[License-discuss] Does the LinShare "attribution" notice violate OSD?

[Bruce Perens]

> The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow
them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original
software.

This actually restricts the scope of modifications. The license is
permitted to restrict modifications to only those that allow the work to be
distributed under the original license. So, *no,* the OSD does not require
that a license permit *all* modifications. And this can be used to create
mostly-harmful license incompatibilities.

That's not *all* that we want here, but the OSD and the license text
governed by the OSD are implementation of the OSD, and modifying either
under the terms of the OSD creates various sorts of absurdities.

On Mon, Sep 19, 2022 at 7:41 PM Pamela Chestek <pamela at chesteklegal.com>
wrote:

> On 9/19/2022 5:18 PM, Thorsten Glaser wrote:
> > Pamela Chestek dixit:
> >
> >> (and something I think about occasionally). OSD says "The license must
> allow
> >> modifications and derived works ..." But it doesn't say ALL
> modifications. If
> >> it is construed as meaning ALL modifications, that interpretation gets
> hard to
> >> reconcile with elements typically accepted as protected from
> modification, such
> >> as the copyright notice and a disclaimer of warranty by the original
> authors.
> > Does it? The licence allows all modifications, those are merely
> > required to be retained by law (not the licence).
> The duty to keep the notice is a contractual duty. If there is a legal
> requirement to retain a copyright notice (there is not in the US - it
> can sometimes be unlawful to remove it, but only if done knowing that
> the removal will induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement)
> in the US the law postdates the same language in the Debian Free
> Software Guidelines. The legal provision is from a section of the
> Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Pub. L. 105–304, title I, § 103(a),
> codified at 17 U.S. Code § 1202), which became effective on October 28,
> 1998. The DSFG was ratified on July 5, 1997.  And this law just applies
> to copyright, not patent, trademark or attribution notices, which the
> Apache license says must be retained.
> > It’s even common
> > for people to merge identical licences by listing all authors and
> > their years together, and I consider this to be equivalent to the
> > initial separate notices from the individual files.
> >
> > So, yes, the licence must allow ALL modifications.
> What about "this permission notice shall be included in all copies or
> substantial portions of the Software"? What about "If the Work includes
> a 'NOTICE' text file as part of its distribution, then any Derivative
> Works that You distribute must include a readable copy of the
> attribution notices contained within such NOTICE file ..." Don't those
> prohibit removal of the license text and any NOTICE file? The first is
> MIT and the second is Apache, both unequivocally open source licenses.
>
> Pam
>
> Pamela S. Chestek
> Chestek Legal
> PO Box 2492
> Raleigh, NC 27602
> pamela at chesteklegal.com
> +1 919-800-8033
>
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-- 
Bruce Perens K6BP
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