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

[Nigel T]

I wasn't going to bring it up but there is an approved special purpose
license that may meet your needs.

UCL v1.0 (https://opensource.org/licenses/UCL-1.0) is a copyleft license
based on Laurence Rosen's OSL license (
https://rosenlaw.com/OSL3.0-explained.htm) with effectively a 1/2 line
change where derivative works of the original must be dual licensed UCL and
Apache and not just OSL.

You get the rough equivalent of a CLA since you can choose the apache
license on any derivative work rather than use under the UCL license.

It is a special purpose license because only when a large body of work is
open sourced for the first time is this license likely to be
useful/chosen.  Unfortunately my sponsor ran out of funding before I could
get them to release our project under UCL...now I have to do it the hard
way so it's taking a while.

Wow, I just clicked on the UCL link and it appears all the formatting has
disappeared for the license.  I can fix that if someone tells me whom to
send an update to...you'll have to trust me on what is says. :)

Here is section 1c that was changed:


c) to distribute or communicate copies of the Original Work and Derivative
Works to the public, with the proviso that copies of Original Work You
distribute or communicate shall be licensed under this Upstream
Compatibility License and *all Derivative Work You distribute or
communicate shall be licensed under* *both this Upstream Compatibility
License and the Apache License 2.0 or later*;


Forking isn't impacted at all other than you can probably safely use any
changes in those forks.  I say probably because there isn't any guarantee
that any forked project licensed everything correctly...but bug fixes and
the like are (probably) safe even if the changes exceed the de minims
threshold since you can pick Apache for those changes.

I am not a lawyer and I'm speaking just for myself.  Do these disclaimers
really do anything?  It's kind of like a cargo cult law ritual...

On Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 3:39 PM Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>
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