[License-review] Submission for review of Mulan Public License，Version 2
江波
jiangbo at kaiyuanshe.org
Thu Jan 30 15:45:04 UTC 2025
Dear Pamela,
I hope you are doing well.
Following your suggestions, we have engaged a specialized translation agency to thoroughly review the English translation of the Mulan Public License v2. The revised translation is attached for your review. Should you and the other reviewers have any additional questions or suggestions regarding the English translation, please do not hesitate to share them. We greatly appreciate your contributions to achieving a more accurate English version of the Mulan Public License.
Based on the revised translation, I believe the patent licensing terms are now clearer. Article 2 of the agreement stipulates that the patent license applies only to the claims owned or controlled by the contributor which will be infringed by its contribution alone, and does not extend to claims which will not be infringed by the contribution itself but will be infringed after modifications made by the user to the contribution.
Furthermore, regarding the copyright license, I would like to clarify that the issues you identified are also present in the Chinese version and are not solely a result of the English translation. Your concerns are valid; copyright in both the United States and China encompasses the right to publicly display and perform the work. The approach you suggested (granting a license to all copyright rights without enumerating them) indeed represents the best practice at present. However, for the reasons outlined below, we believe that maintaining the current copyright licensing terms is a better choice for the Mulan Public License.
Firstly, the current licensing terms are considered to carry minimal risk concerning withholding some rights. License to reproduce, use, modify, or distribute is framed from the user perspective in utilizing open-source software, covering various user operations on the software. Additionally, the public display or performance you mentioned can be interpreted as encompassed within either use or distribution—for instance, displaying a segment of open-source code at an event can be viewed as both use and distribution. Furthermore, several other open-source licenses employ same language, such as the ISC License and Mulan Permissive Software License v2. Importantly, to date, none of the licensors or licensees using licenses with identical terms, including the Mulan Public License, has raised concerns regarding incomplete licenses.
Secondly, considering the current status of the Mulan Public License, modifying the copyright licensing terms to appear more legally sound could potentially spark new friction, negating the benefit of such improvements. The Mulan Permissive Software License v2, which belongs to the same Mulan family of licenses and was certified by OSI in 2020, adopts the same copyright licensing terms. The Mulan Permissive and Mulan Public Licenses were collaboratively drafted by the same group and released in succession, with highly similar language tailored to meet the needs of Chinese developers for Apache-2.0 and AGPL-3.0 style licenses, respectively. Altering the copyright licensing terms of the Mulan Public License to differ from those of the Mulan Permissive may lead to significant confusion among users of the Mulan family of licenses. Additionally, the Mulan Public License has already been adopted by a lot of projects, and publishing Version 3 to merely revise the copyright licensing terms could create discrepancies in understanding the differences between Versions 2 and 3, because, as mentioned, the current Version 2 of the Mulan Public License already provides users all the necessary copyright license.
Above are our reflections on the matter. We welcome your insights and those of the other reviewers. Thank you for your attention and collaboration. Have a nice weekend ahead.
Best,
Nadia Jiang
------------------ Original ------------------
From: "Pamela Chestek"<pamela.chestek at opensource.org>;
Date: Mon, Jan 20, 2025 09:54 AM
To: "license-review"<license-review at lists.opensource.org>;
Subject: Re: [License-review] Submission for review of Mulan Public License，Version 2
Dear Minghui,
Thank you.
I have briefly reviewed the English language version of the license and the translation does not appear to be professionally done. It is our policy to have certified translations of licenses in foreign languages. This license says that "IN THE CASE OF DIVERGENCE BETWEEN THE CHINESE AND ENGLISH VERSIONS, THE CHINESE VERSION SHALL PREVAIL," so we need to review an accurate translation of the Chinese version of the license.
The English language version of the license is problematic and I am hoping that it is a translation issue, not a problem with the license in its original language. One problem is that it does not grant all the rights necessary in copyright. Specifically it states the grant is "to reproduce, use, modify, or Distribute" the software. However, under US law these are not all the rights of the copyright author, which include the right to publicly display and the right to publicly perform.* Under US law this license would be construed as withholding the rights of display and performance and therefore would not be an open source license.
The patent grant is also quite confusing. It says "where such patent license is only limited to the patent claims owned or controlled by such Contributor now or in future which will be necessarily infringed by its Contribution alone, excluding of any patent claims solely be infringed by your modification." "Only limited" is odd phrasing in English and it's not clear how the word "only" might be read. "Excluding of any patent claims solely be infringed by your modification" is grammatically incorrect and might be construed as exactly the opposite of what you meant to say. That is, this phrase could be read to say that the exclusion modifies the non-grant, not that it is a further clarification of the scope of the original grant - in other words, the word "excluding" modifies the non-grant so that it becomes a grant for later modifications.
