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

[Nigel T]

On Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 4:36 AM, Carlo Piana <osi-review at piana.eu> wrote:
 ...

> Why should the downstream receive a different
> treatment compared to the original? It's the same concept as patents:
> the first inventors have a lien on follow-up inventors, even if the
> follow-up has perhaps more relevance and importance, sometimes it's the
> technology without which the first invention is largely irrelevant.
>
 ...

>  Then again, the copyright conditions are asymmetric, thus I
> cannot get rid of that blinking red light on my dashboard.
>
> Cheers
>
> Carlo


It is true that the copyright conditions are asymmetric but presumably so
are the relative contributions between the original developer and the
downstream contributor.  Otherwise the downstream contributor has no real
reason to accept the asymmetric terms.

So why does upstream receive different treatment?  Because they provided a
large body of work with sufficient value that others wish to remix or build
upon.

Unlike your patent example copyright only protects a specific
implementation which means if the original work isn't of sufficient value
then others would be more inclined to recreate rather than reuse.

Strong copyleft always creates an asymmetric copyright condition.
Permissive projects cannot reuse/remix/build upon strong copyleft code but
strong copyleft projects can reuse/remix/build upon permissively licensed
code.  That's not considered a defect but a feature and a long standing
asymmetric relationship within the open source community.

Also the different treatment is the ability to create a closed source
project.  Which is something they already had but elected to open source
because others might find it useful.

Regards,

Nigel
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20161025/3e808d91/attachment.html>