License Committee Report for December 2009

[Joel Sherrill]

On 11/27/2009 10:33 PM, Russ Nelson wrote:
> I'm the chair of the license approval committee.  This is my report
> for the current set of licenses under discussion.  The OSI board will
> be meeting December 2.
>
> Proposition #1: that we turn all approved licenses into generic
> templates even if submitted as party-specific licenses.  This will
> immediately convert a number of licenses which are Mozilla instances
> into "See Mozilla Public License" references.  It will also allow
> submittors of legacy licenses such as PostgreSQL and BlackBox to
> submit a license which they are merely users of, and allow us to
> accept that license as they received it, but approve it for use by the
> rest of the open source community.
>
> Note that Proposition #1 is of my own invention and has not bee
> discussed on the mailing list.  This email is going out long enough
> before the board meeting for sufficient discussion of its wisdom to
> happen.  I will convey the result of that discussion to the board.  It
> needs to be in the report because approval of BlackBox is dependent
> upon it.
>    
I think this would be a wise thing.  It would allow you to
have "generic templates" which can be "instantiated" by
any project.  It would be a clever way to avoid some
license proliferation from OSI's perspective and repeating
the same discussion when the difference is project.

Would it also be possible to have optional paragraphs?  This
is more of a question.  If two licenses are the same except
for a sentence or paragraph, can this template idea cover that?

On a somewhat selfish side-note, would this make it possible
to say something about the various "ok to link with"
exception paragraphs that are added to the GPLv2?  GNAT,
various GCC run-times, RTEMS, etc have this.

When I asked about this a while back the answer was something
like you are adding more freedoms, so not worth adding another
license.

I was thinking you are moving from precise copies of licenses
verbatim to templates.  This might simplify and allow OSI to make
more general statements.

With all that said, anything that helps reduce license proliferation
is a good thing.

--joel sherrill
RTEMS

> --
>
> Title: The PostgreSQL Licence
> Submission:
>    http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?17:mss:931:nooneedaahagajmpehif
> Original-Submission:
>    http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?17:mss:874:200909:kodinndfijkmchmflood
> License: In the submission
> Comments: Re-submitted as a general license. Asking for legacy approval.
> Recommend: approval
>
> --
>
> Title: The BlackBox Component Builder Open Source License
> Submission:
>    http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?17:mss:887:200911:nlcjlommcajfndpfkoni
> License: In the submission and http://www.oberon.ch/BlackBox.html
> Comments: As Cowan says, it's sleepycat with redundancies removed and
>    the names replaced.
> Recommend: approval if Proposition #1 passes; send back for
>    resubmission as generic template if #1 not passed.
>
> --
>
> Title: Falcon Programming Language License
> Submission:
>    http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?17:mss:826:naokadpjdjicihdgloog
> License: http://www.falconpl.org/index.ftd?page_id=license_1_1
> Comments: Clearly OSD-compatible but ... it's the GPL with an added
>    freedom to embed the language interpreter creating a single work
>    without invoking the terms of the GPL.  If that were it, then we
>    could leave it there, but Giancarlo adds required attribution above
>    and beyond that required by the GPL.
> Recommend: Not different enough from the LGPL to warrant approval.
>
>