[License-review] request for review of the 3D Slicer License

Lukas Atkinson opensource at LukasAtkinson.de
Fri May 28 13:02:18 UTC 2021


I think the Part B Downloading Agreement looks like an approvable 
BSD-style Open Source license. At most, paragraph 4 could be a problem. 
But the warning that the software was designed for “research purposes” 
only is not a field of use restriction, and the requirement to comply 
with “all applicable … laws, regulations and orders” seems tautological. 
This seems more like an acceptable disclaimer.

However, I don't think the Part A Contribution Agreement should be 
covered by an OSI approval decision. It's an unconstrained CLA to the 
benefit of a particular party, not an Open Source license to the public. 
If the Contribution Agreement were part of the license, the requirement 
to de-identify data could also be a field of use restriction.

As a practical argument against approval of (parts) of the license: it 
will be difficult to clearly communicate to the public which aspects of 
this license were approved as Open Source and which were not. If this 
isn't made extremely clear, someone will misunderstand the approval of 
parts of the Slicer license to mean that such lopsided CLAs are 
inherently Open Source. Thus, it may be in OSI's best interest to 
decline approval for the Slicer license.

On 27/05/2021 21:11, Steve Pieper wrote:
 > ...



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