Slashdot Mirror
OSI Turns Down 4 Licenses; Approves Python Foundation's
Russ Nelson writes "The Open Source Initiative turned down four licenses this week. Not to name names, but one license had a restrictive patent grant that only applied to GPL'ed operating systems. Another was more of a rant than a license. Another was derived from the GPL in violation of the GPL's copyright. And the fourth had insufficient review on the license-discuss
mailing list (archives). The one license that did pass was the Python Software Foundation License."
In other news, I just had lunch. It was eggs with cheese, sausage and banana bread. Now I'm working on modifying the docs for the app I fixed. If you promise to keep me posted on what licenses OSI is rejecting, I'll promise to let you know when I get my hair cut.
324006
If you'd read the GPL, you would answer your own questions. The GPL is a copyrighted document that grants you explicit permission to redistribute it in unmodified form. Thus the GPLed software that includes the GPL license is obviously not in violation, as they are explicitly granted a right to distribute it. What is not granted is a right to modify the GPL itself. The reasoning for this was that if modification were allowed it would dilute the usefulness of the license, as "GPL-derived" licenses might not even be Free Software or Open Source.
You can however provided added or amended licensing conditions without modifying the actual text of the GPL; for example "this program may be distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL with the added requirement that [blah blah]."
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Not to name names, but one license had a restrictive patent grant that only applied to GPL'ed operating systems.
And what a bizarre license that was (not to name names). It was essentially the BSD license word for word, with the aforementioned patent grant. Yet you couldn't legally use the software on a BSD licensed operating system.
Another was more of a rant than a license.
A delicious rant to be sure. I quite enjoyed it, despite its wrongheadedness. It could not be approved of course, since it explicitly denied its own validity.
The one license that did pass was the Python Software Foundation License.
Whoohoo! In this age of a million open source licenses, it's nice to see that a sensible license that fills a gap in open source gets approved while the frivolous crap gets flushed.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Intel modified the BSD license in the following ways:
The Poetic License
states that:
"The software covered by this license makes no claims about copyright, copyleft or even copy centre (where you take it down to the copy centre and copy it). Make as many copies as you want, for whatever purpose, even if it is to sacrifice those copies in a great floppy pyre. You may even claim copyright, ownership of trademark, originality or patent. You may even sue the real originator for a breach of your claimed copyright. However, this license can't guarantee that this will be in any way successful."
(har de har har)
The CMGPL
The GPL without a bunch of sections? Which ones, you ask? Mostly the ones that don't count!
The Intel BSD+Patent License
Like BSD, but grants a patent license. Patent license is specifically not granted to use under non-GPL OS's, or with modified versions, although copyright license is the same as BSD.
The Artistic License is one I like. I'm always suspicious of an open source license that either a) has a polemical preamble that tries to coerce your behavior, b) reads like the team of lawyers who wrote the license are making a lot more money than the developers, or c) presumes that the only good programmer is one who either programs as a hobby, is an academic, works for a big company that can afford to subsidize the programmer's time, or works for an end-user company that can afford to build complex systems strictly for internal use -- in other words, that there's no moral way to be a software vendor.
:-)
Yeah, I know there's plenty of room for argument all around, but my sympathies are with small software vendors who need some way to get enough revenue from 100-5000 licenses to pay salaries. The Artistic License strikes me as compact and commonsensical, and a good model for many situations. And of course it has the coolest name.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld