[License-review] For Approval: Convertible Free Software License, Version 1.1 (C-FSL v1.1)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Elmar Stellnberger (estellnb at elstel.org):

> A contributor license agreement will work for large industry scale
> applications with many programmers. It will not work for a private
> project of mine because people would either ignore any contributor
> license agreement in my name or even rather wildly develop different
> forks without a mainline/upstream project.

Wildly developed different forks are always inherently permitted by 
open source licensing (OSD #3).  Given that you apparently wish to
prevent forks you disapprove of, I would suggest that you basically
prefer proprietary development.

If you really do understand, and are OK with, the basic realities of
open source such as permitting no impediments to the right to fork, I
would suggest you seek competent legal help when drafting software
licences.  The problems in C-FSL 1.1 are IMO so vast one scarce knows
where to begin -- perhaps with its many odd, convoluted, and poorly
defined turns of phrase.  As a copyeditor, I was so struck with the need
to  red-pencil (among many others) the section 5 phrase 'there only
needs to be one marker by the party which is at the end of the chain as
long as that chain remains to be documented in some place where it is
shipped with your software' that I only barely noticed that the crucial
term 'marker' is completely unclear, even though the preceding sentence
purports to define it.