[License-review] Approval: Server Side Public License, Version 1 (SSPL v1)

[Kevin P. Fleming]

My two cents: my understanding of OSD 5 was that 'discrimination'
applied to natural, inherent characteristics of the persons or groups
in question, or to behaviors they choose to engage in outside of the
usage of the software, not to the ways in which they planned to
consume, distribute, or modify the software. The typical list of
protected characteristics (race/ethnicity, religion, gender, age,
economic status, etc.) and membership in groups would be the ways I'd
consider 'discriminatory' in the context of OSD 5, not the fact that a
person or group wants to incorporate software into a proprietary
product. That would fall into OSD 6, possibly, or not at all.
On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 12:32 PM Luis Villa <luis at lu.is> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 9:08 AM Kyle Mitchell <kyle at kemitchell.com> wrote:
>>
>> As for distinguishing network software development from
>> other kinds of software, plenty of approved copyleft
>> licenses discriminate among ways of creating new software
>> with old.  For example, the weak copyleft licenses, LGPL,
>> MPL, EPL.  Arguably, so do the original, strong, GPL-style
>> licenses, now that we have network copyleft.  GPLv3
>> "discriminates" against proprietary development generally,
>> and among those, privileges developers who distribute
>> software over those who provide it as services.
>
>
> GPL v3 also discriminates against those who distribute User Products, burdening them with extra obligations. I don't recall anyone seriously suggesting at the time that this was a violation of OSD 6, though I'd be curious to revisit the archives in my copious free time :(
>
> (GPL v3 also arguably discriminates against those who wish to exercise their legal rights as granted by laws that implement anti-circumvention provisions of the '96 WIPO treaty, though that's a weaker argument.)
>
>>
>> Copyleft is inherently discriminatory.  For reasons I set
>> out in my post at the section linked below, that kind of
>> discrimination evidently isn't the kind 5 and 6 prohibit.
>> Where developers have a choice to make their code free or
>> nonfree, copyleft exists precisely to encourage and require
>> the free choice.
>>
>> https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/11/05/OSD-Copyleft-Regulation.html#discrimination
>
>
> +1 to this. Copyleft has always been an odd fit with OSD 5 and 6, particularly 6. This discussion will be healthiest if we can grapple with that honestly instead of tying ourselves in knots to deny it.
>
> Luis
> _______________________________________________
> License-review mailing list
> License-review at lists.opensource.org
> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-review_lists.opensource.org