[License-review] A request for checking the review status of Mulan OWLs v1

[Pamela Chestek]

I apologize for not processing these licenses sooner, time slipped away 
from me.

I agree with Carlo and others on the list that the OSI is not in the 
practice of approving licenses that are not software-specific. I believe 
Creative Commons would agree with us that open licenses for cultural 
content are a very poor fit for software and vice versa. Sometimes an 
OSI license will cross over into data or hardware when tied to software, 
but not a license altogether unrelated to software.

It is also difficult to manage the approval process when more than one 
license is submitted at a time. The reason for this is evident here. Two 
of the licenses, Mulan Open Works License Attribution, Version 1 
(MulanOWL BY v1) and Mulan Open Works License Attribution-ShareAlike, 
Version 1 (MulanOWL BY-SA v1) are not likely to be approved because they 
expressly state that they do not grant a patent license. This is the 
reason that the CC-0 license is not an OSI-approved license, 
https://opensource.org/faq/#cc-zero, although it has not been 
definitively decided due to Creative Commons' withdrawal of the license 
from consideration.

Is there agreement that these licenses are not appropriate subject 
matter for OSI- approval, or are there some who disagree with that 
statement?

Pam

Pam Chestek
Chair, License Committee
Open Source Initiative

On 7/5/2023 6:59 AM, Carlo Piana wrote:
> dear Dr. Yao Lu,
>
> sorry for this community to be unresponsive. I am writing in my private capacity as subscriber to the license-review mailing list and without committing to a particular vote if and when this license comes to the Board. I was under the impression that the feedback I am giving was already public and coming from other people, but evidently I was wrong.
>
> Quoting you:
>
>>   Mulan OWLs can be applied to general works under copyright law, so there is no existing OSI-approved license to directly compare and contrast it with.
> This is no coincidence. At OSI, we approve Open Source (software) licenses.
>
> To my recollection, the only non-software specific licenses we approve are those bearing a total waiver of any right so that the work becomes nearly public domain. The submitted licenses (please always submit one license at a time anyway) are openly targeting non-software works, which defies the scope of the submission. In theory, one could use non-software specific licenses for software and meet the conditions, but it is still difficult to meet all conditions while expressly targeting software, proposing non-software licenses for software is a really bad idea, IMHO.
>
> In addition, we have in the past discussed many times (see discussion of CC0 or the MXM license or the W3C license) pure copyright licenses excluding all other rights, therefore at least the non-patent licenses do not meet the OSD, since they expressly carve out patents from the scope of the license.
>
> My tentative conclusion is that:
>
> - Mulan Open Works License Attribution, Version 1 (MulanOWL BY v1)
> - Mulan Open Works License Attribution-ShareAlike, Version 1 (MulanOWL BY-SA v1)
>
> should be rejected for not giving all rights potentially controlled by the licensor.
>
> In general, all the licenses should be rejected for not being (Open Source) software licenses.
>
> All the best,
>
> Carlo
>
> ----- Messaggio originale -----
>> Da: "卢遥 via License-review" <license-review at lists.opensource.org>
>> A: "License-review" <License-review at lists.opensource.org>
>> Cc: "卢遥" <yaolu.nudt at qq.com>
>> Inviato: Mercoledì, 5 luglio 2023 14:36:16
>> Oggetto: [License-review] A request for checking the review status of Mulan OWLs v1
>> Dear License Review Team,
>> Sorry for disturbing you. I am not sure if it is the right time to contact you
>> to inquire about the status of my submission of Mulan Open Works Licenses,
>> Version 1 (Mulan OWLs v1).) for approval. This request was submitted four
>> months ago ( [
>> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2023-February/005356.html
>> |
>> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2023-February/005356.html
>> ] ). I would be greatly appreciated if you could check the review status of the
>> licenses. I am pleased to hear from you on the reviewer’s comments.
>> Thank you very much for your consideration.
>> Best regards,
>> Yao Lu
>> PhD
>> National University of Defense Technology
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