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

[Kyle Mitchell]

On 2017-10-25 02:10, Tzeng, Nigel H. wrote:
> And finally, it appears to me that it may be possible to
> easily circumvent your intent because the business entity
> can make their changes under BSD and simply not provide
> source to any of the internal users of the derivative work
> fulfilling both BSD and L0R requirements. No one else is
> legally authorized to make that source available to
> anyone...not even the actual coders. The requirement for a
> public repo isn’t in the last draft.

You're right.  I removed the "publish" requirement from the
most recent draft.  John Cowan in particular found a few
ways that requirement could run into trouble.

My response was to require Open Source per OSD.  As it turns
out, OSD 2 actually goes beyond what the license for
software says, to availability of source code:

  The program must include source code, and must allow
  distribution in source code as well as compiled form.
  Where some form of a product is not distributed with
  source code, there must be a well-publicized means of
  obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable
  reproduction cost, preferably downloading via the Internet
  without charge. The source code must be the preferred form
  in which a programmer would modify the program.
  Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed.
  Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or
  translator are not allowed.

That requirement applies to releases of modification and
other software under the most recent draft of L0-R. Speaking
of which...

> I think...because I’m not sure the last draft I read
> really is the last draft.

Totally understandable.

The currently proposed draft is here:

https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2017-October/003134.html

All other changes have only been proposed to specific
people, in response to specific feedback.  I will update the
current draft, going forward, only by replying to the
original message.

> You can continue to patch your license to close loopholes
> but attempting to force commercial users to pay the
> developers ultimately isn’t open source. It’s a shared
> source model with dual licensing.
>
> /shrug
>
> I’m not against that desire, and in fact am for it, but
> you’re trying to do something the OSD guards against.

The license that you rightly exclude from Open Source here
is L0-NC, a noncommercial license based on BSD, with
commercial use language from CC-BY-NC-3.0.

https://licensezero.com/licenses/noncommercial/diff

I have not and will not propose that license to OSI for
approval, because it clearly does _not_ meet the Definition,
as you say.

But copyleft licenses like GPL and AGPL, both OSI-approved,
are very commonly used as the public license for
dual-licensing business models.  Businesses pay for
alternative terms in these situations because they
discriminate against Open Source, not because the licenses
discriminate against business.  A recent, successful example
of a project dual-licensed in this way is MongoDB, under
AGPL.

L0-R aims to be a very strong copyleft license.  Stronger
even than AGPL.  That will make it even more attractive for
some business users to purchase alternative terms, when
available.  But plenty of for-profit concerns will be able
to use L0-R software under its public license without issue.
At the same time, an individual wanting to use L0-R code
with private modifications for a non-commercial hobby
project _would_ need other terms.  Commercial use doesn't
matter.  Sharing alike as Open Source does.

> At the end of the day both try to achieve the same goal:
> make commercial users pay for using the work.

Businesses following dual-licensing business models very
often pick an OSI-approved license, like GPL or AGPL,
precisely for this purpose.  Their intent doesn't make those
licenses not Open Source.  Open Source depends on what the
license says.

Again, OSD-conformant licenses cannot discriminate against
commercial use.  But commercial users can and do
discriminate against Open Source software and the freedoms
it values and protects.  The fact that companies that do not
choose an Open Source-compatible business model may dislike
an Open Source license, and try to buy other terms, does not
disqualify the Open Source from being Open Source.

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