[License-review] For Legacy Approval: TOPPERS License

[Yutaka MATSUBARA]

Hello Allison,


On 7/26/15 13:51, Allison Randal wrote:
> On 07/25/2015 07:42 PM, Yutaka MATSUBARA wrote:
>> On 7/24/15 10:38, Carlo wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Is it an official and unified comment from the OSI committee that OSI
>>>> does not approve new licenses that refer to specific projects? Please
>>>> let me know where it is noticed in the OSI website.
>>>
>>> I think this is clearly stated many times in this discussion list. But I
>>> think this is a matter best left to the Board to discuss with you.
>
> This is item #8 of the Open Source Definition, "License Must Not Be
> Specific to a Product". I haven't reviewed the current draft of the
> TOPPERS license on this question enough to say whether it fits the
> criteria, but that's specifically what we'd be looking for when we review.

I believe that the following term does not invalidate #8 of the OSD 
because, in (b), the license specifies only the destination for 
reporting and does not restrict any uses and distributions.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
  (3) When this software is redistributed in the forms unusable
      for the development of other software, such as the case when
      the software is embedded in a piece of equipment, at least
      one of the following two conditions must be satisfied:

    (a) The above copyright notice, this use conditions, and the
        disclaimer shown below must be shown without modification in
        the document provided with the redistributed software, such as
        the user manual.

    (b) How the software is to be redistributed must be reported to the
        TOPPERS Project according to the procedure described
        separately.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The newest TOPPERS license can be found in the email I sent to this 
mailing list on July 1.

>> I would like to discuss with the Board about this matter.
>> Are there any ways for that?
>
> Board members participate in the discussions on this mailing list, so
> this is the best forum for it. Typically, the board will wait until
> discussion on this list seems to be winding down for a particular
> license, and then the board member with primary responsibility for
> License Review (currently Richard Fontana) will bring the license to
> vote in our monthly board meeting.
>
> Sometimes we get more actively involved in drafting revisions of the
> license, it just depends on what's needed. We are interested to improve
> the overall quality of open source licenses, and so are happy to
> participate in drafting where it's useful, and to provide connections to
> established open source legal experts to review drafts (both on this
> list and in the wider open source world).

Thank you for the useful information.

We, TOPPERS project, can revise the license if there are any critical 
problems or rational reasons on approval by OSI Although I submitted 
it as a legacy approval.

Thanks,
Yutaka