[License-review] For Approval: Rewrite of License Zero Reciprocal Public License

[Kyle Mitchell]

On 2017-11-07 15:11, Bruce Perens wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 7, 2017 at 2:49 PM, Kyle Mitchell <kyle at kemitchell.com> wrote:
> > If Open Source licenses can hook copyleft into distribution, why can't
> > they hook copyleft into use?
>
> IMO, OSD # 6 catches your use cases and thus your proposal is not an Open
> Source license.

If that's true of OSD 6 as OSI applies it, I'll say again
that OSI ought to make that broadly understood.  It is not
now broadly understood.  Which is part of the reason you've
been careful to point out your view may not track OSI's.

> But the real question here is not whether your proposed license meets the
> OSD.

I don't mean to bang a tin drum.  But that is the _only_
inquiry I thought I started, submitting L0-R for review.
And the reason I reached out to you, in reply to your tweet
that Open Source means an OSD-conformant license, full stop.

> It is the fact that it is in absolutely nobody's interest to ever
> accept the license as presently written, because it asks for too much.

It is in copyleft-leaning toolmakers' interest.  And in the
interest of those who still want to make open software a
viable competitor to closed-source software.  And in the
interest of those who want a new deal with those carrying
off from the community, down one-way streets paved with
approved license terms.

I've said before that passing judgment like this risks
sending the message that OSI has decided copyleft has to
play with a handicap.  And that insofar as free software is
losing to closed source---or succeeding only by redefining
success as assisting closed source, rather than competing
with it---handicapping copyleft looks like picking a winner.

> It asks for an unreasonable compliance burden of the user, and it asks of
> someone who actually owns a copyright to some work to Open Source that work
> simply for the benefit of using your program.

Will OSI reject a license on the basis that releasing
software as Open Source is an onerous, unreasonable exaction
dwarfing conceivable use value of any single program?  Is
foretelling practical cost-benefit analysis part of what it
does?

OSI has already approved licenses that require release
simply for the benefit of modifying, running, and
distributing the licensed program.  Some users of Open
Source continue to see those licenses as unreasonable.
Judging by OSI approvals past, OSI has not.

> I can conceive that a software developer receives such great value when
> they incorporate someone else's code into their product. So that's where I
> drew the line, and in this I was following the previous work of Richard
> Stallman and the authors of various licenses the Debian project was
> accepting.

The industry smudges every bright line, in time.

Consider Node.js.  Significant server and other software is
written on Node, using Node-targeted libraries.  But a
substantial chunk of the growth of the platform comes down
to developer tooling---code generators, linters, style
checkers, transpilers, bundlers, minifiers---for
browser-targeted development.  Crack open a typical
front-end web project shipped yesterday, and you'd have a
much harder time replacing the tooling than the framework.
I can swap out React in a hurry, as many recently have done.
Babel?  Webpack?  Potentially much harder!

> And thus, even if this license met the OSD, which I don't believe it does,
> for OSI to certify it would be dereliction of their duty to the community.

There is no more substance to "approving L0-R would be
dereliction of duty" than to "L0-R is absurd".  If that
statement's meant to persuade, it's meant to persuade on
some other basis than arguable merit.

I have spent a lot of time arguing merit.  Several hours,
and several drafts, on my prior message alone.  You quoted
one sentence of that message, an example, in another reply.
You quoted just the first sentence here, and responded by
repeating a bare conclusion, as opinion, about OSD 6.

Was the rest for nothing?  I'd be happy to return to it.

> So, I wonder if you are trying to engage us in some sort of Socratic
> discussion? Certainly you are capable of thinking through the consequences
> of your own license as I have.

Your conclusions are not inevitable.  We disagree.  Some of
my reasons appear above.  Some appear in my previous reply.
Please consider them.  I took time for hope you would.

> You appear to have scrapped the previous
> version of your license that you might have made OSD compliant with my
> advice, removing consequences based on use. In its place, I see *yet
> another pass at incorporating use into your terms.*
>
> I can confidently say that you have exhausted this path.

You've invited me, several times as I now understand, to
propose a different license.  To pare L0-R back to a pithy
reimplementation of GPL-style copyleft with some bugfixes.
As I take your gist, a bare modification copyleft triggers,
and combination without "derivative work".  Perhaps that's
L0-R as currently proposed, with edits we've discussed, less
condition 5. Perhaps that seems useful, from your point of
view.  But it's not the license I proposed for review.

True, L0-R was rewritten, and partly at your urging.  But it
has asked what McCoy dubbed the "maximaleft" question from
the very beginning.  It has asked the questions Richard set
out last month.  The rewrite sharpened focus on those
questions.

I asked the questions in hopes of hearing OSI's answers.
Others, leaning both ways, have agreed they aren't cut and
dry.  Perhaps the committee will come back, and constrain me
to just the kind of license you have in mind.  I see, and
have tried to make, a strong case that they shouldn't.

-- 
Kyle Mitchell, attorney // Oakland // (510) 712 - 0933