[License-review] License submission for approval for Moritz30-Projects Open Source License Version 1

Richard Fontana fontana at opensource.org
Tue Jun 7 15:55:29 UTC 2016


On 06/07/2016 07:41 AM, Carlo Piana wrote:
> Sorry for the rude answer, but there is no other license like it because
> it's very badly written (including some English mistakes).

It is certainly very difficult to understand because of what seems to be
a significant amount of non-idiomatic English.

> Just read section 5:
> 
>> If the license get’s removed by the original software owner nothing will change for end users that already use the software. Redistributors will have to remove their redistributions if nothing other is stated by the new license after request. For new end users this license won’t be valid and they have to accept the new one. All newer versions of this software will be only under their new license. Also end users that started using this software will have to accept the new agreement to use the newer versions. Redistributors mustn’t publish newer versions of this software unless something other is stated by the new license.
> 
> This section of the license is totally unacceptable and is liable to
> jeopardize everything, as the new license is a) compulsory and b)
> undefined, and therefore the original license is totally revocable.
> 
> Make no mistake, this is not at all similar to the "or any later
> version" in *GPL or the upgrade provision in MPL. In both versions, the
> upgrade is optional to the downstream developer, not imposed by the
> upstream one, and the license itself is not revoked.
> 
> Also section 11 reads as badgeware.
> 
> I suggest outright rejection of this submission.

I believe it would need to be rewritten and resubmitted (though I'd
encourage Matthias to reconsider whether licenses such as GPLv2 or GPLv3
would meet his objectives). It is not really possible to assess as-is,
other than to conservatively assume that it's not OSD-conformant. For
example I really can't tell whether Carlo's interpretation of section 5
is correct.

Richard





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