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

[John Cowan]

On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 11:27 AM, Bruce Perens <bruce at perens.com> wrote:

In your license, you are asking for an *unrelated* program to be made Open
> Source due to a condition predicated on a specific form of use. Besides
> being clearly against OSD # 6 (and sorry, OSI is not now required to
> announce this obvious fact),
>

I don't see this.  If OSD #6 means, or is interpreted to mean, "no
discrimination against particular tasks", then I can see it, and that's a
license prohibition I would support.  But I have trouble reading it into
the text of #6.  Can you explicate?


> it's against the first of the four freedoms, because it creates a
> consequence for use that is not related to protecting the four freedoms
> regarding the program you're actually running.
>

I agree with that.  The four freedoms are just as much Open Source as Free
Software obligations.


> And you need to be aware that the Open Source campaign does not espouse
> that proprietary software is immoral.
>

Indeed.  Years ago, ESR pointed out that it makes no sense to open-source
"consultant in a box" software, code that gives you the same advice that
the person whose expertise it encodes would provide if they were there.
 If Alice is quite legitimately paid $$$$ for her good advice, then she
should be paid appropriately by someone who uses Alice Inc. software that
gives that same advice.  Allowing redistribution would directly deprive
Alice of her livelihood; allowing modification would just be providing
someone else's advice rather than Alice's, though you could sensibly
open-source the framework in which the advice is embedded if there is one.

Even RMS doesn't think you have an obligation to open-source software you
don't distribute.

-- 
John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Don't be so humble.  You're not that great.
        --Golda Meir
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