3/attachment.html>