[License-review] Request for approval of the Non-Coercive Copyleft Licence (NCCL) 1.0

Tim Makarios tjm1983 at gmail.com
Tue Jul 21 05:33:51 UTC 2015


On Mon, 2015-07-20 at 00:29 -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> Tim Makarios scripsit:
> 
> > If you rely on this licence for your right to distribute a Derived Work,
> > you must give back to the community by agreeing that the Derived Work is
> > governed by this version of the NCCL or substantially similar terms,
> > without adding further restrictions to the rights provided.  
> 
> I recommend that so as not to create a sealed-off software commons,
> you also allow derived works to be licensed under the GPL v3 or under
> both licenses.  I make this recommendation whenever a new copyleft
> license is proposed.

Hmm...

Would that situation be fundamentally different from what the situation
would be if every user of the NCCL voluntarily dual-licensed their work
under both NCCL and GPL v3?  If not, is there benefit in making such
dual-licensing effectively compulsory?

The downside of compulsory dual-licensing would be that there would no
longer be the option of ensuring (to the greatest extent possible) that
no-one could be sued for their use of derivative works of an
NCCL-licensed work.

In practice, I imagine that a fair proportion of users of the NCCL
wouldn't be averse to also licensing their work under GPL v3, especially
if someone wanted to make something that was a derivative work of both
the NCCL-licensed work and an existing GPL-v3-licensed work.

Tim
<><





More information about the License-review mailing list