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

[Pamela Chestek]

On 8/24/2019 11:48 AM, Henrik Ingo wrote:
> It's already been pointed out that the exact same questions arise with
> the AGPL license. But I wanted to point out that your hypothetical
> really highlights how it's simply not a realistic goal to say that a
> user must be able to safely copy code from the internet without
> understanding licensing. That is not the case for software in general,
> nor open source. A lot of code on github is not under any open source
> license anyway, so just cavalierly copying some widget code to your
> website is a bad idea. And that's why at least in my university CS
> education we were trained not to do that.
>
> That said, OSI should not approve licenses with unexpected or
> hazardous requirements on users. I should not be obligated to water
> your plants, for example.
>
> (If your widget is client side JavaScript then also GPL and LGPL will
> require you to provide source.)
So what I hear is "duffers not welcome." My point is not a question of
knowing what the license is, but a matter of meeting its obligations.
With the CAL I have to make source code available simply because I went
into an app repository and installed a non-interactive widget that will
be viewed publicly. There is no other license that requires that (Van's
extreme view of the AGPL notwithstanding).

Pam

Pamela S. Chestek
Chestek Legal
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Raleigh, NC 27602
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