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

[Luis Villa]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 2:14 AM Henrik Ingo <henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi>
wrote:

> But on a general level I don't think that asymmetric licenses are
> negative as a category, nor against the OSD clause against
> discrimination. I have worked most of my career for companies that
> accomplished the same goal by using *GPL as the OSI approved license,
> and requiring a separate CLA for receiving upstream contributions
> (from outsiders, which tend to be a limited set of contributors). The
> difference in my opinion is that while these models can be rightfully
> criticized, and also I have done so, there's no question that the GPL
> is clearly compatible with the OSD. I think it is important for OSI to
> acknowledge that OSD requirements are narrowly focused on the license,
> and do not include:
>
>  - requirement for a vibrant diverse open source community to actually
> exist or grow
>  - requirement for the software to be of any particular level of quality
>  - requirement for the software to be cheap or free
>  - etc...
>
> And of course there clearly was never a requirement for the software
> to only be available under a single license, or the same license to
> everyone.
>
> The new contribution of this license seems to be that it tries to
> capture within a single document both the open source license and the
> upstream CLA (and I repeat, this is based on a superficial reading and
> more to make a general point). IMO this is equivalent to the
> established practice of using GPL and a separate CLA and cannot in
> itself be categorically in violation of the OSD.
>

+1 to all this. Like Henrik, I didn't read the license, so this is not a
comment on the particular license, but many of our licenses have always
permitted a variety of imbalances between various participants in the
ecosystem. If this is a bad idea, OSI should say that for all those other
arrangements as well, and figure out how to formalize that rule, rather
than stretching the non-discrimination principle.

Luis
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