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

[Elmar Stellnberger]

On 9/26/18 11:29 AM, Bruce Perens wrote:
> I don't recommend approval.
> 
> The main reason to reject is that this license allows an arbitrarily 
> chosen group (the original licensors are not necessarily the ones who do 
> the most work, etc.) to take the work of others private and release it 
> under a non-open-source licence, without using the more legally sound 
> process of a contributor license agreement. In particular, it allows the 
> "original"  group to take forks private without the approval of anyone 
> on the forked project. 
I do not see it as a mistake that no contributor agreement is necessary 
because of a clause of implicit consent. Anyone who wants to contribute 
can read the license and then decide if he wants to contribute.

It is just more likely that the development process centers around the 
original authors with a license like this because the encouragement of 
these two groups of people may be different.

Nonetheless I see this license as an encouragement to people who would 
otherwise not publish their software under an OSS license because it 
allows them to retain certain rights at least for the first time. If 
this should further encourage contributions the software can any time be 
re-published under a GPL or BSD like license.