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

Simon Phipps webmink at gmail.com
Thu Feb 19 14:57:13 UTC 2009


On Feb 19, 2009, at 13:17, 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.

Having followed the discussion, that's my conclusion too. As a free- 
standing license I don't believe it would qualify as Open Source  
because of that initial period where the four freedoms are not  
available. I'd be surprised if the OSI Board approved it. That's not  
to say a company attempting a business model on this approach would  
fail, but their software could not be described as open source until  
the initial period had expired.

S.




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