[License-review] For Legacy Approval: OpenLDAP Public License

[VanL]

Upgrade clauses should not mean automatic OSI acceptance. I would think
that an accepted predecessor should strongly bias the analysis toward
acceptance, but should not guarantee it. Even for NGOs/nonprofits.

Thanks,
Van


On Mon, Aug 19, 2019 at 3:05 PM Josh Berkus <josh at berkus.org> wrote:

> On 8/16/19 2:10 PM, Brendan Hickey wrote:
> >
> > We should regard upgrade clauses skeptically, particularly when the
> > license steward is the only user of the license. This language could be
> > used to generate a proprietary fork if the steward saw fit. The GPL at
> > least claims that revisions will be in the spirit of the original, AGPL
> > linking clause notwithstanding.
>
> I don't think that's significantly different. "in the spirit" is
> subjectively interpretatable, and can mean whatever the issuing entity
> wants it to mean.
>
> One key to this license, though, is that it really doesn't make sense
> without a nonprofit foundation as the issuing entity.  I think that's
> something we can assert for all updatability clauses, really.  With
> NGOs, we can generally trust the original NGO to have the public
> interest at heart.  With individuals & for-profit corporations, we
> really can't.
>
> Now, we can't enforce that except via notes on the license at
> opensource.org, of course.
>
> --
> Josh Berkus
>
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