[License-discuss] October 2019 License Discuss Summary

[Patrick Masson]

Dear OSI community,

Please let me introduce Amol Meshram who, beginning with this report,
will be providing monthly summaries of the License-Discuss and License-
Review mailing lists. Amol will be taking over from Lukas Atkinson who
was previously providing the monthly reports. We'd like to thank Lukas
for his help, and welcome Amol.

Please feel free to send Amol (amoel.meshram at opensource.org) or me (
masson at opensource.org) any suggestion you may have regarding the
reports' content, accuracy, or format. We will try our best to address
your feedback to ensure the summaries represent the views of the
community, serve as a useful resource, and help make the discussions
lively and fruitful.

In Oct 2019, License-Discuss mailing list members discussed below
mentioned topics;

1. AGPL and Open Source Definition conflict: 
Discussion was not in context of AGPL and Open Source Definition
conflict so did not include summary of discussion.

2. Storing source artefacts in ELF files: 
In this discussion, software installation related information was
discussed so did not include a summary for this topic.

3. Open Source Software Question:
Ahmed Hassan asked to OSI community members whether someone can claim
software released under dual-license to be an open source software by
restricting number of users who can access it for self-installation? 
Kevin P. Fleming replied that if open source software has usage
restriction then it can not be called as open source software.

Gil Yehuda second with Kevin P and advised to use code which is under
the open source license terms and write a code for implementation which
is not under open source license. 
Brendan Hickey referred the github link provided by Ahmed and found
that “NoLicenseMaximumAllowanceUserCount” condition is only with
proprietary project not with open source project. Similarly, Brendan
Hickey was of the opinion that there is nothing wrong in the open
source project mentioned by Ahmed Hasan.

4. Are you forced to make your project open source?
Richard Dagenais asked OSI community members whether it is mandatory to
open source software when;
    1. open source code is referred/used for developing software, but
it is not modified?
    2. there is a necessity to distribute the Java JRE of the open
source project with newly written code to run the application?

To this Mike Milinkovich replied that it is not mandatory to release
the application under an open source license. 

Thorsten Glaser analysed the mentioned scenarios and found that
developer application can be under any license terms and mere
aggregation of open source code into application is permissible. He
also recommended to follow GPLv2 §3(a) license. 

B Galliart was of the opinion that if Richard Dagenais wants to
redistribute Amazon Correto or any other OpenJDK without modification
then he must follow below mentioned guidelines.
    1. Mention product build using Amazon Corretto and covered under
the GPLv2+CE text
    2. Provide complete copy of GPLv2+CE text
    3. Notify where one can obtain complete source code to the GPLv2+CE
covered work.
In addition to it B Galliart presented two scenarios with respect to
what is called derivative work and what is not derivative work so that
Richard Dagenias can make decision with respect to open source code.
Florian Weimer replied to B.Galliart’s recommendation ‘’You must make
them aware the product included Amazon Corretto and it being covered
under the terms of the GPLv2+CE’’ that the above mentioned
recommendation will not work as various parts of OpenJDK are under
different licenses. 
Bruce Perens wrote a cautionary note that mailing list members in this
thread are competent, qualified lawyers and are very helpful. But, in
any terms their advice cannot be considered as lawyer’s advice as they
are not contracted for this work. So, any advice provided in mail
thread is subject to risk.

5. Google v Oracle –Google’s Petition for Certiorary:
Only judgment is shared over email and no fruitful discussion was taken
place so did not write a summary for this topic. 

6. Feedback on Open-Source Contribution License:
Simon Fridlund shared the modified version of ISC license with OSI
community members and asked opinion about license and whether language
used in license is ok to close for a license?
Brendan Hickey analysed the language used in the license and concluded
that the mentioned license requires something of value in exchange for
the software which is not in line with open source license policy.
Tom Callaway feels condition mentioned in license is violation of
Criteria 5 of OSD and wording used in license is vague in nature and
trivial to circumvent.

7. Coherent Open Source-Getting underway next Friday:
In Sep 2019, Bruce Perens declared that COHERENT OPEN SOURCE will be
presented at Open Core Summit, 2019. Bruce Perens proposed scrapping of
100+ open source licenses and bringing FSF/OSI approved cross
compatible licenses which will achieve most purposes of Open
Source/Free Software.
Gil Yehuda analysed the motivations of open source license and proposed
that it is better to see differences between the motivations for Free
Software, Open Source and Source Available models. Gil Yehuda also
suggested altering goal from "achieves *most purposes of Open
Source/Free Software*" to "clarify when a license meets the intent of
the Free Software movement, the Open Source movement, or the Restricted
Availability movement." Once it is done, we can include the
representatives of each movement so that they can comment whether there
is an overlap or not. 
Bruce Perens feels idea proposed by Gil Yehuda will divide the open
source community.
Lawrence Rosen seconds with the idea proposed by Gil Yehuda and
rejected the arguments put up by Bruce Perens. Lawrence is of the
opinion that FSF needs to change its opinions about license
interworking before many accept those licenses. 
After careful perusal of Bruce Perens arguments, Lawrence Rosen changed
her position and agreed with Bruce Perens that BSD and GPL licenses
should be acceptable to both camps. 


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Patrick Masson
General Manager & Director, Open Source Initiative
855 El Camino Real, Ste 13A, #270
Palo Alto, CA 94301
United States
Office: (415) 857-5398
Mobile: (970) 4MASSON
Freenode: OSIMasson
Email: masson at opensource.org
Website: www.opensource.org
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