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The Board voted at its <a
href="https://opensource.org/meeting-minutes/2024-01-19">January
19, 2024 meeting</a> not to approve the Zeppelin Public License.
The License Committee Recommendation to the Board is appended below.<br>
<br>
Pamela Chestek<br>
Chair, License Committee<br>
Open Source Initiative<br>
<br>
===============<br>
<br>
License: Zeppelin Public License version 1.0 (Exhibit A)<br>
Submitted: October 19, 2023,
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2023-October/005429.html">https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2023-October/005429.html</a>
<br>
Decision date: due no later than the first Board meeting after
December 19, 2023.<br>
<br>
License Review Committee Recommendation: <br>
<br>
Resolved that it is the opinion of the OSI that the Zepplin Public
License version 1.0 does not conform to the OSD and assure software
freedom and the license is therefore not approved as an Open Source
Initiative Certified license.<br>
<br>
Rationale Document<br>
<br>
Reasons for withholding approval: The license is poorly drafted,
leading to interpretation problems that might mean that the license
is not OSD-compliant. For example, the license says in section 1
“Any contributions shall be licensed to the terms of the license.” A
“contribution” is not defined, which means it might not be a
derivative work of the original work, which would violate OSD 9
(“The license must not place restrictions on other software that is
distributed along with the licensed software.”). In particular, the
license says in section 5 “The license may not be modified other
than the addition of clauses (also known as sublicensing),
modification of the marked boilerplate components of the license,
and if the maintainer of the origin, the removal of clauses.” These
permitted changes to the license means that the license can be
changed from OSD-compliant to non-compliant.<br>
<br>
The two comments on the license are <a
href="https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2023-October/005430.html">here</a>
and <a
href="https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2023-November/005440.html">here</a>.<br>
<br>
The license submitter has not responded to the critique of the
license.<br>
<br>
Exhibit A<br>
<br>
Zeppelin Public License Version 1.0<br>
(c) [year] [name]<br>
----------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
Permission is hereby granted to anyone who wishes to use this
software for distribution in source or binary form, modification,
publishing, redistribution with or without modification, commercial,
consumer, private, and/or special usage, under the following
conditions:<br>
<br>
1. Any contributions shall be licensed to the terms of the
license. You may not change the licensing of your contributions
without prior approval of the maintainer(s) of the project.<br>
<br>
2. You may not falsely represent the original source of the
software; for example, you may not tell people you created or wrote
this project if you are not the author or maintainer.<br>
<br>
3. You must disclose the source, and retain the licensing, ad
verbum, in the source form, including this notice. You are not
required to disclose the license in the binary form <br>
of the software, however it is strongly recommended; you must,
however, attribute the origin in the binary form.<br>
<br>
4. You may not use the names of the copyright holders and/or the
contributors/developers for endorsement of a derivative of this
software unless you were given explicit, written consent from the
individuals you wish to use their names. This include trademark,
trade name, service name and product name. Exception is granted for
attribution to the origin of the derivative.<br>
<br>
5. The license may not be modified other than the addition of
clauses (also known as sublicensing), modification of the marked
boilerplate components of the license, and if the maintainer of the
origin, the removal of clauses.<br>
<br>
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS-IS', WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OF IMPLIED
WARRANTY. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY <br>
DAMAGES ARISING FROM THE USAGE OF THE SOFTWARE.<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/19/2023 10:06 AM, Not An FBI
Agent via License-review wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:3243a6456196a5894931f86ca707790f@fbi.ac">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<p>Hello! I made my own license that I wish to submit for review.
I have submitted the license in a text file on the e-mail, and
it complies with the open-source standards. No projects
currently use it other than the projects that I am currently
making, which are in private GitHub repositories. I am also the
license steward. The name of the license is <em>Zeppelin Public
License</em><em> Version 1.0</em>.</p>
<p>The gap that the project is to fill the hole between permissive
and weak-copyleft, as I believe that while both are good, I
prefer something in the middle. I believe that the most similar
license to the Zeppelin Public License is the Apache License,
and comparing and contrasting it shows that both the Apache
License and the Zeppelin Public Licenses are permissive, both
support the open-source movement, both support the rights of
software creators, both support the rights of users, and both
support the rights of derivative works. Some differences are
that the Apache is extremely verbose whilst the Zeppelin Public
License is shorter and simpler, as well as being a little bit
more permissive. Unfortunately, due to my age, I could not get a
lawyer to review the license, however after reading it a dozen
of times, it seems legally plausible.</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<div id="signature">-- <br>
<p><strong><span style="font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;">Not
A Federal Agent</span></strong></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 8pt;"><span
style="font-family: georgia, palatino, serif;">No
seriously, I'm not a fed</span></span></p>
<hr>
<p><span
style="font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 8pt;"><a
href="mailto:totallynotafed@fbi.ac" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">totallynotafed@fbi.ac</a> is
not a federal agent, nor is related to any federal agencies.
Any similarities to real feds are purely coincidental</span></p>
</div>
<br>
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