For Approval: Transitive Grace Period Public Licence, v1.0

[Michael Tiemann]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Chris Zumbrunn <chris at zumbrunn.com> wrote:

>
> On Feb 19, 2009, at 14:17 , Stefano Maffulli wrote:
>
>  On 19/feb/09, at 05:41, Tzeng, Nigel H. wrote:
>>
>>  I think that it is a new trait that probably isn't covered by another
>>> license and deserves more than being a waiver if it is indeed a new open
>>> source (sub?) genre.
>>>
>>
>> This is not a new license. It's a license similar to other existing ones
>> with an additional clause that sets a time based deadline. Software released
>> under the TGPPL falls under the Open Source Definition only when the time
>> has passed. Until then it's not open source software.
>
>
That's how I read it.


>
>>
> You've got that backwards. It is truly open source *until* that time has
> passed. After that it turns into crippled open source because it becomes
> copyleft ;-)


Um, what does this mean to you: "The Transitive Grace Period Public Licence
has requirements similar to the GPL except that it allows you to wait for up
to twelve months after you redistribute a derived work before releasing the
source code of your derived work."?  To me it means that the release of a
derived work denies the open source property of that derived work (and hence
also to the community who contributed to that derived work) for a period of
time.

I think we all agree that when Apple distributes a derived work of the BSD
code (OSX) with no promise at all of ever releasing the source code to their
derived work (OSX), that it's not open source, even if they do contribute
substantial changes back to the BSD community.  And that is as it should
be.  Creating an arbitrary period of limbo, be it 12 seconds or 12 months or
12 years, is a bridge too far.

M