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

[Kyle Mitchell]

Richard,

Thank you for taking time.  Really great feedback here.

Your point on "uses" is very well taken.  I'm pretty sure
earlier drafts of mine employed "use", singular, as you
suggested.  There were two goals in that:

1. Call back to "use" in the BSD grant language.

   If use/uses leads you to doubt that connection, it's not
   so clear as I thought!

2. Distinguish new conditions on "use" from conditions on
   "redistribution", 1 and 2.

   This goes to your second point, on whether there's any
   implied distribution requirement in the new L0-R
   conditions.  I don't intend any.

I chose BSD as the starting point for L0-R because of its
academic brevity, its "pluggable" numbered-list condition
structure, and its built-in use-redistribution and
with-without-modification distinctions.  The first suits the
licensor-users I envision.  The second makes it easy to
write waivers to drop additional copyleft conditions out.
The last makes it possible to implement use-based copyleft
condition, leaving unmodified alone, while showing in the
text that the familiar BSD-2-Clause redistribution rules
remain intact.

I would gladly revise back to "Use with any modification..."
and "Use as part of, or in development of..." in 3 and 4 if
that's beneficial, net-net.  My only concern is frustration
of other drafting goals.

To be specific, the motivation for "uses" came out of the
puzzle Josh highlighted: bringing clarity to the grace
periods, and doing so in a way that avoids time-based
gotchas.

One of those gotchas is picking up a piece of L0-R (seven
days) code, running it with a private patch for six days
before dropping it, and a year later using the same L0-R
code for a completely different project, with a different
private patch, for another six-day period.  Ideally, there
wouldn't be any good theory of liability there.

To avoid that, I need some way to restart grace period
clocks for sufficiently distinct modifications,
incorporations, and developed products, perhaps based on
unbroken chains of derivative works.  Or a new way to make
clear that Open Source doesn't have to happen immediately,
but it does have to happen.

On your second point, it wasn't my intention to trigger the
use-based conditions in 3 and 4 on use, as described, plus
distribution, somehow implied.

BSD "redistribution" is very easy to read as Copyright Act
"distribute".  But "use" has no Copyright Act analog, and
must to be mapped onto copyright terms.  More specifically,
at least under US law, to actually execute changed code, you
need "reproduce" and "prepare derivative works" from
17US106.  I read BSD-2-Clause "use" to grant permission for
reproduction and preparation of derivative works.

If we think BSD-2-Clause grants blanket copyright permission
for software, and that courts will read distinct terms like
"use" and "redistribution" apart, then either
"redistribution" has to expand past its plain meaning to
cover "reproduction" and "preparation of derivative works",
or "use" does.

I'm going to take some time this afternoon to try to revise
the language again, both for concerns here, and in light of
Josh's input.  I've tried before; maybe recent input will
help get me unstuck.

I'll give thought to your proposed rewording of 3, as well.
The choice of structure in current draft 3 and 4 was largely
to parallel that of BSD 1 and 2.  If I can avoid the
jarring, discontinuous look of BSD+Patents---probably
inevitable for that project---I'd like to.  But that's of
lesser concern than other matters broached.

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