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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."
Can someone explain how the OSI is doing something good for the community by endorsing incompatible license variations?
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
The external deployment clause is interesting to me. As I read it, if you use a modified OSL app on your website, you need to make your changes public. As I read the GPL, you don't need to make your changes public unless you distribute the binary.
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.
So now open-source licenses are trying to restrict our legal rights? I can't see any company adopting any software that uses these licenses if it does not allow them to exercises their legal rights to file lawsuits. It seems this clause is just a way to try and take away people's freedom.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Can't you just make up your own liscense for your software?
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
The AFL, unlike MIT and BSD, does not require that the copyright
be maintained in derivative works, but only in distributions of
the Original Work.
I agree. Why didn't he just work with the FSF on the GPL version 3?
The "Open Software License" (interesting name for a license) seems to be a copyleft license incompatible with the GPL. Sigh... Is it really smart for an OSI board member to add new incomptatible copyleft licenses to the mix and also ask for OSI certification. Hmmm...
There are some interesting things in there such as the patent thing, but is it really smart to mix up copyrights and patents in the same legal document?
The license seems a bit US centric which might put off non-americans.
So what license is the text of the AFL licensed under?
I don't know about other peoples' views, but I don't think that restricting people's freedom of action (ie, saying you can't sue for patents, software with this license, or all your software will be illegal) is what OSI is all about. Licenses like this lead to things like Microsoft EULAs -- it's only a matter of time.
uhm. Everyone can write his/her own license, of course. So I guess the number of licenses is practically infinite :)
Let's see if I have this right:
If I write some software package think "infringes" on a patent, and the patent owner sues me, the patent owner is never granted any rights by any of these liscenses. This sounds like a really innovative way to combat all the patent b.s. that's been going on. If enough important things were to adopt this liscense, it might just make the economic cost for filing such a patent higher than the benfit.
Example:
- Linux adopts one of these new liscenses.
- Software package XYZ adopts one of these liscenses and violates IBM's patent on determine bra cup size via direct measurement (US Patent 5,965,809).
- If IBM sues XYZ, they can never use linux.
Seems to have some interesting implications...Is my interpretion correct?
Life is too short to proofread.
Isn't Lawrence Rosen the lawyerdude who wrote in Linux Journal?
Heh, the license itself has a license:
At first glance, this license doesn't seem bad, and doesn't seem terribly different than the GPL in spirit. It does have a more "lawyerly" tone to it (for instance the section defining "You" in the license).
One glaring difference is the "External Deployment" clause, which is much clearer than the GPL on the subject. But personally, I'm not sure if I would want to limit the "use" of software in this way. I strongly believe that licenses should not even pretend to restrict your use of the software in any way. On the other hand, it closes off a way for people to circumvent the GPL by modifying the software and then deploying it as a service "at arm's length".
Another difference is the patent clause: "This license will self destruct in the presence of patent litigation." I actually think this is clever. I'd like to see more analysis of this clause.
But all in all, I don't see this license as being particularly obnoxious. What did I miss?
Maybe the GPL works for you, but its viral nature does not work for everyone.
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.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Doesn't that mean no special requirements for using the program in a web page as opposed to a command-line app?
A license to copy and modify a program does not automatically confer the right to perform the program publicly.
But that 'external deployment' stuff restricts how you may *use* the software, not just how you may distribute copies. It seems like enough to make the program non-free.
Not how you use it, but how you modify it. Modification, or preparation of derivative works, is normally the exclusive right of the copyright holder. So is public performance. GPL2 claimed "if you distribute binaries, you must distribute source code". GPL3 claims additionally: "if you modify the software and publicly perform it, you must distribute source code."
Will I retire or break 10K?
This new Open Source License is very aggressive, much more so than the GPL; but whereas the GPL is aggressive in terms of preserving users' freedom, the OSL is aggressive in terms of protecting OSI-certified software.
Basically, what they're doing is trying to prevent people from suing OSI-certified with this clause from patent-infringement lawsuits.
If a company uses OSL-licensed software, and they file a lawsuite against any OSI-certified license with that clause in it, then they automatically lose their license to use the OSL-licensed software. Rather clever. Basically, it creates an incentive for a company not to file a lawsuite against an OSI-certified license with that clause in it, if the software OSL'ed software they're using is important to them.
