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

[Brendan Hickey]

The OpenLDAP Foundation is a non-profit. Still, I think we need to draw a
distinction between narrowly and broadly focused groups. With reasonable
certainty we can say that the FSF isn't going to write the GPLv4 to demand
royalty payments to the SCO (even if they did decide to co-opt the works of
GPLv2+ users for the benefit of the AGPL). A single user license is
inherently more susceptible to the whims of a sponsor.  With someone else
in the driver's seat the AGPLv3 probably would've transformed seamlessly
into the SSPL.

Brendan

On Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 16:04 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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