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

[Simon Phipps]

>
> 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.


That's not how OSI or the license review process works. OSI waits for this
public forum to reach a stable consensus, then evaluates it against mission
and principle, then crystalises the community opinion if they match. OSI
will not offer opinions on licenses either here or privately, and this
forum is the "committee".

S.


On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 7:50 AM, Kyle Mitchell <kyle at kemitchell.com> wrote:

> 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
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>



-- 
Simon Phipps*, President, The Open Source Initiative*
+44 238 098 7027 or +1 415 683 7660 : www.opensource.org
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