[License-review] Berkeley Artistic License V5

[Carlo Piana]

Lucy,

I will echo Josh's and Kevin's remarks, and add that I am never entirely fine with having one single "original" and treat the derivatives differently, not allowing them being "original" to other downstream project. I understand that this may fit under the general umbrella of #4, but I would regard #4 as an exception, rather than a rule as it refers only to retain the integrity of the source code, not to granting special rights or status to the originating work beyond that. 

Coming to a more technical analysis, the language of Section 5 seems a bit nontechnical, hard to parse and with some typos (like version "as a the project" -- last word non capitalized). While the first sentence seems an effort to comply with #4 by expressly allowing distribution of modified binary originating from patched software, not particularly problematic, the second part does not provide clear guidance to the reader as to what they are supposed to do.

I note that the obligation/condition to provide a method to receive the Standard Version does not clarify whether it is the code from which the Modified Version has been forked or the current version, since Standard Version refers to a project, not to an identified codebase.  If the interpretation is the latter one, I think the license violates the OSD #1 at least. If it's the first, it should be stated more clearly (Artistic v2 here is different and the rationale for requiring keeping source of the Original Version current is more clear, since it refers to object code distributed /without/ the source, and not two separate codebases for one artifact, one not being the actual source of the distributed artifact).

All in all the license does not seem to have been checked by a lawyer, nor that there is any mention of a legal review. Could you please clarify? 

https://opensource.org/licenses/review-process. 

All the best,

Carlo (in his personal capacity)

PS: as a generic remark, not specific to the submission, I take exception any time people bash on GPLv* for being complex. It certainly has some rough spots and verbosity, but creating an elegant copyleft license and avoid many loopholes in few words is no easy feat (or even possible).  Many who have attempted have simply removed guardrails and allowed loopholes. Others simply ignored they existed, and the result is often buggy, messy, ineffective and delusional.




----- Messaggio originale -----
> Da: "Kevin P. Fleming" <lists.osi-license-review at kevin.km6g.us>
> A: "License-review" <license-review at lists.opensource.org>
> Inviato: Martedì, 8 ottobre 2024 13:21:26
> Oggetto: Re: [License-review] Berkeley Artistic License V5

> On Sat, Oct 5, 2024, at 06:43, Lucy Brown via License-review wrote:

>> This is a submission of Berkeley Artistic License v5.
>> This is a “New” License that was made as a means of creating a more legible,
>> correct, and up to date variation of Artistic License V1, that has been
>> conformed to my personal interpretation of the BSD, (Berkeley), style. It
>> differs from BSD-4 and Artistic v2 in that it is not re-licensable and it is
>> copyleft rather than permissive. It differs from GPL in that it's short, Clear,
>> and accessible and it contains Metadata to credit developers within the
>> license.

> I understand that you've chosen to name this license 'Berkeley Artistic' because
> you followed the style of the BSD licenses, but those licenses use that name
> because they originated at Berkeley, not because someone liked that name :-)

> If this license is not associated with UC Berkeley then it seems unwise to use
> their name for the license, given that their name is a well-known 'brand' in
> the context of software licenses.

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