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

[Kyle Mitchell]

Carlo,

Thank you so much for your input.  I have lived a little while in a second language, and I'm especially grateful for your effort.  I don't think I could participate in this mailing list in Russian or Spanish.

On to your questions.

"Use in the execution and development of any computer program" is written in technical terms, not legal terms.  Court I'm familiar with will see those word choices, gather that they are technical terms, rather than legal ones, and ask, "What would software people mean by 'execution and development'?".  The court would ask for evidence from software people, not lawyers.

You gave a specific example.  As a software person, I _would_ read the language to apply to programs compiled with an L0-R compiler.  Yes, that's new.  And intentional.

As for the Definition, I'm afraid I can't read it as you do.  OSD criterion number 6 prohibits limits on use of software in "fields of endeavor", not all limits on use, flat-out.  It gives two examples, business and genetic engineering, that are broad reasons for using software, not choices about how to license software.  And we all know a famous counterexample, the JSON License's prohibition on use for evil, very broad indeed.  OSI's annotations describe the major intent of the criterion to exclude noncommercial use limitations.  Commercial use of L0-R code is very possible.

We know from the choice of words, from the examples, from the annotation, and from the approval of licenses like AGPL, that the criterion does not prohibit all possible limits on use.  Modifying an AGPL program and using it in such a way that users interact with it remotely, without any opportunity to receive source, is not permitted.  But AGPL meets the Definition, including criterion 6, even if users over the network never receive any copy of any part of the software.  Often they don't.

Practically, it matters less and less whether someone gives you a copy of a program to run for yourself, or runs a copy of the program for you.  Legally, both require copyright permission, and perhaps patent permission.  So when we look closely, and past the old world of mainframes running programs sent on tape, by mail, the distinction between "distribution" and "use" breaks down.  That in mind, what about the Open Source Definition requires copyleft licenses "hook into" distribution, but not use?  Nothing, I think.

You are correct that L0-R is stronger than any currently approved copyleft license.  I have said as much, too.  That is its goal, and I would not propose it for approval if it merely "reimplemented" (A)GPL copyleft.  But nothing I see in the Definition compels the GPL or AGPL approach to implementation.  Nothing in the OSD says that AGPL is as strong as copyleft can possibly be.

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