Please therefore provide a certified translation of the Chinese language version of the license so we can learn whether the problems are just a function of an unfaithful translation or there is a fundamental problem with this version of the license.
If the problem in the copyright grant is in the Chinese language version too, please consider withdrawing the license from review so that you can revise it and resubmit it.
Pam
*Because licenses are now used internationally, a better practice for open source licenses is to grant a license to all copyright rights without enumerating them, to ensure that the grant is complete in all jurisdictions.
Pamela S. Chestek
Chair, License Committee
Open Source Initiative
On 1/14/2025 5:59 AM, Zhou,Minghui wrote:
Dear Pamela and all,
Please see the attahced .txt file for Mulan Public License, Version 2.
(I'm the author, I simply provide the text for your convenience.)
Best, Minghui
-- Minghui Zhou， Professor Vice Dean, School of Computer Science Peking University, Beijing, China https://minghuizhou.github.io/
-----Original Messages-----
From: "Pamela Chestek" <pamela.chestek at opensource.org>
Send time: Tuesday, 01/14/2025 09:55:32
To: license-review at lists.opensource.org
Subject: [License-review] Submission for review of Mulan Public License，Version 2
(Resending, adding direct email address)
Dear Nadia,
As previously mentioned, can you send a copy of the license as a .txt file? This is a requirement for submitting a license, https://opensource.org/licenses/review-process ("Submit a copy of the license as an attachment in simple text format.") I cannot copy/paste from the website because of the potential loss of fidelity to the original.
We cannot process the submission without a copy of the license as an attached document.
Pamela S. Chestek
Chair, License Committee
Open Source Initiative
On 11/10/2024 8:11 AM, Pamela Chestek wrote:
Please provide a copy of the license as a .txt file attached to an email. The link is currently not resolving for me. This license will not be considered submitted until we have a copy of the license.
Pam
Pamela S. Chestek
Chair, License Committee
Open Source Initiative
On 10/25/2024 4:54 AM, 江波 wrote:
Hi Community,
I hope this message finds you well. My name is Nadia, and I represent KAIYUANSHE as the OSI Affiliate Member.
I am reaching out to formally submit a new license, the Mulan Public Open Source License, for OSI approval. Below is a concise overview of the license.
Overview:
The Mulan Public License (Mulan PubL) belongs to the Mulan Open Source License family (https://license.coscl.org.cn/). Previously, the Mulan PSL v2 under the Mulan Open Source License family was OSI-approved in 2020. Mulan PubL v2 builds upon Mulan PSL v2 by adding copyleft provisions, restricting distribution conditions for emerging technologies like SaaS.
Mulan PubL v2 stipulates that for "contributions" received, the license must be perpetuated for subsequent distributions. For "derivative works," not only must the license be maintained, but the source code download link for the "derivative work" must also be prominently provided for a period of 3 years.
The differences between Mulan PubL v2 and mainstream licenses revolve around differences in distribution restrictions:
GPL:
Distribute with the license, retaining disclaimers and other statements.
Distribute the modified version with a clear statement of the modified file with the date; if your modified program interacts with the user in the form of commands at runtime, the copyright and other notices must be displayed at the beginning of the program runtime.
Provide complete and easily compilable source code at the time of distribution.
Abandon distribution if you cannot comply with the conditions of this license.
Mulan PubL v2:
Distribute with the license, retaining disclaimers and other statements.
For “Contributions” received, the license must be retained for secondary distribution. For “Derivative Works”, a copy of this License must be provided, and the download address of the corresponding source code of the “Derivative Works” must be provided in a conspicuous place, with a constraint validity period of 3 years.
Provide recipients with a written offer indicating your willingness to provide the Corresponding Source Code of the Derivative Work licensed under this License. Such written offer shall be placed prominently in the Derivative Work or its accompanying documents. Without reasonable excuse, the recipient shall be able to acquire the Corresponding Source code of the Derivative work for no more than three months from your receipt of a valid request, and be valid no less than three years from your Distribution of the particular Derivative Work.
Key Features of Mulan PubL v2:
Dual Chinese and English language provisions with equal legal standing.
Adherence to concise language principles for enhanced comprehension.
Explicit granting of copyright and patent rights, excluding trademark rights.
Imposition of restrictive distribution conditions for open-source software; conditional restrictions on distribution for cloud computing and SaaS.
Mulan PubL v2 was released in May 2021 with version 2.0. Currently, 94 Chinese open-source projects support MulanPubL-2.0, with over 1.4K code repository applications. Notable applications include OceanBase (https://github.com/oceanbase/oceanbase).
Here is the full text of the Mulan Public License, Version 2: http://license.coscl.org.cn/MulanPubL-2.0
I am eager to engage in further discussions with the OSI community regarding this submission.
Best regards,
Nadia Jiang
_______________________________________________ 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 --
Pamela S. Chestek Chair, License Committee Open Source Initiative
_______________________________________________ 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 --
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