[License-review] Approval: Server Side Public License, Version 2 (SSPL v2)

[Carlo Piana]

On 28/01/19 22:29, Eliot Horowitz via License-review wrote:
> We have spent a significant amount of time over the past couple months
> considering the comments posted on license-review regarding the SSPL. 
> We have also met with several individual members of the list to get
> additional feedback and discuss how we can improve the SSPL.  It has
> become apparent from those discussions that confusion around the
> purpose and intent of the license remains, and we would like to try to
> clear up that confusion.  
>

[...]

Eliot, all,

I am not commenting the license text per se, rather the scope of review.

I don't think that the intention is relevant, unless it transpares and
transpires from the text of the license and shapes the rules that it
sets up against the principles that guide our actions and decisions. I
have submitted that there is no salvation or damnation outside the legal
text, since this is what we judge, since it it the text that needs to be
cleared and since this is what people are likely to pick up in other
projects, which may be oblivious of the context or context might not be
the same for them.

On the one hand, I think I have proclaimed myself in favor of approving
a Microsoft license, despite at the time I had reasons to believe that
their intent was less than genuine: the license was there and spoke by
itself. On the other hand, I have spoken against W3C when the patent
carving provision was being held irrelevant against the W3C patent IPR
policy, which is immaterial however in a discussion about licenses, not
projects. But I was ruled against and I have my objections on the records.

In this context, I still insist that any clarification, binding
statement, covenants and anything else that one particular project can
issue, is as well immaterial in this discussion list, unless they are
made a binding declaration materially attached to the license, so that
they become part of the deed that we have under scrutiny. Albeit, in my
view, license text should remain self-contained (even though made of
multiple documents linked together).

Again, it is worth repeating it: we are evaluating licensing texts, not
projects.

Cheers

Carlo