[License-review] For Legacy Approval: LBNL BSD

Fri May 17 14:26:07 UTC 2019

As I understand it, legacy approvals should not implicate the policy
against license proliferation at all. The legacy approval mechanism
seems to have been used sparingly but I think it would be a good idea
for OSI to take a more active role in recognizing the open source
status of legacy licenses that commonly appear in packages in
community Linux distributions, which must number in the hundreds.

The odd last paragraph should be paused over -- the notable feature is
"if you choose to make your Enhancements available either publicly, or
directly to Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, without imposing a separate written license agreement for
such Enhancements", you grant a permissive license which is somewhat
broader than the downstream BSD-style license. What annoys me about it
is, probably due to careless drafting, that it does not appear to
address the case of someone making apparently non-licensed
Enhancements available directly (non-"publicly") to some person other
than LBNL. It's also not clear whether the "separate written license
agreement" would exclude this BSD-LBNL license itself. There have been
a few license submissions in recent years that have tried to awkwardly
shoehorn a CLA into the license and this license seems to have a
similar character. In normal open source practice, modifications to a
work are assumed to be under the same license as the original, but I
don't know if this license is trying to assert that without some
abnormally clear indication that this is the case, the person who
makes such modifications available publicly is deemed to be granting
the broader, unconditional license.

This is different from Apache License 2.0 section 5, which tries to
say that upstream contributions to the licensor are by default
licensed under the Apache License 2.0, which just codifies the
"inbound=outbound" understanding.

Richard

On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 9:48 AM Kevin P. Fleming <kevin+osi at km6g.us> wrote:
>
> The request is for "legacy" aprpoval, and if approved that will mean
> that usage of the license is discouraged, right?
>
> On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 6:36 AM Bruce Perens via License-review
> <license-review at lists.opensource.org> wrote:
> >
> > I always appreciate your comments, John, but I'd like to hear from Sebastian this time. Is this important enough to have yet another license adding to the license proliferation problem?
> >
> >     Thanks
> >
> >     Bruce
> >
> > On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 7:12 PM John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> Well, I suppose because of the default copyleft.  If you publish a derivative work and *don't* give it a specific license, it gets the LBNL BSD by default rather than the usual default, which is no-license.
> >>
> >> On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 7:11 PM Bruce Perens via License-review <license-review at lists.opensource.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Why do they still need to use this rather than the plain BSD license?
> >>>
> >>> Thanks
> >>>
> >>> Bruce
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, May 16, 2019, 16:33 Sebastian Ainslie <sainslie at lbl.gov> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> The license:
> >>>>
> >>>> Copyright (c) XXXX, The Regents of the University of California, through
> >>>> Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (subject to receipt of any required
> >>>> approvals from the U.S. Dept. of Energy). All rights reserved.
> >>>> Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
> >>>> modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
> >>>>
> >>>> (1) Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
> >>>> this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
> >>>>
> >>>> (2) Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
> >>>> notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
> >>>> documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
> >>>>
> >>>> (3) Neither the name of the University of California, Lawrence Berkeley
> >>>> National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy nor the names of its contributors
> >>>> may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
> >>>> without specific prior written permission.
> >>>>
> >>>> THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS"
> >>>> AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
> >>>> IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
> >>>> ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE
> >>>> LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
> >>>> CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
> >>>> SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
> >>>> INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
> >>>> CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
> >>>> ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
> >>>> POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
> >>>>
> >>>> You are under no obligation whatsoever to provide any bug fixes, patches, or
> >>>> upgrades to the features, functionality or performance of the source code
> >>>> ("Enhancements") to anyone; however, if you choose to make your Enhancements
> >>>> available either publicly, or directly to Lawrence Berkeley National
> >>>> Laboratory, without imposing a separate written license agreement for such
> >>>> Enhancements, then you hereby grant the following license: a non-exclusive,
> >>>> royalty-free perpetual license to install, use, modify, prepare derivative
> >>>> works, incorporate into other computer software, distribute, and sublicense
> >>>> such Enhancements or derivative works thereof, in binary and source code
> >>>> form.
> >>>> ---------------------------
> >>>> The rationale:
> >>>>
> >>>> The LBNL BSD has been in use since 2003. It has an ADDED paragraph at the
> >>>> end that makes it easier to accept improvements without a specific grant
> >>>> required.
> >>>> ---------------------------
> >>>> Early examples:
> >>>>
> >>>> https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause-LBNL.html
> >>>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:LBNLBSD
> >>>> ---------------------------
> >>>> Proliferation category:
> >>>>
> >>>> Special purpose - US Federal National Lab
> >>>> ---------------------------
> >>>>
> >>>> Kind regards
> >>>>
> >>>> Sebastian Ainslie
> >>>>
> >>>> Principal Commercialization & Licensing Lead Intellectual Property Office
> >>>> Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
> >>>> www:   ipo.lbl.gov
> >>>> e mail:  sainslie at lbl.gov
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> License-review mailing list
> >>>> License-review at lists.opensource.org
> >>>> http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-review_lists.opensource.org
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
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> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Bruce Perens - Partner, OSS.Capital.
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