[License-review] Approval: OIN License (Open Innovation License)

Sat Dec 26 15:36:03 UTC 2020

Hi in regards to your key points. I want to emphasize each one, one by one:
The license agreement clearly states:
This means any code, file, diagrams, data format, or other innovation
containing this license within it can be copied, modified, redistributed,
published, or even used for commercial purposes within the context of this
license.
The context is "or even used for commercial purposes". "Or" grammatically
separates the rest of the items from the list. It also emphasized it can be
copied, modified, redistributed, published, etc. Saying "or even used" is
different then "and only used", and "or even used" is the same thing as "or
used". This simply just puts a non-restrictive clause on commercial usage
of the technology, but it obviously doesn't imply restrictive clauses on
open source usage or redistribution. This makes the license within the
rules and standards of OSD.

Also I clearly indicate in the last paragraph of the agreement:
Said agreement which is within the last paragraph prior to this sentence is
meant to be taken as a general consensus, but not legally enforceable.
Again for context, the last paragraph which starts with "Anybody" and ends
with "human mind" minus quotations, is outside of the boundaries of being
legally enforceable and within the duties of oneselve's actions. The rest
of the license which includes the copyright notice and its context is
within a legally enforceable context. For secondary context, the rest of
the license refers to anything outside of that said paragraph.

This is because mission statements are ambiguous and not legally binding,
however violating an open source license is a form of IP or copyright
infringement to an extent. The whole document is to be looked at as a
whole, henceforth the legal applicability and the non-bindingness of the
mission statement still applies. There are also other permissive licenses
such as WTFPL that I would argue are perhaps more legally ambiguous in
language.

The only other inquiry you have is that OIN may accidentally suggest
affiliation with Open Innovation Network.  The term open innovation is used
alot in technology and the Open Innovation Network is not considered an
open source license. I was originally going to be using OIL as an acronym,
but I think it may present unwarranted liabilities making an acronym for a
license after a commodity. Also I was going to adapt OINN, but I didn't see
a need to have two Ns. Since there are actually no license agreements using
OIN as an acronym, I still think it should be fine. The Open Innovation
Network acquires patents and licenses them as royalty free as long as
people who use them don't agree to make patents against Linux Systems (See
http://xml.coverpages.org/OIN-Announce.html). If we were going to be using
the same logic on acronyms one can say that the COPL license might have
people confused w/ Concurrency Oriented Programming Languages or that NTP
may be affiliated with New Trade Policy or India's New Telecom Policy or
Nordic Innovation's NTP program. Outside of specific license acronyms like
ZLIB, the same can be said about other licenses. Since OIN isn't an open
source license identifier currently, I still want to proceed with it as an
acronym and think for simplicity's sake it should be fine for now.

On Sat, Dec 26, 2020 at 10:02 AM McCoy Smith <mccoy at lexpan.law> wrote:

