[License-review] Request for Approval of Universal Permissive License (UPL)

[John Cowan]

Lawrence Rosen scripsit:

> Remember typical practice: Alice goes to SourceForge, finds Bob's free BSD
> program, copies it, compiles and links it, and distributes her software.
> Bless her! This is precisely what the FOSS community wants to see.

Actually, we don't know if that's truly typical or not.  It's quite likely
that "Alice goes to SourceForge etc. etc. and distributes her software in
binary form under a proprietary license" is the more frequent scenario,
it's just that we don't see it or hear about it.

> Bob will have many things to prove including, most important, that
> somehow he was damaged by Alice's actions

Statutory damages makes that unnecessary, no?  In effect, copyright
violation is almost a matter of strict liability, though of course the
amount of the damages are affected by scienter, and the definition of
fair use somewhat alleviates the burden.  (Arguably, unfair use should be
an element of the tort rather than fair use being a defense, but that's
not the way the law is applied today.)

> and that this isn't just a typical legitimate way that one copyrighted
> FOSS program is built on top of another.

But Alice's program is not FOSS in my hypo here.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Man has no body distinct from his soul, for that called body is a portion
of the soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of the soul
in this age.  --William Blake