[License-review] Request for Approval : Modular Open-source Software License (MOSL)

[Bruce Perens]

On 09/25/2012 09:40 AM, Hadrien Grasland wrote:
> Now, people could indeed decide to add additional license terms to 
> request that one pays some kind of extra charge for the binary, but I 
> did not and that's what matters as far as OSD compliance is concerned. 
> Isn't it ?
So, you're not looking for a GPL-like license at all in that case, but 
an LGPL-like one. GPL very clearly requires free redistribution of the 
entire program, including any additions that people might make to it. 
LGPL allows derivative works that are not under the same terms.
>
> Otherwise, I have to ask again : both the BSD and the MIT licenses 
> permit one to charge for source code by adding extra terms. Should 
> they be declared OSD-incompatible ?
Assume that I give you source code under the BSD license. You can't add 
terms to /my/ license without my permission. What you can do is place 
your /own/ license on your derivative work. This might be a modified 
copy of the BSD license, but it should not be called the BSD license at 
that point. My license still applies to the pieces that I own, without 
any additional terms at all.

It's a bad idea to have something called the "Modular Open Source 
License" that allows arbitrary additions to be added to it and is still 
called the Modular Open Source License once those things are added. 
Because, of course, it might not be Open Source any longer.

There's also the issue of license proliferation. Where the number of 
OSI-approved licenses is N, the problem of understanding the combination 
of any two licenses in the set requires the study of N * N-1 
combinations by lawyers. Developers aren't often equipped to do this 
study on their own. We don't want you to have to hire a lawyer just to 
develop Open Source (although that is in fact the case for companies 
today). So, we tend to discourage the creation of new licenses. A 
license that is literally built to be modified would thus pose a bad 
effect for the community, by increasing the combinatorial problem.


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