[License-review] Submission of OSET Public License for Approval

[Richard Fontana]

My comment wasn't about license compatibility. Rather:

Clearly OSET favored some kind of copyleft license, and you've made a
few comments about the GPL that seem to imply (possibly reinforced by
the comments of the CAVO folks, unless this was in response to those
comments) that in this open source voting systems space there is a
background community preference for the GPL, maybe even specifically
GPLv3.

A main justification for having this alteration of MPL 2.0 seems to be
that the GPL license family would be inappropriate because it would
cause problems, possibly even contractually insurmountable ones, in
procurement. So my point is that this seems to assume that the
products being offered for procurement contain no GPL-licensed code,
and perhaps only contain OSET-PL plus code under noncopyleft licenses.
If they do contain GPL-licensed code -- for example, let's say a
software stack that includes the Linux kernel -- you've eliminated any
benefit you otherwise might have gotten from the novel features of
this license. (Similarly, if your stack includes any MPL 2.0 code, you
are stuck with the limitations of MPL 2.0 relative to the changed
features in OSET-PL.) One or more of the people from CAVO seemed to be
making a similar point.

Thanks for the clarification about why MPL 2.0's 'Executable Forms'
provision is not sufficient for OSET's needs.

Richard



On Mon, Sep 07, 2015 at 05:34:06PM +0000, Meeker, Heather J. wrote:
> Re: Aren't you assuming that such an open source technology system will not contain any
> GPL-licensed software....
> 
> No, we are not at the point of making such assumptions.  We don't expect to limit this license to only one software package, so there are many possible configurations of software and attendant licenses.   If this is a licensing compatibility concern, the OSET license is no less compatible with other licenses that most copyleft licenses already approved, and more so than some approved licenses.  If this is a question of whether election procurement managers are likely to accept our license, then that is a different question.  (Please see my prior post on this point.)  
> 
> Re: One other question: MPL 2.0 allows using different terms for
> 'Executable .....
> 
> So does OSET (we use the same provision as MPL2 2.0), but we are assuming that provisioning election systems will include delivery of source code -- or at least, that we need to allow for that possibility. 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: License-review [mailto:license-review-bounces at opensource.org] On Behalf Of Richard Fontana
> Sent: Sunday, September 06, 2015 11:03 AM
> To: License submissions for OSI review
> Subject: Re: [License-review] Submission of OSET Public License for Approval
> 
> On Tue, Sep 01, 2015 at 10:18:59PM +0000, Meeker, Heather J. wrote:
> > Our stakeholder community—elections administrators and officials—are very
> > receptive to acquiring open source software-based election and voting systems
> > provided the software (and related support and services) can be legally
> > acquired through their procurement process.  A primary ingredient of their
> > procurement process is terms and conditions of software licensing that meet
> > their regulatory requirements.
> > 
> > While governments already often acquire open source technology on an ad hoc
> > basis under existing licenses, they face more, and different, hurdles acquiring
> > open source election systems.  Open source software that is merely part of a
> > larger IT system is usually covered by two documents—the open source license,
> > and an overarching (and often superseding) procurement agreement that fits with
> > the applicable regulations.  Where an agency is acquiring an entire open source
> > technology system—especially technology to be used in public elections and
> > subject to competitive bidding—procurement regulations need to be handled
> > properly within the four corners of the open source license.  
> 
> I'm trying to understand this particular point. Aren't you assuming
> that such an open source technology system will not contain any
> GPL-licensed software, perhaps not any copyleft software (perhaps not
> any software under any other open source license -- in other words are
> you assuming that the 'technology system' will consist solely of
> software under the OSET-PL)? Because otherwise you have a
> mixed-license product where only some portion of the product is
> licensed in such a way as to meet your goals.
> 
> One other question: MPL 2.0 allows using different terms for
> 'Executable Forms', so presumably you could meet your objectives here
> by way of an appopriate non-open-source license for the Excecutable
> Form. Why is MPL 2.0 not suitable - is it because you expect to be
> distributing 'Source Code' (as defined in OSET-PL/MPL 2.0) in a
> procurement context, or is it because of some desire to be able to
> claim that the license used in the procurement context is open source?
> 
> Richard
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