[License-review] Approval: BSD + Patent License

[Mark Wielaard]

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 10:03:33AM -0800, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
> McCoy is proposing a BSD license plus patent license. It is an okay
> FOSS license. But AFL 3.0 did that very thing 10 years ago. The only
> reason for AFL 3.0 not being accepted generally for that same purpose
> is the FSF's complaint, "contains contract provisions." That kind of
> quasi-legal balderdash is directly relevant to what McCoy and others
> want to do. 
> 
> And if AFL 3.0 isn't satisfactory for some random reason, then use
> the Apache 2.0 license.

Sorry Larry, but these are impractical suggestions wrt reviewing the
license submission and intent of the BSD + Patent License. The AFLv3
is GPL incompatible because it contains contract provisions requiring
distributors to obtain the express assent of recipients to the license
terms. The extra restrictions making ASLv2 incompatible with GPLv2 have
already been discussed. Both are clearly documented cases of expressly
incompatible licenses by the GPL license steward the FSF. I understand
your desire to mention your disagreement with the license steward and
discuss alternative legal interpretations of what it means to be
compatible with the GPL then what might be generally accepted and
used in practice. But it is offtopic and not a very constructive
discussion in the context of this license submission, which doesn't
contain any of those extra restrictions.

Cheers,

Mark