[License-review] Official Submission: Modified 0BSD License (Maintenance-Required)

[Josh Berkus]

On 3/17/26 3:03 PM, Vicentte Felipe wrote:
> ​Contractual Condition: The "Maintenance Obligation" is a condition 
> precedent to the license grant. While the user is not required to 
> provide attribution, the Author's right to distribute the software is 
> contingent upon their commitment to the "Duty to Repair."
> ​Binding Nature: If the maintainer fails to provide "best efforts" to 
> address defects (such as breaking changes in the underlying React 
> framework), they are in breach of the license conditions.

I don't understand what you're expecting to accomplish with this license.

"The Original Author(s) and/or those who explicitly claim to provide a 
supported version of this software accept an affirmative obligation to:
​Review and address reported technical defects."

First, "original author" is meaningless given that you haven't defined 
it in the license.

If distributors are "claiming to provide support", surely addressing 
technical defects is a matter for the support contract?  How would you 
define, or prove, "claiming to provide support"?  Who judges whether 
defects have been "addressed"?  Who defines a "defect"?

If your goal is to build a stronger React framework community by 
pledging to address defect reports yourself, surely there are more 
effective, and easier, ways to do that than a license?

Licenses aren't tools for social engineering.  If you're trying to build 
a commercially and technically successful community, clever license 
terms aren't going to do that for you.  You have to do the actual 
community-building work.

-- 
Josh Berkus