RE: Re: Æsthetic Permissive License - For Approval

Lawrence Rosen lrosen at rosenlaw.com
Fri Dec 28 18:04:35 UTC 2007


Sean Palmer submitted this complete license:
> Copyright <Year>, <Entity Name and Optional Metadata>
> 
> Entities may copy, modify, distribute, sell, and use this work, without
> warranty, provided this entire instrument is preserved as a notice.

Does the phrase "without warranty" apply to the "entities" or to the
licensor? Is it an effective warranty disclaimer? Am I an entity now?

Since when is a license an "instrument"? Where must it be preserved?

What about all the other IP rights that might be embodied in a work? 

A license can be so simple as to be worthless. It is like a 3-line software
program that successfully prints "HELLO" (my first program, oh so many years
ago!), but that serves absolutely no useful commercial purpose. Why are we
wasting our time on this?

/Larry


> -----Original Message-----
> From: sean.b.palmer at googlemail.com [mailto:sean.b.palmer at googlemail.com]
> On Behalf Of Sean B. Palmer
> Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 6:57 AM
> To: Russ Nelson
> Cc: license-review at opensource.org; www-archive at w3.org
> Subject: Re: Re: Æsthetic Permissive License - For Approval
> 
> On Dec 20, 2007 3:43 PM, Russ Nelson <nelson at crynwr.com> wrote:
> 
> > Write the license you want to write.
> 
> Given all this good advice, I hereby modify my submission to:
> 
> Copyright <Year>, <Entity Name and Optional Metadata>
> 
> Entities may copy, modify, distribute, sell, and use this work, without
> warranty, provided this entire instrument is preserved as a notice.
> 
> The normative version of which is at:
> 
> http://inamidst.com/stuff/aepl/license
> Last-Modified: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 13:10:06 GMT
> SHA1: 3ec2f90a88af01c232648656cbba4ce21783d3cd
> 
> And the previous version of which is persistently archived here:
> 
> http://inamidst.com/stuff/aepl/draft-license-01
> 
> I'm also considering suggested name changes.
> 
> The 30 days of discussion is, I presume, counted from the initial
> submission only. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
> 
> > Better for you to have a license that makes you happy rather than
> > one that makes us happy and yet gets you no users.
> 
> Absolutely, though this license's interested users value OSI approval.
> Sites such as the Python Package Index and SourceForge Trove, for
> example, only enumerate OSI approved licenses to select, I've been
> told.
> 
> Since I'm not a lawyer, I presume that users will appreciate any
> available stringent license review, especially given that testing a
> license in the judicial system is hardly possible for a new license.
> 
> My submission has generated a surprising amount of positive feedback
> in private, so I think I've hit the nail on the head at least in
> spirit!
> 
> --
> Sean B. Palmer, http://inamidst.com/sbp/




More information about the License-review mailing list