[License-discuss] Question: is the following paragraph in violation of OSD6

[Pamela Chestek]

On 10/4/2024 3:15 PM, Lucy Brown via License-discuss wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 4, 2024 at 11:32 McCoy Smith 
> <mccoy_at_lexpan_law_c1q6k9zfca4ag1_wasd8035 at icloud.com> wrote:
>
>     On 10/4/2024 10:10 AM, Josh Berkus wrote:
>
>         On 10/3/24 13:12, Lucy Brown via License-discuss wrote:
>
>             You may distribute this Software, with or without fee,
>             provided that you do not advertise the Standard Version of
>             this Software as a product of your own.
>
>
>         We'd need to hash that out.  It certainly feels hinky, but I'm
>         not sure whether it would be an OSD violation or not. 
>         Generally, *requirements* to advertise anything aside from the
>         licensing terms are violations of OSD 8 and 10.  Requirements
>         to not advertise something?  Not sure.
>
>         That assumes that by "Standard Version" the license means
>         "Unmodified source code"; if it means something else, it would
>         depend on what. Regardless, it's not possible to make any real
>         judgement without seeing the whole license.
>
>         The more common thing in licenses is a requirement to NOT
>         include the source organization's name on modified versions.
>
>     FWIW, Artistic-1.0 (which is OSI approved) sort of has this
>     concept (as may other OSI approved licenses)
>
>     5. You may charge a reasonable copying fee for any distribution of
>     this Package. You may charge any fee you choose for support of
>     this Package. You may not charge a fee for this Package itself.
>     *However, you may distribute this Package in aggregate with other
>     (possibly commercial) programs as part of a larger (possibly
>     commercial) software distribution provided that you do not
>     advertise this Package as a product of your own.*
>
> I originally had that whole paragraph in my license, I was told that 
> *You may not charge a fee for this Package itself. *violates OSD6.

To clarify if there is any misunderstanding, your original license was 
"/You may charge a reasonable copying fee for any distribution of this 
Software on physical media. You may charge any fee you choose for 
support of this Software. You may not charge a fee for this Software 
itself./" I called out "You may not charge a fee for this Software 
itself," which appears to be a statement about whether one could charge 
a fee for exercising the licensed rights, i.e., the rights granted in 1, 
2 and 3. So it wasn't an objection to a fee for providing a copy of the 
source code, which is what the above paragraph is about, and which you 
also included in the first quoted sentence, but what appeared to be a 
prohibition on charging a fee for exercising the licensed rights.

Pam

Pamela Chestek
Chair, License Committee
Open Source Initiative
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