[License-review] License Committee Report

Richard Fontana richard.fontana at opensource.org
Mon Mar 11 02:57:40 UTC 2019


Here is a status update on licenses in review. The previous License
Committee Report [1] is incorporated by reference.


Convertible Free Software License, Version 1.4

Submission date:  2019-01-22. [2]

As Lukas Atkinson pointed out, version 1.4 “does not fundamentally
address criticism on the previous version”. Several commenters had
previously argued that the basic policy feature of this license is
discriminatory in violation of the OSD. I myself think that even with
the revisions made in version 1.4, the license continues to be very
confusingly drafted. There appear to be other OSD-conformance problems
as well (for example, though I don’t think it was previously noted by
anyone, it appears to restrict commercial distribution). I do not
believe constructive further revision is possible.

Recommendation: Reject.


Server Side Public License, Version 2

MongoDB, Inc. withdrew this license from consideration by OSI a couple
of days ago [3].


Twente License

Submission date: 2019-02-05 [4]

The last word from the license author, on 2019-02-06, was that they
were “highly motivated to make changes to this proposal and have a
license people can actually use, promotes good (tm), and perhaps be
OSI-compliant.” [5]

Recommendation: No action at this time. A decision by OSI is due on or
about 2019-04-05.


[1] http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2019-February/003974.html
[2] http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2019-January/003928.html
[3] http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2019-March/003989.html
[4] http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2019-February/003945.html
[5] http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2019-February/003965.html

-- 
Richard Fontana
Open Source Initiative



More information about the License-review mailing list