[License-review] For Approval: Twente License

[Lawrence Rosen]

Anand Chowdhary wrote about the proposed Twente License:

> ... compliant with certain guidelines, primarily respecting privacy, human rights, and other European values

 

Personally, I respect and admire those values. I wish that the US, with a different President and Congress, would pursue those values also!

 

But compliance with values is the function of laws rather than a software license. We recognize that limitation in OSD #6 regarding the (somewhat ambiguous) "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor". [1] Our governments adopt protective regulations about "values". (At least recently, Europe often does, the US doesn't as often.) But "privacy, human rights, and other ... values" are far more ambitious than software can protect with its mere open source licenses. 

 

By the way, please don't call them "European" values. We are in each country entitled to our own values.... That is why you can't restrict a license based on fields of endeavor or values.

 

/Larry 

 

[1] OSD # 6: The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

 

 

From: License-review <license-review-bounces at lists.opensource.org> On Behalf Of Anand Chowdhary
Sent: Tuesday, February 5, 2019 1:05 PM
To: license-review at lists.opensource.org
Subject: [License-review] For Approval: Twente License

 

Name: Twente License

 

Rationale: The MIT license is the most popular open-source license out there. It's used by millions of projects and helps the community by providing open access to code, so that developers can build on top of the hard work done by others. However, in light of recent events where companies are financially motivated to disregard individual privacy, developers should choose wisely who can use their intellectual property or codebases.

 

Distinguish: Twente License is free and permissive—just like the MIT license—but it adds a clause where the end product in which Twente licensed code can be used has to be compliant with certain guidelines, primarily respecting privacy, human rights, and other European values.

 

Legal review: I’ve had a lawyer informally have a look, but no in-depth legal review has been conducted.

 

Proliferation category: Other/Miscellaneous licenses (5) 

 

Relevant links:

* https://github.com/AnandChowdhary/twente-license

* https://twente.me/anand

 

Please find attached the license in plain text.


Best, 

 

Anand Chowdhary 

Chief Executive Officer

Oswald Labs <https://oswaldlabs.com> 

 

NL +31 644691056

IN +91 9555297989

ceo at oswaldlabs.com <http://mailto:ceo@oswaldlabs.com> 

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