> This one probably needs some careful legal and grammatical review as it is
> very awkwardly drafted and potentially confusing/legally ambiguous. Its
> current draft is probably not approvable.
>
> The grant itself is drafted in a way that could be read to restrict the
> license to only commercial uses, which obviously would violate the OSD.
>
> The context statement could also be read as a legally binding restriction
> on the license grant (the use of “agree” is mainly the problem), although
> it seems the intent is **not** to have those statements to be legally
> binding but instead merely suggestions. I’m not sure the language used
> accomplishes that goal.
>
> The interesting issue this license raises is whether legally non-binding
> statements that would, if legally binding, violate the OSD, can
> nevertheless satisfy the OSD. I tend to think if they are drafted in a way
> that they are unambiguously non-legally binding, they probably would be,
> but it does present an interesting test of the OSD and I suspect once a
> license of that sort is approved, you will likely have many submissions of
> licenses with non-legally binding statements of ethical principles
> following.
>
>
>
> I’d also suggest the use of “OIN” as the shorthand name of the license is
> likely a problem and it would likely suggest an affiliation with the Open
> Invention Network, which I’m pretty sure this license isn’t.
>
> *From:* License-review <license-review-bounces at lists.opensource.org> *On
> Behalf Of *Andrew Nassief
> *Sent:* Friday, December 25, 2020 4:50 PM
> *To:* license-review at lists.opensource.org
> *Subject:* [License-review] Approval: OIN License (Open Innovation
> License)
>
>
>
> Hi, I would like to submit my license for approval. The LICENSE.md file
> can be seen on GitHub
> <https://github.com/StarkDrones/OIN/blob/main/LICENSE.md> with its
> available markdown. For sake of simplicity, here is the raw text of the
> license:
> *Released under the Open Innovation License*
>
> Copyright © // Insert information of license holder
>
> *Version 1, 10th November 2020*
>
> *Copyright © 2020 Stark Drones Corporation*
> *Copyright © 2020 Andrew Magdy Kamal*
>
> This project is licensed under the *Open Innovation License*. This means
> any code, file, diagrams, data format, or other innovation containing this
> license within it can be copied, modified, redistributed, published, or
> even used for commercial purposes within the context of this license.
> Any code, file, diagrams, data format, or other innovation containing this
> license is understood to be fully "AS IS", no claims are made in regards to
> safety, security, warranty, usability, or other form of merchantability and
> market-readiness. In no events are copyright holders, authors, or
> publishers are to be held liable for any claims, damage or results from
> usage of what have been licensed under this license.
>
> The context of this license includes: Keeping this original license text
> verbatim and permissive notice, as well as the copyright notice included in
> any redistribution of said project. Project is defined as what is using
> this license. For purposes of context, the copyright notice above version
> and year is meant to be modified for whomsoever publishes or releases "any
> code, file, diagrams, data format, or other innovation", so that they can
> include their information. After modifying, the comment saying "// Insert
> information of license holder" which starts with // can be removed. This
> current paragraph however, will remain in-tact.
>
> Anybody who releases software under the "Open Innovation License" agrees
> to at goodwill, build or release technology for the betterment of humanity
> not meant with the intention to harm a human being. They agree to a prima
> facie moral duty through consequential deontology to understand that
> technology should be within the concept of moral good or outcomes that are
> morally right and/or ethical. They agree at goodwill to promote the
> advancement of humanity and civilization as a whole. They agree to a sense
> of adventurement, edification, and the expansion of the human mind.
>
> Said agreement which is within the last paragraph prior to this sentence
> is meant to be taken as a general consensus, but not legally enforceable.
> Again for context, the last paragraph which starts with "Anybody" and ends
> with "human mind" minus quotations, is outside of the boundaries of being
> legally enforceable and within the duties of oneselve's actions. The rest
> of the license which includes the copyright notice and its context is
> within a legally enforceable context. For secondary context, the rest of
> the license refers to anything outside of that said paragraph.
>
> ____
>
> *Rationale:*
>
> I wanted to release this license for a variety of different reasons.
> Infact, I made many posts in regards to why this license is unique and
> valuable, and found many developers willing to adapt this license through
> small innovation challenges. The license was made on the basis of promoting
> a mission statement on ethical technology within the license as well as not
> being specific to only software i.e. files, diagrams, data format or any
> other innovation.
>
> We also wanted to make sure that the license is adaptable. Many open
> source licenses require you to put tons of header files for compliance. We
> wanted to make a license that just requires you to contain the license file
> in your directory. While many other open source licenses also do that or
> follow in similar footsteps, we weren't able to find one that met all these
> unique qualities.
>
> Currently, a big inspiration for this license was the idea of promoting
> free and open software as well as a mission statement on ethical
> technologies. We found that many of the big tech companies that are hailed
> as heroes of open source or doing open source initiatives, built
> technologies that are harmful to human activity. A technically non-legally
> enforceable mission statement within an enforceable open source license was
> the way to go. We also made sure to go out of our way to promote the ideals
> of open source and free and redistributive software.
>
> *Distinguish:*
>
> I looked at a variety of different open source licenses. The standard
> being MIT, then BSD+Patent, ZLib, CDDL, CPAL, CPL, CAL, BSL, and the AFL
> license. I feel like MIT, ZLIB, and the Boost licenses focus on
> redistribution and code. Those are the standards. The open patent licenses
> and other licenses focus on derived original work. However, none of them
> tried going to the same extent I wanted in terms of being specific in
> regards to data formats or general consensus and mission. I believe this is
> an important thing to take into account.
>
> *Legal review:*
>
> Currently I have submitted this to SPDX as well for review through their
> GitHub/Website. However, the review time to get approval and receive SPDX
> identifiers can be many months. I submitted in November and decided to
> submit to OSI while I wait. As for reviewing the context of language myself
> and actual legal review, I have thought out reviews through my own legal
> council and self judgement as a researcher familiar with these types of
> languages.
>
> *Proliferation category:*
>
> I don't necessarily need to be in a Proliferation category as of now, as
> many of the licenses on your site are not in a category. However, I would
> eventually want to get into the *Licenses that are popular and widely
> used or with strong communities *category.
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-- 
Andrew Magdy Kamal
http://andsocialrew.wall.fm
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