OSI Approves Two New Licenses

An anonymous reader writes "The Open Source Initiative approved two new licenses. One, the Academic Free License is a MIT/BSD-like license . The other one, the Open Software License is an apparently GPL-incompatible "viral" license with some obnoxious clauses. Both have an interesting "mutual termination for patent action" clause - basically, the license terminates if you file a lawsuit in any court against any software that is licensed under an OSI approved license containing the same clause."

Comments

Quick, look busy!

[eddy]

-"Damned, we've surfed right out of p0rn!"
-"We really ought to do something to justify our existance, but what?"
-"How about we rubberstamp some licenses and put out PR-fluff?"
-"Let's do it."

Viral licences remain untested in court

[btempleton]

These licences all say, "the only terms under which you can copy this work is if you agree to this licence."

But that's misleading. If you copy a copyrighted work without permission from the copyright holder (ie. without agreeing to the terms set out) then you have made a copyright violation. That's it. You have not made yourself bound to the terms, which you may not even have been aware of. You can be sued for a copyright violation, and in some cases charged with criminal copyright infringement, but I don't think you can be bound to any mystical licence terms. Possibly if they have proof you knew of the terms and deliberately ignored them, but maybe not even then.

Think about it. What if the GPL said "You may not use this software unless you give the FSF 1 billion dollars. Re-copying of this software implies acceptance of this price."

Everybody would agree that's ridiculous. So why do they think you can write a term like that dictating what licence you will put on your changes?

I think if you violate a viral licence like the GPL or this one, they can sue you to stop publishing the original code or the derivative work. They can ask for damages. But they can't command you -- other than in negotiation to drop the lawsuit -- to follow other terms.