[License-review] resolving ambiguities in OSD [was Re: For Approval: License Zero Reciprocal Public License]

[Luis Villa]

On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 6:20 PM Josh berkus <josh at postgresql.org> wrote:

> On 10/24/2017 06:13 PM, Bruce Perens wrote:
> >
> > With regard to *simple users,* those who make use of the Open Source
> > software and do not modify or redistribute it, there should be as close
> > to *no legal load* as possible. We need to be cognizant that many of
> > these users are individuals and very small businesses that can't
> > reasonably assume any legal load at all. We can't protect them from
> > patent issues brought by others than the licensor of the software, but
> > to the extent that we can protect them, we should. In
> > particular, *simple users should not ever have to read the license.*
>
> Is this an actual requirement for OSI license certification?  I ask
> because it has specific bearing on whether or not we recommend LZRPL.
>
> It would also leave open the question of why the AGPL gets to circumvent
> that requirement.
>

And GPL v2 and v3, and EUPL, and I'm sure others. (The only reason one can
even vaguely pretend v2 meets a "should not ever have to read the license"
criteria is because of decades of usage.)

In the other thread we also now see it suggested (again, in completely good
faith!) that enforceability is a criteria; putting aside that all contracts
balance some risks around enforcement and other goals, and different
license authors may have very different perspectives on that optimal
balance, I'm at a loss as to how OSI can reasonably assess this in all but
the most egregious cases. (And certainly hard to see how license-review's
non-lawyers can assess it better than a reasonably experienced lawyer in
the space like Kyle.)

Again, OSI would be well-served by actually writing down the non-OSD
criteria, or publicly admitting that the criteria are not agreed-to and
non-transparent. I realize this would not be easy, but the current
situation benefits no one.

Luis
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