[License-review] Submission of the Upstream Compatibility License v1.0 (UCL-1.0) for approval

Tzeng, Nigel H. Nigel.Tzeng at jhuapl.edu
Tue Nov 29 15:27:44 UTC 2016


On 11/28/16, 6:43 PM, "License-review on behalf of Richard Fontana"
<license-review-bounces at opensource.org on behalf of
fontana at opensource.org> wrote:


>Hi Nigel,
>
>My general sense of the license-review discussion of the UCL, and this
>is confirmed for me by re-reading it now, is that opinion was mostly
>negative, with concerns being expressed about the asymmetrical nature
>of the license. This matches my personal view of the license. Thus I
>would recommend against approval.
>
>Regarding NOSA 2.0, I'm afraid there has been no change in status. In
>the short term I would not expect NOSA 2.0 to be approved without
>substantial revisions, or else convincing justifications of
>arguably-problematic provisions. However there has been no 'up or down
>vote'. 
>
>Richard

Richard,

I welcome any discussion on UCL, positive or negative.  I wished to get
the ball moving in any direction before investing more effort into UCL
changes as a private individual.

Regarding NOSA, I feel that while the Federal Source Code Policy may not
survive the current administration that it would behoove the OSI to do
something to address the fact that a major Fed Gov open source contributor
and license steward has asked to update their license.  A special purpose
license meant to facilitate the open sourcing of US Government developed
software that takes into account the needs of a federal agency.  We are
highly dependent on NOSA licensed code for our flight software and
spacecraft testbeds which are based on Goddard's Core Flight Executive and
I have been a contributor in the past on NASA WorldWind, another NOSA
success story.

I think that 3.5 years (first submitted Jun 7, 2013) is long past the time
period where an up or down vote should be taken.

It may also be useful to get the ball rolling on CC0 approval in case the
Federal Source Code Policy survives and a large portion of the code
released on code.gov is released under a non-OSI approved FOSS license.
If the policy is set where OSI approval is not required to be considered
Open Source by the Federal Government that would probably be sub-optimal
for the OSI.  I guess this is a topic more suited for license-discuss.

Regards,

Nigel




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