Modifying existing licenses in minor ways

[Adam C. Engst]

At 1:52 AM -0800 12/14/00, Danese Cooper wrote:
>Adam,
>
>Sorry to take so long to answer you, but I've been travelling in Europe for
>the last 2 weeks with uncertain connectivitiy and I typically punt on my
>mail list emails until I get home...but Sun is very interested in having
>people use the SISSL (because we think its a really good license).

Thanks for the reply, Danesse! Larry Rosen at OSI deserves credit for 
turning me on to your license, and I must say that it fits our 
situation perfectly.

>  > Title: I'm presuming that the title should remain the same (rather
>>  than calling it the XNS Industry Standards Source License or
>>  something). Is that true, even though it's covering a different
>>  technology than originally intended (and one that's not from Sun)?
>
>When Sun adopted the Mozilla Public License v 1.1, we were forced to change
>the name and all internal references from "Mozilla" or "Netscape" to "Sun".
>We published a diff file to show that the only changes we made were this
>renaming (and broadening to include coverage of "documentation" in addition
>to "source code").
>
>Sun wouldn't require you to rename the license, but you might decide you
>want to.

I'm hoping our changes are sufficiently minimal by being in the 
Exhibits that a name change shouldn't be necessary. Our attorney 
wasn't bothered by it, and I would think that OSI would prefer not to 
have name changes generally, since it makes it seem as though the 
license is a new one.

>  > These two clauses apply to new versions of the license itself. 6.1
>>  (letting Sun release new versions) doesn't seem problematic since 6.2
>>  says that code covered by a particular version can always be covered
>>  by that version. And I presume that by using this license, we could
>>  choose to use future versions as we wish. Initially, I was concerned
>>  that the last sentence would enable Sun to modify the terms, but on
>>  reflection, it would seem that sentence is instead saying only Sun
>>  can modify the license itself, and the fact that we're using it with
>>  non-Sun Original Code is irrelevant. Am I reading that correctly?
>
>I've sent email to the Sun attorney who authored the SISSL requesting
>comment on this question, but pending that official answer (and here I must
>say, IANAL ;-), I believe your reading is correct.  Certainly the intent of
>SISSL was not to set up a situation wherein Sun could control T&C when the
>license is used in OEM situations.

Excellent, thank you!

>  > Obviously, we'll have to change Exhibit A to include a different
>>  Initial Developer, but the implication of having this information in
>>  an Exhibit would seem to be that it should be filled in. I don't see
>>  any problem with modifying this part of the License for use with XNS
>>  - OSI shouldn't need to certify the Exhibit, since it's no different
>>  than a Contributor modifying the Exhibit. Seem reasonable?
>
>First your suggested mods seem reasonable to me.

Good.

>Second, I might agree with you about the role of OSI in certifying licenses
>which are essentially OEM'd from "approved" licenses...but OSI would
>disagree with you & me.  Sun was required to submit our version of the
>Mozilla Public License (our Sun Public License), even though the changes
>were well documented and not substantive.  I think you need to plan to
>submit your version (and the delta from our SISSL) to OSI, and hopefully
>they'll turn the request around quickly.

I'm totally happy to do that if OSI so requests it, but my feeling 
from what I've heard here is that our changes are essentially changes 
to a template, much like the new BSD license has spots to fill in the 
appropriate names.

My guess is that your changes to the MPL, though seemingly trivial, 
were enough to require recertification because they affected the 
material terms of the license (addition of documentation), in essence 
creating a new license. As I see it, someone could look at the MPL 
and your revision and say, "Hmm, I want to include documentation in 
my project, so I should choose the SPL instead of the MPL." The fact 
that such a deliberation could take place says to me that 
recertification is reasonable (though hopefully easily accomplished).

In our situation, since the only thing we're changing is what 
code/technology is covered, I can't see anyone thinking they'd adopt 
our version of your license instead of just adopting your original 
and modifying it again as necessary for them.

But as I said, I'm happy to go through the OSI process if they so 
request. Larry has said they have a lot of proposed licenses backed 
up though, so I'd think they wouldn't want to add to their backlog 
unnecessarily.

Thanks again for responding, and for making available such a useful license.

cheers... -Adam

______________________________________________________________________
Adam C. Engst, XNSORG President                  XNS Name: =Adam Engst
                Email: <ace at xns.org>         Web: <http://www.xns.org/>