[License-review] Approval: Open Innovation License v2.0

[Richard Fontana]

On Mon, Dec 28, 2020 at 5:01 PM Andrew Nassief <kamalandrew55 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello, I have made a version 2.0 of my license on GitHub:
> https://github.com/StarkDrones/OPNL/tree/main/Version%202

Disclaimer: I did not look at the previous version closely and did not
follow the list discussion closely. It's possible I may be repeating
points made about the previous version.

> The text is as follows:
>
> The Open Innovation License
>
> Version 2, 28th December 2020
> Copyright © 2020 Stark Drones Corporation
> Copyright © 2020 Andrew Magdy Kamal
>
> Preamble
>
> The Stark Drones Corporation believes at goodwill, to build or release technology for the betterment of humanity. Technology should not be meant with the intention of harming a human being. We believe in 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. We agree at goodwill to promote the advancement of humanity and civilization as a whole. We agree to a sense of adventurement, edification, and the expansion of the human mind.

>
> Released under the Open Innovation License
>
> Copyright © (YEAR) (Copyright Holder)
>
> 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 non and/or 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 and file verbatim, 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 after the preamble 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.

I'm going to be somewhat charitable here and say that this seems like
it's probably intended to be a highly and uninterestingly permissive
FOSS license and it just happens to be written in a highly odd and
idiosyncratic style. It is notable mainly for using some (to me, quite
annoyingly) oddball phrasing (your use of "goodwill" is as far as I
can tell unidiomatic; you use "context of this license" to mean
something like the operative terms of the license; I am pretty sure
"consequential deontology" has no obvious meaning but I am also not
getting the sense that you are using it for comical effect; and
perhaps most unforgivingly from my perspective, you use "innovation"
to mean something like "work of authorship").

Unlike (I think) most people in this space nowadays I celebrate
without mockery the eccentric tradition of FOSS license drafting, but
that's mostly for licenses that grew out of the developer community in
an earlier time, licenses which might be deserving of legacy approval
by the OSI under its current rules. I am the furthest thing from an
arch-license-antiproliferationist but I don't see what this license
provides *as a license* for contemporary use that we don't already
have with, say, the MIT license. You address this in your rationale:

> 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.

I don't find that convincing, again even though I am not an
arch-anti-proliferationist and have recommended approval of a number
of permissive licenses in the past. You mention data formats, true,
but that may actually raise questions as to what you mean (what sort
of license rights in data formats are you granting permission to copy,
etc.). I don't know what you mean by "general consensus" here and I
suppose "mission" refers to the paragraph of preamble language?

Richard