[License-review] Some notes for license submitters

[Bruce Perens]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 1:02 AM, Kyle Mitchell <kyle at kemitchell.com> wrote:
>
> The majority of open source contributors and companies I've
> worked with see the identity of "open source" and license
> terms as historical trivia.  They usually haven't heard of
> OSI or OSD until I mention them, and OSI would seem _less_
> "open source" in their eyes for hosting its own mailing list
> to avoid GitHub.
>

Actually, these folks sound like proprietary software developers. We can
get some of them to make Open Source. But making Open Source into
proprietary software to attract them wouldn't help anyone.


> license-review shouldn't pretend they don't exist, or that they're all
> unread fools who'll grow up, do their homework, and start paying dues.


Yeah, but when I asked you to introduce me to even one of them, it didn't
happen. So, I am still treating them as if they don't exist until you
actually show me that they do.


>
> Those proprietary licenses run on the same copyright operating system open
> source does. The functionality is there.
>

Yeah. You can use steel to make swords or ploughshares. We like being on
the side that shares software that everybody can use, modify, and
redistribute for any purpose. That's where we drew the line.

We are asking of you only one thing. Go forth and use your license. We are
not stopping you. Just don't call it Open Source.

Perhaps so many years back, a hard line on use restrictions felt like it
> had a shot.


There was an extensive history of use-limited software both before and
during Open Source. It had names like "shared source", "non-commercial",
"educational use only". Some of it was mounted by the world's richest
companies, with a goal of replacing Open Source. Their budgets were
tremendous and ours essentially zero. We know just how successful they were
at building community - not at all. Essentially all of the players
eventually saw how much better we were doing with Open Source and decided
to go with Open Source licenses.

>
> And also the issue of dev-tools package managers.


You want to put license restrictions on use of dev tools rather than
construction of derivative works using libraries. We're not interested in
that.


>
> Don't forget OSL!


Don't make me plow through OSL guessing what text you mean.


> Or GPLv3, section 2, paragraph 1, for that matter
>

I think you're misinterpreting it.  GPLv3 section 2, paragraph 1:  *The
output from running a covered work is covered by this License only if the
output, given its content, constitutes a covered work. *This means that you
can't persuade the program to output its own source code and thus claim to
have the same work in the public domain. This existed in GPLv2 as well:

*the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a
work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the
Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. *


> They call patent litigation the sport of kings.  Is open source their
> potlatch, their feast of merit?
>

We're pretty far from license terms now. In an abundance of charity I am
making sure you understand the fair, just, and correct reasons that your
license isn't Open Source and should not be accepted by OSI. This question,
however, I can ignore.

Most people have to ask how they're going to make money, pretty much all of
> the time.


Yeah, me too. But I am not able to employ more than a few of them, and I am
not responsible to let them make that living by growing marijuana on my
farm, or by making Open Source less than Open Source.

it's asking a lot to forgo all direct compensation-incentive, and play in
> the major leagues with that kind of handicap.
>

And somehow people still do it in great numbers.

> Why invoke business model in the _other_ direction, repeatedly, to cast
aspersions on L0-R?

Because that's it's purpose, and the way you implement that purpose happens
to not fit the OSD. I do not begrudge you use of the business model either,
as I have now repeated several times this evening. Just don't call it Open
Source.

Part of what inspired L0-R was holes in AGPL's coverage. Dev tool authors
> want a reciprocal license.
>

And they can have one. But it's not an Open Source license and should not
be called one.


> To my knowledge, there was no short, academic-style, hacker-administrable
> reciprocal public license form until L0-R, especially the 2.0.0 draft.
>

See the Sleepycat license for one. Very old and not the text I'd have them
use today, but the intent was to have the terms of the GPL without the
philosophy.
-- 
Bruce Perens K6BP - CEO, Legal Engineering
Standards committee chair, license review committee member, co-founder,
Open Source Initiative
President, Open Research Institute; Board Member, Fashion Freedom
Initiative.
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