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

Christine Hall christine at fossforce.com
Tue Jul 2 16:41:14 UTC 2019


I understand that. However, it seems to me that requirement would be 
outside the scope of an open source software license. As has been 
pointed out, ownership of the data and the requirement to return it or 
not is already covered by law in many jurisdictions, and in any 
jurisdictions where it's not, it will be eventually. So isn't this an 
issue that would be better sorted out through legal systems than through 
software licensing. This seems like an overreach to me.

Christine Hall
Publisher & Editor
FOSS Force: Keeping tech free
http://fossforce.com

On 7/2/19 11:38 AM, VanL wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Jun 29, 2019 at 12:55 PM Thorsten Glaser <tg at mirbsd.de 
> <mailto: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
> 
> 
> 
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