I propose one modification to this license, one which would allow it to protect any OSI-certified or OSS / FS license from patent-lawsuites; adjust the clause to say "if you file a patent lawsuite against software licensed under any OSI-certified, OSS, or FS (i.e., LGPL/GPL) license.
This is certainly not a Free Software license, and I'm sure that RMS will denounce it soon, even though it protect many OSS / FS projects from patent lawsuites.
Consider the implications of this. Lets say that by some act of God (or Satan), Stallman releases a new version of GCC under a modified GPL license with such a patent-lawsuite termination clause in it. Now lets say taht MS uses that new version of GCC as the core for its GUI-based compiler, which is "at a arms length" from the GCC program (i.e., calls it externally), and releases a product called MS GCC, for which they charge you for the MS GUI. Now lets say this was a major profit-maker for MS. And lets say they decide to sue an OSI / OSS / FS license for violating MS' patents. If they do that, they automatically lose the right to use that new GCC, so they can't sell their graphically MS GCC. In other words, it would create a pretty big motivation for them not to sue any OSI / OSS / FS software for patent-infringement.
I like that, because it offers some protection for us OSI / OSS / FS developers from patent-infringement law-suites. We can't afford to defend such things, and we certainly can't afford to be help them sue us with our own software (imagine a company suing us using OpenOffice to write up the legal documents; that'd be like when the English massacred the Chinese using Chinese-made Chinese-invented gunpowder).
On the other hand, this is exactly the same kind of thing which is outrageous about EULA's. MS could put the same kind of thing in any of their EULA's; i.e., if you sue MS, you're license to use MS Office terminates. Good luck suing them if you were only relying on their word processors to type up the legal documents!
However, that said, the same thing which is outrageous in a EULA is not so outrageous in an OSS / FS license, because we need to use whatever means we have to protect ourselves.
In short, we need to think about this kind of thing very carefully. By no means can you say that this type of clause is concerned with the user's freedom. Its concerned with protecting the developer from a lawsuite. So its a clear values choice: Ensuring Freedom (as the GPL does) versus protecting yourself and other OSI / OSS / FS developers. I'm not suggesting which one is best, but you should at least know that choosing this type of license over a freedom-ensuring license (like the GPL) necessarily reduces the amount of freedom.
In that regard, if the idea is to protect the developer (and OSI / OSS / FS developers in general) from a lawsuite, why not just say "by accepting this license, you agree not to file lawsuites against any OSI / OSS / FS software developer?
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
>>>I agree. Why didn't he just work with the FSF on the GPL version 3?
>>Because there are people who honestly believe that the GPL is incompatible with a number of business models, and that those incompatibilities are "by design" and so not likely to vanish in a 2.x->3.x transition.
>how do they solve this 'problem' by using a license which has t the same restritions as the GPL, but with some extra restritions?
Because there's more than one license involved here than the one which happens to be "GPL and then some"? The discussion in the subthread seems to be "general license fragmentations and incompatibilities"
How can you use my intestines as a gift? -Actual Hong Kong subtitle.
"Maybe the GPL works for you, but its viral nature does not work for everyone."
The GPL can be summed up as thus:
"You can do whatever you want with this code, but you must pass along this same freedom to someone who wishes to do the same with what you produce with it".
I don't see what the problem is. Someone who wants to use GPL code in an "embrace and extend" project is prohibited by copyright law from doing so, just as someone who wanted to use MS code would be prohibited.
I DO like the patent clause in these new licenses. I wonder if anything like that will be put in GPL 3.0?
Corporatism != Free Market
It's this little thing called "choice". The more well worded, legally defensible open source licensing choices out there, the more choice software developers have when releasing their software. Choice is good for the community.
The only free license is no license at all. While I realize that there are sometimes good reasons to release under a particular "open source" license, there's a lot of code out there that should, could, and would be in the public domain if it were not for the screaming egos of their authors.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
This is what remains untested in court. If you choose to follow the GPL, then you're following it like a contract. But if you distribute a derivative work without following the GPL, it's arguable that you're not violating the GPL, since you never accepted it in the first place. What you are doing is simple copyright violation, since you're distributing derivative works without permission from the copyright holder. Thus the only thing they can do is the usual "sue you for damages" that happens in copyright infringement, or possibly criminal copyright infringement charges depending on the circumstances. It basically becomes a standard piracy lawsuit.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The problem is that the GNU GPL is itself an "embrace and extend" project. Everything that uses code that is licensed under the GPL must, according to the terms of the GPL, be licensed under the GPL itself. Anyone who might want to use code under the GPL in a closed source product is not given the freedom to under the GPL.
