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

[J. Ritchey]

Modifying an existing license to create your own, without the aid of legal
expertise, presents the same risks as writing one from scratch. So it's a
perfectly relevant example.

On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 1:02 PM McCoy Smith <mccoy at lexpan.law> wrote:

> Now you’re being intentionally misleading.
>
> BSD-0 is simply the ISC license minus the attribution and license clauses.
> It says as much on the OSI web page for that license:
> https://opensource.org/licenses/0BSD
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* License-review <license-review-bounces at lists.opensource.org> *On
> Behalf Of *J. Ritchey
> *Sent:* Monday, February 15, 2021 12:38 PM
> *To:* License submissions for OSI review <
> license-review at lists.opensource.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [License-review] Request - For Approval - Ritchey
> Permissive License v11
>
>
>
> I agree OSI could benefit from adopting a stricter approval process which
> requires previous legal review as a prerequisite. Lack of legal review is a
> valid concern with any license; frankly a big one. My point is that
> presently it's not a requirement. So it's not unreasonable for me to submit
> a request the same as anyone else. It's also not unreasonable for that
> request to be rejected on those grounds. However it's not as if my request
> is unprecedented. For example, the Zero-Clause BSD license (originally
> named Free Public License) is OSI approved. It was created by Rob Landley
> who is not a lawyer, and it's approval request here on OSI states "There
> hasn't been any external legal review or legal analysis of the FPL". -
> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2015-August/002438.html
>
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 7:52 AM McCoy Smith <mccoy at lexpan.law> wrote:
>
> The problem with this statement “legal review is one of many
> characteristics a license can have, that make it worth approval. While my
> license lacks legal review it brings other qualities to the table, as
> outlined in my original post” is that licenses are legal instruments, and
> OSI approval is a mechanism that presents approved licenses to the
> community as having value as a legal instrument. Under your theory, a
> submitted license that is unquestionably legally invalid should
> nevertheless be approved if it has good ideas in it or the submitter feels
> strongly that it is something they want to use.
>
> You’re more than welcome to attach a legally invalid, harmful, or
> ineffective legal instrument to your copyrighted work, but the OSI doesn’t
> want to approve things that have that quality because others might adopt it
> as well based on that approval.
>
>
>
> As I’ve said before, we’re seeing here another example of someone using
> what they perceive as a loophole (i.e., the approval process doesn’t
> mandate legal review, it just asks submitters to declare if it was done) to
> argue they deserve full board review or can ignore community input. I
> continue to believe there should be a more definitive statement in the
> approval process about legal review and either requiring it ab initio or
> requiring if there is some amount of objection from the mailing list to the
> legal drafting of a submitted license. Something for the new board or the
> new Executive Director to perhaps consider.
>
>
>
> *From:* License-review <license-review-bounces at lists.opensource.org> *On
> Behalf Of *J. Ritchey
> *Sent:* Sunday, February 14, 2021 5:44 PM
> *To:* License submissions for OSI review <
> license-review at lists.opensource.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [License-review] Request - For Approval - Ritchey
> Permissive License v11
>
>
>
> I would like to apologize, but it seems some of my responses are getting
> directed to peoples' emails, instead of the board, even though I've been
> using the "reply" button. If you received any emails directly from me, my
> apologies. I don't know why some of my emails are doing this, when others
> aren't. I'm new to email boards, and thought reply would send them to "
> license-review at lists.opensource.org". I'm going through my responses
> trying to find which ones need to be re-sent to the correct address. This
> is one such message below. Hopefully it ends up in the right place.
>
>
>
> I've read enough previous reviews on here to know that some members feel
> strongly that licenses should require legal review before they can be
> submitted for review, but presently it's not a requirement. So my
> submission has just as might right to be reviewed here as any other. Should
> this review reject my application on the basis of lack of legal review,
> that would be understandable, as it's a valid concern with my (or any)
> license. However, legal review is one of many characteristics a license can
> have, that make it worth approval. While my license lacks legal review it
> brings other qualities to the table, as outlined in my original post.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 14, 2021 at 11:32 AM Josh Berkus <josh at berkus.org> wrote:
>
> On 2/13/21 4:30 PM, J. Ritchey wrote:
> > Legal review:
> > No legal review of this license has been done. None is planned.
>
> Given this statement, why would we take this license submission seriously?
>
> This is like submitting a PR to someone else's repository with the
> commit message "I didn't do any tests or use any linting tools".  That's
> an automatic rejection in most OSS projects I know, and I don't see why
> this submission should be any different.
>
> Now, if you were looking for legal assistance crafting a license that
> resolves what you perceive to be the deficiencies in BSD/MIT, that would
> be one thing.  But you appear to believe that you don't need legal
> assistance.
>
> -1 from me, propose immediate rejection without further discussion.
>
> --
> Josh Berkus
>
> _______________________________________________
> The opinions expressed in this email are those of the sender and not
> necessarily those of the Open Source Initiative. Communication from the
> Open Source Initiative will be sent from an opensource.org email address.
>
> License-review mailing list
> License-review at lists.opensource.org
>
> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-review_lists.opensource.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> The opinions expressed in this email are those of the sender and not
> necessarily those of the Open Source Initiative. Communication from the
> Open Source Initiative will be sent from an opensource.org email address.
>
> License-review mailing list
> License-review at lists.opensource.org
>
> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-review_lists.opensource.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20210215/392c9ef6/attachment.html>