For Approval: SSCL

Russ Nelson nelson at crynwr.com
Wed Sep 8 13:59:40 UTC 2010


Gregor, I really REALLY appreciate your enthusiasm, and desire for a
succinct copyleft license.  But all those words and sentences and
paragraphs in the GPL are there for a REASON.  I strongly encourage
you to read the GPL, and reverse-engineer the wording to see what
problem is being solved.  Then go and see if the SSCL actually solves
that problem unambiguously.  Not in your mind, but in the mind of a
hostile reader.

Legal agreements are made between friends, and interpreted by
enemies.  You only need a license when the other guy has turned into
an asshole.

I read through your submission email, and I don't see a description of
your objection to the GPL, other than a philosophical objection to its
length and complexity and that it doesn't cause compatibility problems
(and yet it does, since the GPL requires you to license all derived
works under the GPL, so this license is incompatible with the GPL).
The GPL is fairly well understood at this point, so that's not a good
reason to try to reinvent it.

We have a board meeting today.  I'll mention the SSCL, and say that
it's still under discussion.

Gregor Pintar writes:
 > 2010/7/2, Bruce Perens <bruce at perens.com>:
 > > Nothing in your text, as presently stated, would reliably prevent
 > > someone from combining the work with a GPL work and treating the whole
 > > as if it was under the GPL. Unfortunately, you don't get that _and_
 > > simplicity both. You'd have to put in more text about combining works,
 > > the entire work being under this license, no additional restrictions, etc.
 > >
 > However, it won't be approved.
 > 
 > 
 > Fixed licence:
 > 
 > Copyright (c) years, Company or Person's Name <E-mail address>
 > 
 > Permission is hereby granted to use, copy, modify and/or distribute
 > this source code and binary programs derived from this source code
 > provided that the following conditions are met:
 > 
 > - Redistributions of this source code must retain this licence text
 >   and all copyright notices without alteration.
 > 
 > - Redistributions of binary programs which is derived from this source code must
 >   reproduce this licence text and all copyright notices in the documentation,
 >   which must be distributed with binary programs.
 > 
 > - If the binary program is derived from a modified version of this source code,
 >   you must to publicly release the modified version of this source code
 >   under this license.
 > 
 > THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
 > WARRANTY. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES
 > ARISING FROM THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
 > 
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