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

[VanL]

Hi Henrik,

An upgrade clause allows a licensor who is the license steward to
arbitrarily change terms in the license - for example changing a BSDish
license to a GPLish one. All licensees would automatically have "accepted"
the applicability of the new terms.

Thanks,
Van

On Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 3:31 AM Henrik Ingo <henrik.ingo at avoinelama.fi>
wrote:

> 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
> +358-40-5697354        skype: henrik.ingo            irc: hingo
> www.openlife.cc
>
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