[License-discuss] Data portability as an obligation under an open source license

[VanL]

On Sat, Jun 29, 2019 at 12:55 PM Thorsten Glaser <tg at mirbsd.de> wrote:

> Christine Hall dixit:
>
> > Open source licenses (again, according to my understanding -- folks with
> > many years experience at OSI should correct me if I'm wrong) should
> > apply only to the software being licensed, and the data collected by or
> > stored within a software application is clearly not part of the software
> > itself.
>

There is an important distinction here: The CAL does not apply to any data
stored by the application. I agree that forcing user data to be licensed
under a particular license would violate the OSD. However, that is not what
the CAL does. *The CAL does not change the license on any user data*. The
CAL just makes sure that user data is not withheld from the user.

That is a key (and freedom-preserving) distinction. The CAL is not an "all
your data is belong to us" license - it is a "the data that you use to
interact with this software cannot be withheld from you" license.

Thanks,
Van
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20190702/0650b600/attachment.html>