<div dir="auto" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 14px;"><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Hi.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">It seems like you got something wrong. Tiwaz License 1.0 is derived from MPL-2.0 - it's not a "public domain"-like (0BSD, MIT-0, CC0) license and its unique features were discussed earlier in the mail chain. I'm not sure where the comparison with 0BSD comes from at all...</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div contenteditable="false" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">&nbsp;</span></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><hr id="previousmessagehr" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; user-select: none;"><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">From</strong>: "Rob Landley" &lt;rob@landley.net&gt;<br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Sent</strong>: 7/18/25 11:46 AM<br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">To</strong>: me@loncothad.cc, License submissions for OSI review &lt;license-review@lists.opensource.org&gt;<br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><strong fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Subject</strong>: Re: [License-review] Request for OSI Approval: Tiwaz License, version 1.0 (New License)<br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></span></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">On 5/28/25 15:20, Loncothad wrote:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">&gt; Opinions on the mentioned "flaws" come from open source community members I know who are concerned that Mozilla, as the steward of MPL 2.0, might exploit the "or later" clause (MPL 2.0 Section 10.2). Another community member developed a different approach to address this concern: the "Immutable License" (https://github.com/cull-os/carcass/blob/master/LICENSE.md). However, that license takes a completely different (more "distributed") approach, and its creator neither wishes to be a License Steward nor seeks OSI approval for it. This is where our views diverge, as I am seeking OSI approval for the Tiwaz License to establish it as a valuable tool for the wider Open Source community.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">What specifically are you trying to accomplish?</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">A dozen years back I did a public domain equivalent license:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-domain-equivalent_license" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 102, 147); text-decoration: underline; user-select: auto;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-domain-equivalent_license</a></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Which I got permission from Kirk McKusick to call a BSD license to ease</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">adoption:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://landley.net/toybox/license.html" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 102, 147); text-decoration: underline; user-select: auto;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://landley.net/toybox/license.html</a></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">At the time (2013) there wasn't an MIT-0 or John the Ripper license or</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">similar, and Creative Commons was insisting their licenses (including</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">CC-0) should not be applied to software, so I didn't think I was doing</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://xkcd.com/927" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 102, 147); text-decoration: underline; user-select: auto;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://xkcd.com/927</a>/ but even so somebody else came up with the same</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">idea under a different name a year later and I had to argue about using</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">a consistent name for it (because I'd run it through SPDX but not OSI).</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Hopefully that's still sorted.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Anyway, Android picked it up at the end of 2014 (when they started using</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">toybox) and Samsung asked me to get it approved by SPDX and then I ran</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">it through Github's approval process in 2018, and there's apparently 62</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">thousand repositories on there (not including forks) using it now:</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/search?q=license%3A0bsd&amp;type=Repositories&amp;ref=advsearch&amp;l=&amp;l" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 102, 147); text-decoration: underline; user-select: auto;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://github.com/search?q=license%3A0bsd&amp;type=Repositories&amp;ref=advsearch&amp;l=&amp;l</a>=</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">(Probably helps that it sorts alphabetically at the top of the list. :)</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">You can complain it's a copyright license that doesn't address patent</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">law, contract law, trade secrets, that weird IP niche involving ASIC</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">masks, DCMA circumvention exemptions, or anything except granting the</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">right to use copyrighted material. But if you want simple public domain</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">equivalent license instead of a complex legal thing: it's pretty simple.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">&gt; My goal with the Tiwaz License is to offer an OSI-approved option, within a familiar MPL-like structure, that provides this version immutability, thereby guarding against the potential "exploits" associated with "or later" clauses.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Anyway, my question is... what are you trying to accomplish with your</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">license? What are your goals, why should people use _that_ one instead</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">of an existing license? How are the users uniquely served by THIS license?</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">0BSD doesn't have an "or later" either, it's a simple permission grant,</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">plus some warantee disclaimer boilerplate that's a really just there to</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">make it look like other licenses. (Computer history is a hobby of mine</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">and this is essentially a fossilized historical relic, as I explained</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">back in <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://landley.net/notes-2018.html#13-03-2018" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 102, 147); text-decoration: underline; user-select: auto;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://landley.net/notes-2018.html#13-03-2018</a> .)</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">What do you need your new license for that an existing license doesn't</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">do? If you expect many people to adopt your license and make it a new</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">"standard", then why yours instead of one of the existing ones?</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">If you yourself are making your own instead of using an existing one,</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">why should anyone ELSE use yours instead of making their own? I'm not</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">saying there isn't a good answer to that question, but you have to</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">articulate it as part of your license promotion strategy, if your goal</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">is for people OTHER than you to use it.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">(0BSD started started as the license _I_ needed for toybox, and that</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">package still uses it. Other people using it really just made _me_ using</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">it seem less weird. Unique licenses cause work for lawyers, leading to</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">friction in adoption. Common licenses get approved once and then re-used</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">by multiple packages. BSD already having 2, 3, and 4 clause versions let</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">the zero clause version with an explicit analogy to CC-0 get rubber</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">stamped by corporate legal departments a little easier, while not asking</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">individual developers to engage significant legal expertise making a</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">decision about what to use for their own projects. :)</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">&gt; I have no information on whether those community members discussed this with an attorney. Personally, I've discussed licensing matters generally with a friend of mine who is a legal counsel, but software licensing is not his specific line of work.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">I've studied intellectual property law on and off almost 30 years (back</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">before even</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.fool.com/archive/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/05/02/get-your-copyrights-here.aspx" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 102, 147); text-decoration: underline; user-select: auto;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.fool.com/archive/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/05/02/get-your-copyrights-here.aspx</a></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">and <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.tech-insider.org/linux/research/2005/1002-a.html" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 102, 147); text-decoration: underline; user-select: auto;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.tech-insider.org/linux/research/2005/1002-a.html</a> and so</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">on), spent ~3 years working on</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/halloween9.html" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 102, 147); text-decoration: underline; user-select: auto;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/halloween9.html</a> related issues,</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">talked to a bunch of lawyers like Cathy Raymond and Eben Moglen about IP</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">licensing at quite some length, launched the first GPL enforcement suits</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">back in 2006 (which ate far too much of my time for something like 4</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">years and I most recently got deposed about fallout from all that</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">nonsense last year, ala <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://landley.net/notes-2024.html#24-06-2024" fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 102, 147); text-decoration: underline; user-select: auto;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://landley.net/notes-2024.html#24-06-2024</a>)...</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">And I very much do NOT consider myself an expert on IP law. The license</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">I did was an existing license with half a sentence removed, one</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">explicitly chosen for simple straightforward wording and widespread use</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">backed by a very large organization, which I still asked for multiple</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">expert opinions on my change at the time.</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">(Lawyers never really say yes. They just refrain from giving a strong no.)</div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><br fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div><div fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Rob</div></div>