[License-review] For Legacy Approval: LBNL BSD

[Richard Fontana]

On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 10:37 AM Smith, McCoy <mccoy.smith at intel.com> wrote:
>
> I’m curious why, if this license has been used successfully for 16 years, OSI approval is needed at all? Has the lack of OSI approval suddenly resulted in prospective licensees declining to use code under this license?

Probably not. I would assume there's just low awareness of it. But
I've noticed that OSI has recently come under some attack from a
not-insubstantial number of people in the wake of the perceived
rejection of certain experimental business-model-facilitative copyleft
licenses. The attack in part goes to OSI's claim to say what open
source licenses *are* and the fact that Linux distributions distribute
packages embodying hundreds more licenses than are in the OSI's
approved catalogue, while characterizing (most of) those licenses as
free software/open source, is something some of these critics point to
in what I think is an attempt to undermine the OSI's authority. For
that sort of reason I can see some benefit to some mass effort to get
legacy approval for that larger set of obviously-FOSS licenses (not
saying that this BSD-LBNL license is one of them, though if I ever
consciously looked at this license in the past that's probably what I
would have concluded).

I can't find the tweet but on Twitter recently Van Lindberg expressed
the view that for distros like Debian or Fedora, the only portions of
them that can legitimately be called "open source" are those that are
licensed under an OSI-approved license. I do not agree with this at
all, and if the legacy approval mechanism can help respond to this
sort of viewpoint then it can only be beneficial to OSI.

Richard


> Also, I think generally OSI should discourage licenses with text that is specific to a particular entity or entities, which is the case with clause (3).
>
> > On May 17, 2019, at 6:48 AM, Kevin P. Fleming <kevin+osi at km6g.us> wrote:
> >
> > The request is for "legacy" aprpoval, and if approved that will mean
> > that usage of the license is discouraged, right?
> >
> > On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 6:36 AM Bruce Perens via License-review
> > <license-review at lists.opensource.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> I always appreciate your comments, John, but I'd like to hear from Sebastian this time. Is this important enough to have yet another license adding to the license proliferation problem?
> >>
> >>    Thanks
> >>
> >>    Bruce
> >>
> >>> On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 7:12 PM John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Well, I suppose because of the default copyleft.  If you publish a derivative work and *don't* give it a specific license, it gets the LBNL BSD by default rather than the usual default, which is no-license.
> >>>
> >>>> On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 7:11 PM Bruce Perens via License-review <license-review at lists.opensource.org> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Why do they still need to use this rather than the plain BSD license?
> >>>>
> >>>> Thanks
> >>>>
> >>>> Bruce
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Thu, May 16, 2019, 16:33 Sebastian Ainslie <sainslie at lbl.gov> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The license:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Copyright (c) XXXX, The Regents of the University of California, through
> >>>>> Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (subject to receipt of any required
> >>>>> approvals from the U.S. Dept. of Energy). All rights reserved.
> >>>>> Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
> >>>>> modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> (1) Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
> >>>>> this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> (2) Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
> >>>>> notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
> >>>>> documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> (3) Neither the name of the University of California, Lawrence Berkeley
> >>>>> National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy nor the names of its contributors
> >>>>> may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
> >>>>> without specific prior written permission.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS"
> >>>>> AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
> >>>>> IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
> >>>>> ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE
> >>>>> LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
> >>>>> CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
> >>>>> SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
> >>>>> INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
> >>>>> CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
> >>>>> ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
> >>>>> POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> You are under no obligation whatsoever to provide any bug fixes, patches, or
> >>>>> upgrades to the features, functionality or performance of the source code
> >>>>> ("Enhancements") to anyone; however, if you choose to make your Enhancements
> >>>>> available either publicly, or directly to Lawrence Berkeley National
> >>>>> Laboratory, without imposing a separate written license agreement for such
> >>>>> Enhancements, then you hereby grant the following license: a non-exclusive,
> >>>>> royalty-free perpetual license to install, use, modify, prepare derivative
> >>>>> works, incorporate into other computer software, distribute, and sublicense
> >>>>> such Enhancements or derivative works thereof, in binary and source code
> >>>>> form.
> >>>>> ---------------------------
> >>>>> The rationale:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The LBNL BSD has been in use since 2003. It has an ADDED paragraph at the
> >>>>> end that makes it easier to accept improvements without a specific grant
> >>>>> required.
> >>>>>
>
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-- 
Richard Fontana
Senior Commercial Counsel
Red Hat, Inc.