Re: BSD-like licenses and the OSI approval process

On 10/17/07, Chris Travers <chris.traversgmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/16/07, Philippe Verdy <verdy_pwanadoo.fr> wrote:
> >
> > So if the fact that they use "open
source" terms for describing the licence
> > does not matter. We are ONLY interested in the
compatibility of the licence
> > with our set of approved licences. And for me this
is just enough, however
> > IANAL...
>
> However, taking this viewpoint will effectively prevent
the OSI from
> asserting that non-OSI approved licenses should not be
called open
> source (as Mr Tiemann has argued in his blog).

Not so fast.

IANAL either, but it seems to me that if the copyright
holder says,
"My license is open source because it grants sufficient
permissions to
allow it to be relicensed as X", that statement itself
is sufficient
permission to allow someone to distribute under the terms of
X.
Therefore the software is now implicitly licensed as X and
is
effectively an open source license.

Even if there might be a legal question about whether the
terms of
your license really do allow relicensing as X, I would think
that your
asserting that it is allowed can be construed as sufficient
permission.

Of course this only applies if the copyright holder is on
record
saying this.  If someone else says it, then there is the
question of
whether they're right.  Who has liability if they're wrong?

That's the fly in the ointment for Larry Rosen's approach of
just
relicensing a bunch of stuff under one license.  Sure,
anyone *can* do
that.  But until someone actually *does*, other people can
justifiably
wonder whether they are truly compatible.  And the person
who actually
does the work of doing that is taking on liability by doing
so.  (The
liability risk is very minor if they do a good job of
vetting the
licenses.  But even so it is not entirely non-existent.)

Cheers,
Ben

On 10/17/07, Ben Tilly <btillygmail.com> wrote:

> Not so fast.
>
> IANAL either, but it seems to me that if the copyright
holder says,
> "My license is open source because it grants
sufficient permissions to
> allow it to be relicensed as X", that statement
itself is sufficient
> permission to allow someone to distribute under the
terms of X.
> Therefore the software is now implicitly licensed as X
and is
> effectively an open source license.

I don't disagree with you on that point.  However, this does
not
invalidate what I am saying.  We can argue what
"relicense" means in
this context and whether this is permitted in the MIT
License or BSD
LIcense but that is an entirely separate issue.

The  problem that we all see is that there are a *lot* of
existing
permissive licenses out there.   These are not generally new
licenses,
but we can probably agree that there are thousands of
licenses out
there when we are talking about minor wording variations,
and that
many of these probably predate the OSI.

The issue is that I don't believe that the OSI can *ever*
put pressure
on vendors to adopt only OSI licenses as open source (for
example the
complaints about Microsoft publicly labling one of the two
licenses
they submitted as open source prior to approval by the OSI)
and at the
same time refuse to approve new licenses on the basis of
license
proliferation concerns.  If permissive licenses are denied
on this
basis, what happens with CentriCRM?  What about people
caling the
"Microsoft Reference License" as "a hobbled
open source license?"
(Note:  That quote was *not* made by Microsoft but rather by
a web
site catering to the open source community.)  What about LWN
labeling
Qmail as "open source?" (Granted, if DJB
explicitly allowed the
distribution of patches, it would be, but it is missing
this
requirement.)

This sort of erosion is what I am talking about.  As long
as
PostgreSQL, BIND, etc. use unapproved licenses, everyone
else can
point to them and say "we don't have to listen to you
about approved
licenses."

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

Ben Tilly [mailto:btillygmail.com] wrote:
> Envoyé : mercredi 17 octobre 2007 21:56
> À : Chris Travers
> Cc : License Discuss
> Objet : Re: BSD-like licenses and the OSI approval
process
> 
> On 10/17/07, Chris Travers <chris.traversgmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10/16/07, Philippe Verdy <verdy_pwanadoo.fr> wrote:
> > >
> > > So if the fact that they use "open
source" terms for describing the
> licence
> > > does not matter. We are ONLY interested in
the compatibility of the
> licence
> > > with our set of approved licences. And for me
this is just enough,
> however
> > > IANAL...
> >
> > However, taking this viewpoint will effectively
prevent the OSI from
> > asserting that non-OSI approved licenses should
not be called open
> > source (as Mr Tiemann has argued in his blog).
> 
> Not so fast.
> 
> IANAL either, but it seems to me that if the copyright
holder says,
> "My license is open source because it grants
sufficient permissions to
> allow it to be relicensed as X", that statement
itself is sufficient
> permission to allow someone to distribute under the
terms of X.
> Therefore the software is now implicitly licensed as X
and is
> effectively an open source license.

You don't understand: I mean that if a software writer wants
to designate
its software as open source, he can do so without any legal
consequence.
The only thing that is legally important is not the fact
that its licence is
said to be "open source" (without any reference to
OSI), but the fact that
the licence *asserts* as being compatible with another
explicitly named
licence that you consider being "open source"
(BSDL, MPL, GPL...).

One way a licence can do that is by explicitly granting the
user to choose
between either the terms of the licence itself, or the terms
of another
licence, including if the licence requires (in that case) to
terminate the
licence at the same time as he chooses the alternate
licence.

This is not like multiple licencing, where all licences
apply
simultaneously, because the text clearly requires the user
to choose
irrevocably between the two texts, and only one licence
applies at any time.

I won't say the same thing about the term
"copyleft" which was uniquely and
first defined by the FSF as necessarily meaning "GPL
compatible", and
there's apparently no precedent (so the "copyleft"
term is probably
defendable in a court by free software supporters, but IANAL
to assert this
would be the case if "copyleft" has not be
registered as a trademark by the
FSF, allowing it to forbid its usage by some licensor whose
licence is not
compatible with the GPL).

I absolutely don't matter in fact about the terms. What I
need and want is
ONLY making sure that the licence is compatible with some
other well known
"open source" or "free" licence. And the
job of the FSF and of the OSI is to
study if such licences are compatible with their rules.

Unfortunately, there exists licences that are considered
compatible with OSI
rules (and approved by OSI) which are considered NOT
compatible with the GPL
by the FSF (despite the GPL itself is compatible with OSI
rules). This means
that the licence compatibility is NOT a transitive property,
but only a
PARTIAL ORDER (like in a oriented graph, where NO shortcut
is implicitly
allowed):

If licence A is said compatible with licence B which itself
is said
compatible with licence C, this does not imply that licence
A is compatible
with licence C. It does not imply also any reverse order.

This really complicated the things, and that's why avoiding
the
proliferation of licences is highly wanted as it really
fragments our
desired commons. And one way to reconcile things and
reconsolidate this
licencing graph is by making licences that are EXPLICITLY
said (in their OWN
text) to be compatible with several other wellknown
licenses, or for
free/open source software makers to avoid writing their own
licence by
providing their software with multiple licences (and
providing a way to
contact them for getting supplementary licences if one of
those proposed
licences are not satisfying for users, due to the
difficulties of
integrating it with other software covered by one of the
proliferating other
licences).