[License-review] Fwd: For Approval | Open Source Social Network License 1.0

Fri Mar 27 22:50:06 UTC 2020

Except the license as submitted by Syed is a minor revision of an existing OSI-approved license, the AAL.  I sent around a compare between the two previously; it is attached again.

Are you saying that a lawyer must be retained under those conditions?

From: License-review <license-review-bounces at lists.opensource.org> On Behalf Of Eric Schultz
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2020 3:37 PM
To: License submissions for OSI review <license-review at lists.opensource.org>
Subject: Re: [License-review] Fwd: For Approval | Open Source Social Network License 1.0

Syed,

Thanks for submitting this license. I get the impression you're really trying to comply with the OSD and it's appreciated.

While you're free to continue trying to get your license approved, I want you to consider whether this is the best use of your limited resources.

An obligation of OSI approval is that the license be drafted by an attorney. Since your team is so small, it's totally reasonable such a requirement would be prohibitive. Open source licenses are brutally difficult to draft because they must meet a complex set of requirements; there just aren't that many intellectual property attorneys who are even qualified to write them. Since that's the case and it's extremely unlikely you will find free help to draft it, I'd very much encourage you to evaluate other licenses that have already been approved.

I appreciate that you feel that no license quite fits but as long as you keep your goal as being compliant with the OSD, I think it's likely that there's at least one license that will either fit your needs perfectly or be very close.

Based on my understanding of what your current license seems to be trying to do, I would encourage you to look at the AGPL 3 or the Cryptographic Autonomy License (viewable at https://github.com/holochain/cryptographic-autonomy-license and approved recently but not yet posted on opensource.org <http://opensource.org> ). They both work somewhat differently and add different obligations but they cover many of the issues you seem to be trying to address.

Eric 

On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 3:54 PM Syed Arsalan Hussain Shah <arsalan at buddyexpress.net <mailto:arsalan at buddyexpress.net> > wrote:

@Josh, i am not an expert in these things but 

The license provide example for prominent display it didn't means you must show on splash screen, that means on any visible place.

Regarding your other 3 points,  the initial license is introduced for our web application only.

- If you are running web based application on headless machine that means either it is API or something else.

- If it is embedded hardware then it should be provided somewhere on hardware just like arduino microcontroller have it on back side. (in context of our web based software to see how it can be installed on embedded machine https://opensource.com/article/20/3/raspberry-pi-open-source-social)

- You can borrow the libraries / source files but in source files you should mention the copyrights and attribution notice.

I think the draft can be reset into better English and few new points that clears these types of ambiguities?  

Maybe it should be mentioned in license that it is suitable for web based applications?

On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 1:28 AM Josh Berkus <josh at berkus.org <mailto:josh at berkus.org> > wrote:

On 3/27/20 11:41 AM, Kevin P. Fleming wrote:
> 1. Must they be retained in source code distributions?
> 2. Must they be included in binary distributions?
> 3. Must they be presented to the user of the software in any fashion?
> 
> (1) is quite common and completely acceptable.
> 
> (2) is also quite common and completely acceptable.
> 
> (3) is not common, and by common interpretation of the OSD it is not
> acceptable because it disallows a particular type of modification of
> the software. OSD-compliant licenses allow recipients to make any
> modifications they wish and to distribute those modified versions.

It's even finer-grained than that, because we consciously approved the
GPLv3 despite its attribution notice requirement.

The reason why the GPLv3 was acceptable was that the notice requirement
was flexible; that is, notice is only required if the derivative work is
already presenting other information to the user, and the exact format
of the notification is not defined.

Contrast this with the OSSNL, which *requires* a splash screen.  This
means that:

- I can't run OSSNL-licensed software on any "headless" machine
- I can't run OSSNL-licensed software in an embedded context
- I can't borrow useful libraries out of OSSNL-licensed software and use
them in a program that has no GUI

This makes it a clear violation of OSD#10.

-- 
Josh Berkus

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-- 

Eric Schultz, Developer and FOSS Advocate

wwahammy.com <http://wwahammy.com> 

eric at wwahammy.com <mailto:eric at wwahammy.com> 

@wwahammy

Pronouns: He/his/him

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