For Approval: CeCILL (providing source)

[Wilson, Andrew]

Francois Letellier wrote: 

> Dear all,
> 
> To my knowledge, the English translation of this license is here: 
> http://www.cecill.info/licences/Licence_CeCILL_V2-en.html, and is 
> considered to have the same legal value as the original French text.
>
> But I could not find a clear status of whether CECILL is OSI-approved or 
> not, and why.

Russ Nelson will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe CeCILL is in
the pile of licenses awaiting the next OSI board meeting for official
disposition.

I personally would advise against OSI approval.  My two previously-stated
points were (1) triviality, since CeCILL can collapse to straight GPL at
any point in the distribution chain, and (2) the onerous
nature of the licensor's obligation to
provide sources over the entire term of the license (potentially 70
years under US copyright laws).  All other copyleft licenses, starting
from GPL, put a reasonable time limit on this obligation.  Having freshly
re-read the license, now I'll add (3) the excessively broad patent
covenant not to sue, which is not limited to the actual CeCILL-licensed
work or its derivatives.

Andy Wilson
Intel Open Source Technology Center