[License-review] For Approval: W3C Software and Document License

[Tzeng, Nigel H.]

From: Carlo Piana <carlo at piana.eu<mailto:carlo at piana.eu>>
Date: Thursday, Aug 10, 2017, 6:08 AM
To: license-review at opensource.org <license-review at opensource.org<mailto:license-review at opensource.org>>
Subject: Re: [License-review] For Approval: W3C Software and Document License

On 09/08/2017 21:15,

The scope of a FOSS license is to give permission to do things with
software. They are *historically* conceived as copyright licenses
because *historically* that was what drafters understood it was the
regime under which rights had to be conferred on software.

If different rights insist on software, the owner of those rights who
purports to give permission *must* give those permission under all the
rights she may have, or the openness test would miserably fail.

Otherwise it is like opening one lock of a door, with the other
remaining closed. The door will not open. So if the license is a key,
you cannot just say "this key will conditionally open all the copyright
locks on my doors" and claim that the doors will be "open doors". If
there are patent locks of yours, the doors will remain shut. [0]

A license which only gives copyright licenses but refuses to do so for
patents is not an open source license in my and many others' opinion.
It's a public license, it is valid, it has some scope, but it's not open
source.

I invite OSI to take a stance once for all as to this conceptual ambiguity.


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