[License-review] For approval: The Cryptographic Autonomy License (Beta 2)

[Josh Berkus]

On 8/22/19 4:54 PM, Pamela Chestek wrote:
> 
> On 8/22/19 7:20 PM, Simon Phipps wrote:
>> I on the other hand disagree with characterising what Van has clearly
>> framed as a requirement arising from use of the software with the
>> generic term "data restriction".  As others have pointed out, the
>> requirement arises from the licensing of the software and does not
>> mutate into a restriction or requirement uniquely associated with the
>> data.
>>  
> Disclaimer: Personal view.
> 
> I don't follow your distinction. All objectionable impairments can be
> framed as conditions on the license. "This license is granted on the
> condition that you water my plants on Thursday." So plant-watering is
> properly the subject matter of an open source license?

Your argument seems to be that extra conditions (ones aside from the
copyright on the code itself) on the license are never acceptable in an
open source license, no matter what those conditions are.

But the body of approved licenses argues against you.  We have many
licenses that have conditions around both patents and trademarks.  So
the de facto policy of the OSI is clearly that extra conditions *are*
acceptable if they enhance freedom (or some other criteria).  Deciding
otherwise would require invalidating some of the most popular licenses
in the world.

Many licenses, including Apache, GPLv3, and others, include a patent
grant as part of the license.  The CAL includes a patent grant and that
portion of the license was completely noncontroversial; nobody even
remarked on it.

Why is a patent grant noncontroversial, but a data grant is
controversial?  The CAL data grant is an extra condition that enhances
user and developer freedom.  Why wouldn't we allow it, the same way we
accept patent grants?

-- 
Josh Berkus