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

[Bruce Perens]

The issue of the license text being infringing of FSF's copyright needs to
be addressed. I doubt FSF is going to give permission for this use of their
text. There is a possible 17 USC 102(b) argument, but most sources (Nimmer,
Adams) disagree, and I don't know of any case law. This might require a
full rewrite, and IMO OSI would face a risk of being a contributory
infringer simply by hosting a copy of the current text on their site. The
legal ambiguity of that might be sufficient reason for rejection.

I am most concerned with the second paragraph of section 13, and its
conflict with OSD #9 and #6. The definition of how those pieces are coupled
needs to be tighter. Management software, backup software, etc. may be used
as part of the offering of a service, but they don't create a derivative
work, nor are they combined into the same program. So, we get a restriction
on works that are simply aggregated together (#9) or a restriction on use
of the program if the data is backed up using a non-Open-Source backup
program (#6).

    Thanks

    Bruce

On Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 8:31 AM Richard Fontana <fontana at sharpeleven.org>
wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 09:03:02AM -0400, Eliot Horowitz wrote:
> > This license is being submitted for approval by its steward, MongoDB,
> Inc.
>
> Apologies if this was already noted in your submission: MongoDB,
> Inc. has made a redline from AGPLv3 available here:
> https://webassets.mongodb.com/_com_assets/legal/SSPL-compared-to-AGPL.pdf
>
> Eliot, have you also contacted the Free Software Foundation about this
> license (to see whether they would consider it, or rather software
> licensed under it, to meet the Free Software Definition)?
>
> Richard
>
>
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>
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>


-- 
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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