For Approval: MLL (minimal library license)

Chris Travers chris.travers at gmail.com
Tue Nov 13 18:52:47 UTC 2007


I agree that this needs no separate approval provided that you are
only conditionally dual-licensing the software based on approved
wordings by the OSI (i.e. using the license texts listed on the web
site).  However, I would make a few practical suggestions beyond
discussing these matters with your lawyer.

The first is that you *really* want to include the license if it is
this short in the file.  If you want to offer BSD and MIT license
options so you are clear about sublicensing rights, include the
licenses inline.  The reason is that, the OSI's web page
notwithstanding, there are hundreds of subtle versions of these
licenses out there.  For example, I am entirely unsure how these
specific variants were chosen in the first place (the Kerberos license
from MIT is further from the "MIT License" on the OSI site than the
Intel Open Source License is from the BSD License on the web site).

Otherwise you don't have a common point of reference for the actual
wording of the licensing and someone could easily grab the wrong
variant (intentionally or by accident) and that might be bad.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers



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