BSD-like licenses and the OSI approval process

[Donovan Hawkins]

On Tue, 16 Oct 2007, Rick Moen wrote:

> Larry maintains that it's better-written and is a more certain guard
> against modern legal risks, while still matching precisely the intent of
> a simple permissive licence.  I think he's right, for whatever it's worth.

I don't disagree, though I think some of the clauses make it unsuitable as 
a replacement for BSDL (patent retaliation, venue specification, court 
costs). However, if your aim is compatiblity (which is generally important 
for permissive licensing), it's not a very good choice compared to BSDL.


>> I suggested following the Creative Commons model and using keywords to
>> add additional contraints like this (similar to the "attribution,
>> share-alike" wording)...combining upstream works into a single project
>> becomes as simple as ORing all the keywords.
>
> You know, that actually might work, with sufficient care about phrasing.
> Good idea, worth trying.

I mentioned the idea previously and discussed some of the things I was 
trying to do with it myself (see 
http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:13986 for more info). As I 
said at the time, I'm no lawyer and don't claim to be the best person for 
it, but someone has to start it up. Hopefully I can get a lawyer or two to 
help out, or hire one if I can swing it.

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Donovan Hawkins, PhD                 "The study of physics will always be
Software Engineer                     safer than biology, for while the
hawkins at cephira.com                   hazards of physics drop off as 1/r^2,
http://www.cephira.com                biological ones grow exponentially."
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