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

[Smith, McCoy]

Not sure you need to hear back from me (I'm not on the OSI board, so my affiliation is only as a commentator on this and other OSI mailing lists).  But since you asked.....

1.  I continue to believe that your license, as drafted (based on the last draft I saw) violates OSD 6 & 9, for the reasons outlined in my prior e-mail.  I think it could be rewritten to not violate those provisions and meet what I understand to be your goals for the license.  But the process here is to examine your license, not your goals.

2.  I think there is quite an interesting philosophical question raised by what I think are your goals here.  I will opine upon them as an external observer and not as someone who speaks for OSI (there are others who have responded to you who do).  Namely, would an "IP Maximaleft" license be approvable by OSI under the OSD?  So, hypothetically:

	"You are granted a license to all the rights that the author(s) have the right to grant, under the following conditions:
		1. You preserve all notices by the author(s).
		2. You preserve all disclaimers of liability by the author(s), and you understand that you get no liability from the author(s).
		3.  Every exercise of the rights granted to you by the author(s) requires you to publicly publish the source code resulting from the exercise of those rights."

[Note:  This is *not* a license submission by me, nor is it intended to be something to be reviewed for legal clarity or completeness; it's just a hypothetical].
In my opinion, that sort of license would pass the OSD (assuming it could be written in a way that is deemed to be legally clear so that it doesn't sweep in use cases violating OSD 9).  I don't think FSF's Freedom 0 is required by the current OSD.

3.  I don't think a license of that type is a particularly good idea, nor is it a license that I think many users would want to accept.  And I think it would be detrimental to the smaller developers.  The freedom to privately tinker, as articulated in FSF Freedom 0, is a worthwhile freedom.  Requiring someone to publish their tinkering, particularly when that obligation is continuing, would impose a burden that I think most developers wouldn't want to shoulder, and might also subject them to having to publish work that is not something they'd want public.

4.  I seriously doubt this license is going to achieve the goals you seek.  The companies you think are extracting value from the work of unpaid developers would likely not accept software licensed under those terms.  Taking the right to privately tinker away from an organization that might have hundreds or thousands of developers who might be tinkering with the code creates an administrative compliance nightmare that is not likely worth the benefit of receiving the code.

5.  In the end, the LZPL schema looks something like a fairly common model in the industry -- an eval license, followed by a commercial license in the eval process is successful.  Except the eval license in this case, LZPL, has terms that I think most organizations and developers wouldn't find palatable.  Better for the developers you think want to use this model to use a more standard eval license and keep "open source" out of it.

For what it's worth

McCoy
-----Original Message-----
From: License-review [mailto:license-review-bounces at opensource.org] On Behalf Of Kyle Mitchell
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2017 5:49 PM
To: License submissions for OSI review <license-review at opensource.org>
Subject: Re: [License-review] For Approval: License Zero Reciprocal Public License

On 2017-10-24 17:10, Bruce Perens wrote:
> Can we get back to writing licenses now, please?

Yes, I'd love to.  But frankly, apart from waiting to hear back from Richard and McCoy, and giving your latest message its second read, I'm feeling less and less like I know what to do.

To give a sense, it came as a surprise to read that you think a draft---which draft?---is OSD-conformant as revised.
I think that's the first vote of such confidence I've heard on the conformance question.

I'm equally tempted to stand on whatever you think conforms, ask that it be reported to the board, and wait for whatever feedback comes of that, on the one hand, or to rewrite the whole thing from scratch with a free hand, best I can, on the other.

--
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