[License-review] Request - For Approval - Ritchey Permissive License v11

[Thorsten Glaser]

J. Ritchey dixit:

>I don't have the legal authority to permit unlawful usage, nor does any

The distinction between lawful usage and unlawful usage is not the
important one here.

Lawful use of a copyrighted work is that which you can do without
a licence at first (e.g. the USA-specific “fair use”, a limited
amount of private and backup copies, etc).

A licence permitting lawful use is basically not a licence, as
anything that normally falls under lawful use is, well, already
permitted by law ;-) Copyright licences have to be rather specific
in what they grant (it’s a little tricky extending this to yet
unknown uses, as in a permissive licence, but the “usual” list
you find in most licences is a pretty good start); they also
cannot grant everything (e.g. certain moral rights are very
tricky to waive), just as a disclaimer cannot disclaim everything
(at least in the EU you’re always liable for damage you cause
willfully¹ or with gross negligence; if you try to disclaim them
your disclaimer may become invalid, in which case normal product
warranties (6 months at a minimum) apply, see EUPL).

① Not sure whether the English term “willful damage” is the same
  so I tried to avoid using it; IANAL, TINLA.

As an aside: what specific problems is your licence supposed to
be solving? I’ve recently had to deal with cases where the licence
permitted an intermediate to not reproduce it; the work in question
was deemed inacceptable for (further) redistribution until the
licence text was restored because without an explicit grant the work
must (per Berne Convention) be treated as if it were an unlicenced
work. Licence audits require an audit trail or a trail of grants to
be present (so it can be checked to avoid unlicenced works, whether
the licences fit together (e.g. no Apache2+GPLv2-only) and are
acceptable to the entity checking it).

bye,
//mirabilos

ObPlug: http://www.mirbsd.org/MirOS-Licence.htm is OSI-certified,
        less than 1 KiB in size, and maybe it can fit your needs,
        given what I commented regarding the requirement to repro‐
        duce the licence text or grant itself?
-- 
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when God enlightens him. Or only God invents algorithms, we merely copy them.
If you don't believe in God, just consider God as Nature if you won't deny
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