[License-review] For Approval: libpng license, version 2.0

[Smith, McCoy]

>>From: License-review [mailto:license-review-bounces at lists.opensource.org] On Behalf Of Henrik Ingo
>>Sent: Monday, November 5, 2018 7:51 AM
>>To: license-review at lists.opensource.org
>>Subject: Re: [License-review] For Approval: libpng license, version 2.0


>>This list is of course populated with great legal minds as well, but in my experience a lawyer giving your formal legal counsel will trump a mailing list discussion any day.

>>None of the above is to imply that I would be opposed to your submission as it stands. I guess my first reaction is that libpng as a library is embedded into larger software applications, so there would be some value in ending up with a simpler and shorter alternative. So it would be worth looking into the alternatives you mentioned, such as moving the contributors to a separate flat list.


I found this submission very confusing, in part because it seems to be a series of licenses and/or disclaimers sequentially superimposed on other licenses or disclaimers, each of which appears to indicate that it applies to different versions of a particular piece of software.  If, for example, the Boost license is intended to apply to the latest version, why is there a need for reproduction of the license or licenses used with predecessor versions of the software?  If it is for legacy code, that legacy code would already have the license appended to it, so there isn’t a need to instead append the license text itself.  If not, how is the user to discern which rights apply to which parts of the latest version of the software they have received?


I’d also note that the text you submitted has a lot more legal terminology than just a concatenation of the zlib/libpng license (here: https://opensource.org/licenses/Zlib  ) and the Boost license (here: https://opensource.org/licenses/BSL-1.0 ) including a fairly strong trademark statement that neither of those licenses has:

“The name "libpng" has not been registered by the Copyright owners as a trademark in any jurisdiction.  However, because libpng has been distributed and maintained world-wide, continually since 1995, the Copyright owners claim "common-law trademark protection" in any jurisdiction where common-law trademark is recognized.”



The effect of that statement on OSD 1 should probably be addressed.



The license, given the manner it is written, also seems to only be applicable to, and may only be used with, a single piece of software given the way it presents authorship statements within the text of the license, so seems non-reusable.



The UCITA point is  an interesting one, but I’m curious if anyone on the list has information on what disclaimer terminology is and is not effective under UCITA.

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