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

[Henrik Ingo]

I'm not quite following here... A BSD style license allows me to do pretty
much anything with downstream software anyway. How can an upgrade clause be
an issue?

With copyleft licenses there's a clear need to trust that rules and
requirements stay the same for all parties - that requirements aren't
removed. What is the problem for a BSD-style license? There's nothing to
remove, and adding limitations is not a problem, because you can just use
the old license.

henrik

On Mon, Aug 19, 2019 at 11:17 PM Brendan Hickey <brendan.m.hickey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi
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