A new "use" clause in the OSD

Brian Behlendorf brian at collab.net
Wed Aug 7 03:46:58 UTC 2002


Russell Nelson proposed:
> > OSD#11: A license must not restrict the use or modification
> > of the software in any way except the following: it may
> > disclaim warranties, it may grant limited patent use rights,
> > it may specify arbitration, it may suspend use rights if the
> > user sues for patent infringement, and it may prohibit
> > modifications which remove legal information.

On Tue, 6 Aug 2002, Lawrence E. Rosen wrote:
> My preference is for a clause that is more general and doesn't list only
> the things we can think of today:
>
>    OSD #10: No open source license may limit or restrict
>    a person's rights to use the software that would be
>    available in the absence of a license, including their
>    fair use rights under the copyright law.

While the whole business of expanding the OSD in this area still
smells rotten to me, I think I prefer Russ's statement.  Not only would it
not invalidate any of the current OSI-approved licenses, it is a much more
limited grant, and also avoids the whole rathole of tracking changes to
"fair use" laws and variances in that between jurisdictions.  It can
always be expanded later if something vital seems missing.

	Brian

--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3



More information about the License-discuss mailing list