[License-review] Review: Zeppelin Public License

[Pamela Chestek]

I appreciate your effort and intention, but the license is poorly 
drafted which leads to interpretation problems. The license approval 
requirements say that "The license must be grammatically and 
syntactically clear to a speaker of the language of the license" and 
"Every possible variation of the application of the license must meet 
the OSD." This license does not meet those requirements.

The license is not grammatically and syntactically clear. You mention 
that it's shorter and simpler than the Apache license, but shorter and 
simpler isn't necessarily better. For example, the Apache license 
defines "Contributions" as "including the original version of the Work 
and any modifications or additions to that Work or Derivative Works." 
Your license uses the word "contributions" but does not define it. This 
ambiguity led to McCoy's comment that "contributions could be separately 
copyrightable, and not a derivative work, and thus this provision would 
violate OSD 9 (“The license must not place restrictions on other 
software that is distributed along with the licensed software.”)."

As another example, your section 3 says "You must disclose the source, 
and retain the licensing, ad verbum, in the source form." The word 
"source" is used to mean two different things, the origin of the 
code/owner of the copyright and the source [code]. This overloaded use 
of a word can creates interpretation problems.

Section 5 says "The license may not be modified other than the addition 
of clauses (also known as sublicensing)."  "Clause" and "sublicense" are 
not synonyms, so I don't know what you mean here. Is your intention to 
allow sublicensing? If so, that should be with the rest of the grants at 
the beginning.

The license also does not meet the OSD in every possible variation. 
Section 5 allows "modification of the marked boilerplate components of 
the license" - there are no marked boilerplate components of the 
license, so its unclear whether these permitted modifications might 
alter significant terms of the license. That section also allows "the 
maintainer of the origin, the removal of clauses." As pointed out by 
McCoy, this means that the license could be change from OSD-compliant to 
non-compliant at any moment.

For these reasons, I do not believe that this license should be approved.

Pam

Pamela S. Chestek (in my personal capacity)
Chestek Legal
300 Fayetteville Street
Unit 2492
Raleigh, NC 27602
+1 919-800-8033
pamela at chesteklegal.com
www.chesteklegal.com

On 10/19/2023 1:06 PM, Not An FBI Agent via License-review wrote:
>
> Hello! I made my own license that I wish to submit for review. I have 
> submitted the license in a text file on the e-mail, and it complies 
> with the open-source standards. No projects currently use it other 
> than the projects that I am currently making, which are in private 
> GitHub repositories. I am also the license steward. The name of the 
> license is /Zeppelin Public License//Version 1.0/.
>
> The gap that the project is to fill the hole between permissive and 
> weak-copyleft, as I believe that while both are good, I prefer 
> something in the middle. I believe that the most similar license to 
> the Zeppelin Public License is the Apache License, and comparing and 
> contrasting it shows that both the Apache License and the Zeppelin 
> Public Licenses are permissive, both support the open-source movement, 
> both support the rights of software creators, both support the rights 
> of users, and both support the rights of derivative works. Some 
> differences are that the Apache is extremely verbose whilst the 
> Zeppelin Public License is shorter and simpler, as well as being a 
> little bit more permissive. Unfortunately, due to my age, I could not 
> get a lawyer to review the license, however after reading it a dozen 
> of times, it seems legally plausible.
>
> Thank you!
>
> -- 
>
> *Not A Federal Agent*
>
> No seriously, I'm not a fed
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> totallynotafed at fbi.ac is not a federal agent, nor is related to any 
> federal agencies. Any similarities to real feds are purely coincidental
>
>
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