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

[Tzeng, Nigel H.]

>From: mdtiemann at gmail.com [mdtiemann at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Michael Tiemann [tiemann at opensource.org]

>I think I understand what you are saying, and I think it clarifies my
>example with respect to Apple's OSX.  The BSD license permits Apple to put
>their own terms around the code and say "hands off--this is proprietary
>software now!"  Guys like Greg Stein even thing that's cool.  Whatever.  The
>fact is, nobody is confused for a moment that the software wrapped in
>Apple's license has the open source property while wrapped in that license.

If OSX was under the TGPPL rather than BSD then Apple would add 
proprietary code to the BSD code and enjoy 12 months of grace period
before they had to release the source code.

Still no one is confused for a moment because the rule is simple:  12 months
after distribution (of binary) the source must be released and after that it 
works as any other open source code.

>If Apple chooses to push a patch upstream, absent their restrictive license,
>such changes may be accepted by the upstream maintainers, and version of
>open source BSD may be derived with those changes, retaining the open source
>property.

>If Bruce's logic is correct, the TGPPL creates a trojan horse situation
>where the license would (if the OSI were to grant such approval) claim open
>source over top of code that did not, in fact, carry the open source
>property.  That would be Bad.

Only because you persist in misunderstanding.  There is no trojan horse.

The license ensures that the source will be released in 12 months or Apple
no longer has a license to use FreeBSD code inside of OSX any longer.

What it gives Apple is a 12 month period where its own new additions 
provide it  a competitive advantage before it must be released for 
anyone to reuse (under TGPPL).  

Likewise if I were to "improve" OSX and sell it then I would have 12 
months of competitive advantage before Apple (and everyone else)
would get those improvements.  The "free" versions only ever lag the proprietary
versions by a year.