[License-review] Approval: Server Side Public License, Version 2 (SSPL v2)

[Smith, McCoy]

>>From: License-review [mailto:license-review-bounces at lists.opensource.org] On Behalf Of Josh Berkus
>>Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2019 11:44 AM
>>To: License submissions for OSI review <license-review at lists.opensource.org>; Richard Fontana <richard.fontana at opensource.org>
>>Subject: Re: [License-review] Approval: Server Side Public License, Version 2 (SSPL v2)

>>That's disappointing; given that SSPL is an attempt to expand the scope of Copyleft, I was really hoping that the CL crew would have opinions on it, or at least the ideas behind it.

FWIW I did mention SSPL (and LZPL) in my presentation, and posited the following:

* Licenses should be evaluated solely on their fidelity to the standards of freedom/openness, and the quality of their drafting in meeting those standards
* Experimentation is not necessarily a bad thing
                   *Even failed experimentation
*The business model, much like their philosophy, of the drafter should be immaterial to evaluating the merit of their license

There were some people in attendance who did not agree with the last proposition

>>I don't see these as separable; "how far can/should we extend copyleft" is directly related to any discussions around OSD compliance, especially 6, 9 and 10.

AGPL (v1 & v3) both reach, at least in some ways, a SaaS business model.  So there is not a bias against a SaaS model in OSI.  I raised the question about whether the next step in copyleft is to extend copyleft past AGPLv3 (which I think is the most far-reaching copyleft license).  I don't recall anyone saying, no, AGPLv3 is the line in the sand over which no future license must pass.

I also, as a thought experiment, I proposed something I called the " Extreme Copyleft Public License (ECPL) " (I proposed something similar on the mailing list in response to either LZPL or SSPL) which said, in essence, "if I, the author, can legally require you to copyleft something, you must copyleft it"  This generated a lot of discussion with people after the presentation (mostly around how such a license would be drafted) but I don't recall anyone saying "such a license should not exist" or "such a license is not copyleft" or "such a license does not conform with the OSD"