[License-review] License Committee Report

[Bruce Perens]

OK, but my recommendation would be *do not accept* for both.

There has been ample discussion of the problems in SSPL, but this comes in
two flavors: people discussing how it doesn't fit the OSD and the goals of
Open Source, and a few people commenting that they like or need the license
without offering refutation of the OSD issues and conflicts with the goals
of Open Source. Licenses aren't approved by popularity contest.

In offline discussion with lots of business people who are interested in an
Open Core business model, the consensus seems to be that they would like to
standardize on a license, but they do not need to call it Open Source. A
few lawyers tried to work on this, but I am not seeing that the project has
legs. Open Core is outside of the mission of OSI, since it inherently
requires a non-Open-Source license for some portion of the product. I
involved myself individually mostly to make sure that there would not be
conflicts with Open Source.

Regarding CFSL, the new language seems to be just as discriminatory as the
old text, but it's hidden better. There is a trick of discussing the
special group that is allowed to relicense in terms of "you", which doesn't
change the effect of the terms. And it still seems to be non-lawyer-written.

    Thanks

    Bruce

On Wed, Jan 9, 2019 at 9:13 PM Richard Fontana <
richard.fontana at opensource.org> wrote:

> Here is a status update on licenses in review. The previous License
> Committee Report [1] is incorporated by reference.
>
> Note that the libpng License version 2.0 [2] has been withdrawn by its
> submitter. [3]
>
> I am delighted that Lukas Atkinson has begun to provide the
> license-review and license-discuss communities with summaries of
> discussion threads. Please see his December 2018 report for
> license-review. [4]
>
> The license review process proposed on license-discuss [5] has not yet
> been formally adopted, but for now I think we ought to attempt to use
> it as a guide for the timing and nature of recommended OSI decision
> outcomes on submitted licenses, if only to test its practicality.
>
>
> Server Side Public License, Version 2
>
> Submission date: 2018-11-21 [6].
>
> Looking at the proposed process, SSPLv2 is “a revised version of a
> license that was previously submitted for review”, so a decision was
> due on or about 2018-12-21. I think therefore a decision on SSPLv2
> ought to be made at the next OSI board meeting (which is my today or
> tomorrow, 2019-01-10), which should be to have 30 more days of
> discussion, which would then mean another decision is due on or about
> 2019-01-21. Perhaps what we should aim for is a recommendation from
> the License Committee Chair (currently me) on that date for a decision
> to be made by the OSI at its next board meeting. (OSI board meetings
> are typically held monthly.)
>
> Recommendation: Defer (retroactively) for another 30-day discussion
> cycle (from 2018-12-21), since community discussion of conformance of
> the license to the OSD remains active.
>
>
> Convertible Free Software License, Version 1.3
>
> Version (1.1) of this license was previously submitted [7]. The OSI
> decided to withhold approval of the license, pending submission of a
> redrafted version. The new version, 1.3, was submitted on
> 2019-01-08. [8]
>
> Recommendation: No action at this time. Under the proposed license
> review process, a decision is due on or about 2019-02-08.
>
>
> Richard
>
>
> [1]
> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-December/003869.html
>
> [2]
> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-November/003791.html
>
> [3]
> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-December/003874.html
>
> [4] https://opensource.org/LicenseReview122018
>
> [5]
> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2018-December/020157.html
>
> [6]
> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-November/003836.html
>
> [7]
> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-September/003506.html
>
> [8]
> http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2019-January/003891.html
>
> _______________________________________________
> License-review mailing list
> License-review at lists.opensource.org
>
> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-review_lists.opensource.org
>
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