[License-review] License Committee Report

[Richard Fontana]

On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 06:06:25PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Richard Fontana (fontana at sharpeleven.org):
> 
> [FPL 1.0.0:]
> 
> > The license is clearly OSD-conformant. I do not find the policy
> > objections to the Free Public License persuasive, particularly given
> > that no such objections were raised when CC0 was submitted. (CC0 also
> > has no expectation of CC0-covered works bearing a copyright notice and
> > has no notice-preservation condition.) 
> 
> I would speculate that none was raised about CC0 because that licence
> has an explicit, specified role for the 'Affirmer', without whom the
> fallback permissive provisions would be at best suspiciously vague and 
> for all I know might lack legal force.  You may recall that the fallback 
> permissive licence clauses (that take effect if dedication to the public
> domain is locally ineffective) is what brought out support for CC0 --
> though apparently on account of separate dispute over patent concerns it
> was withdrawn before approval.

But the point is that I, an Affirmer, can release something under CC0,
give it to you, and you can proceed to remove all trace of me and CC0
and give it to someone else, consistent with the CC0 waiver and the
fallback license.

> If the Board bases its approval decisions mechanistically on OSD
> compliance, then Richard's recommendation should certainly be followed.
> The case for non-approval rests in the contention that the licence's 
> aim of concealing licensors is harmful to the interests of downstream
> code recipients.

I don't actually think the license aims to 'conceal' licensors. Rather
it says 'don't worry about recording information on who the licensor
is'. One reason why this does not concern me is that I realized long
ago that the discernable record of purported provenance and copyright
ownership in most open source codebases is generally inaccurate and
gets decreasingly accurate over time. I don't actually think this is a
problem, in practice; it's just a feature of open source that one has
to get accustomed to.

Anyway I will emphasize your concern if the license is discussed at
the board meeting.

Richard