[License-review] For Approval: Convertible Free Software License, Version 1.1 (C-FSL v1.1)

[Carlo Piana]

Ellmar, all,

I remain quite puzzled by the main feature of the license, namely, the
right of *some* copyright holders in the initial work to decide on the
licensing of the *other* follow-on developers who are also copyright
holders. Isn't it a sort of discrimination, therefore against #5?

I know that the same practical effect would be achieved by assigning the
code to a single project, but that it's always an option for any forker,
not a legal effect of the license. Here you give up your rights on your
copyright as a condition of the very license, which does quite limit the
rights of some versus the rights of others.

My initial and non meditated reaction is that this license should be
rejected as long as Section 7 is concerned.

A remark on the need to retain the ability of relicense or to "make
business" (AKA proprietary exploit) with the software. That's achieved
with a liberal, non copyleft license. But restricting others from doing
something that the initial developers can do, siphoning in the formers'
code and copyright, that does not seem acceptable.

Or am I mistaken on the working of the condition?


Carlo



On 26/09/2018 09:57, Elmar Stellnberger wrote:
> Full Name: Convertible Free Software License Version 1.1
> Short Identifier: C-FSL v1.1
> URL: https://www.elstel.org/license/C-FSL-v1.1.txt
>
> Rationale and Distinguish:
> While the BSD license allows the whole world to re-license and while
> re-licensing is virtually impossible with GPL since every contributor
> would need to consent the C-FSL license goes a practical intermediate
> way restricting the right to re-license to a group called the original
> authors. That way open source developers are not excluded from making
> business with others who want to base a proprietary product on the
> given piece of open source software.
>
> Proliferation Category & Legal Review:
> Other/Miscellaneous
> A lawyer from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency, USA) has
> already checked C-FSL for its proliferation properties. He has found
> the license to be compatible with other open source licenses. He
> decided that C-FSL can be used together with the CC0 license in the
> FDtool (functional dependency mining tool) project.
>
> list of software which uses C-FSL v1.1.:
> qcoan: https://www.elstel.org/coan
> xchroot, confinedrv, bundsteg, debcheckroot, dbschemacmd: also found
> at www.elstel.org
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> License-review mailing list
> License-review at lists.opensource.org
> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-review_lists.opensource.org


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20180926/a08dfc51/attachment.html>