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

[Brendan Hickey]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2018, 04:48 Elmar Stellnberger <estellnb at elstel.org> wrote:

> On 9/28/18 1:45 AM, Bruce Perens wrote:
> >
> >         Nobody is forced to contribute. If a contributor has read the
> >     license
> >     he can then decide thereupon whether he wants to contribute or not.
> >
> >
> > It is an unfortunate fact that most of the developers do not have access
> > to legal counsel, and are poorly equipped to parse the license on their
> > own. So "caveat emptor" isn't a really good argument here. OSI should
> > not approve a license with language that works as a trap for the unwary
> > developer.
> >
>
> The opposite is true. The license has intendedly been written in a way
> so that programmers not only lawyers can understand it. To me it is a
> crucial fact because the programmers are those who will need to know how
> the license works in order to do their programming work.
>

It bears repeating: Software licenses are not project management tools.
They are legal artifacts which facilitate the distribution and reuse of
code within a legal system that didn't foresee this. It is unlikely that a
court will interpret an ambiguous license in a way that coincides with your
intent or understanding of the text. This is a bad outcome for everyone.

It's useful for laypeople to understand licenses at a high level, even if
they don't have the training required to understand all the nuance in the
text. I can use the Apache License, GPL or MIT License and be confident in
the rights I've conveying to third parties. Likewise, I can use code
distributed under these licenses without undue worry. It is inessential for
me to understand every word in the GPL governing source distribution, for
example.

If any of the original authors comes from Europe
> it is an option to apply European law.
>

Here's an example of ambiguity in this license. What do you mean by "come
from" and "hometown"? I hold two passports. I've lived in a number of
places. Does this entitle me to apply English law? Does my place of birth
dictate the jurisdiction regardless of where I live? Choice of law isn't
necessarily bad, but this particular implementation is problematic and is
indicative of flaws throughout.

You can use any license you want, but as written this one should not be
approved. It violates the OSD in one or more ways. It contains undesirable
clauses (ex. badgeware). It appears largely redundant with the CDDL. It's
ambiguous.

Brendan

>
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