It is a viral license. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it reflects a certain philosophy which not everyone holds. I personally believe that there is room in the world for both proprietary, GPLed, and unrestricted code (ala BSD-style licenses). Makes the world go 'round. GPL-only, proprietary-only, or BSD only are all bad ideas.
Big IANAL disclaimer, but I'd warrant that the patent clause (#9) is, while interesting, ultimately unenforceable. Despite that fact that most of us here see anyone who seeks software patent rights, or litigation on the basis of them, as misguided at best and downright evil at worst, prevailing notions of patent rights are that they are just and valuable, and that someone has the right to exercise and enforce those rights if necessary.
Therefore, that clause may be considered discriminatory and overreaching, as it endeavors to *take away* a right that the licensee already has, independent of the license.
The power of the GPL (and much of this new OSL as well) comes from the fact that it only *grants* rights that one wouldn't normally have under copyright (and in this case, under the 2nd clause, patent) law. This "Mutual Termination for Patent Action" clause seeks to take away an established (if perhaps ill-fitting and unfortunate) legal right from the licensee, one which has no direct bearing on the licensed software in question. I don't think that can be enforced.
Please, though, I would love to hear what a real lawyer thinks....
:wq
No, it's not true.
My ideal license =
GPL + several additional clauses:
#1 An anti-advertising clause, as is (I believe) in the BSD-license: Neither the name of the nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
#2 Another anti-advertising clause, preventing the author of modifications from having in-software ads, as are used in Opera.
#3 Mutual Termination for Patent Action. This License shall terminate automatically and You may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to You by this License if You file a lawsuit in any court alleging that any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing this "Mutual Termination for Patent Action" clause infringes any patent claims. Alternatively, if you retract the lawsuite, this termination is nullified.
[#4 Addition to Mutual Termination for Patent Action. Additionally, you will no longer have the right to use the software for your own personal use if You file a lawsuit in any court alleging that any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing this "Addition to Mutual Termination for Patent Action" clause infringes any patent claims. Alternatively, if you retract the lawsuite, this termination is nullified.] Not sure about this one, as it requires that people accept the license whether or not they want to distribute modified code; one of the great things about the GPL is that you don't have to accept the license.
#5 Mutual Termination for Other Action. This License shall terminate automatically and You may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to You by this License if You file any intellectual property lawsuit (i.e., trademark, copyright, patent, etc) in any court against any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing this "Mutual Termination for Other Action" clause. Alternatively, if you retract the lawsuite, the termination is nullified.
#6 Global Termination for Other Action. This License shall terminate automatically for everyone in the world and they may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to them by this License (or even use the software at all) if You file any intellectual property lawsuit in any court against any OSI Certified open source software that is licensed under any license containing this "Mutual Termination for Other Action" clause and win that lawsuite. Alternatively, if you retract the lawsuite or retract the win, the termination is nullified.
This is basically, again, designed to protect OSS / FS projects and users.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Software should be patentable or copyrightable, not both. And the government should pick one soon and stick with it. If it is patentable you MUST open the source, but can sue people for the sources use for 15 years. If it is copyrightable (which is what I think it is) then you can do whatever you want with it, but not sue people for doing the same thing another way. If, for example apple has some random transparencly patent (which they do, but I forget the spicifics) they must open (probably closer to "share") the code that implements it, and get the protection for 15 years, but then it is fair game. A patent on something like this is silly if combined with a copyright though.
If the publishing industry did the same it would be like someone patenting the concept of a plot twist at the end of a mystery novel, and writing a book to demonstrate. Then for 15 years nobody was aloud to use that plot device, after that it was open though, even their exact implimentation.
Of course in many ways closed source software is more like a vacuum then a book. To get to the meat of it requires disasembly which is fair less trivial then reading a book, so perhaps that is they way it should be looked at. But I absolutly do not think that you should get 15 years of protection from different implamentations of the same thing, and near infinate protection from exact implimentations of your software. It is an either or scenario.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Online applications were not common when the GPL was written. The emergence of applications that are only executed online is a hole in the intent of the GPL. At least, it is a hole in the eyes of the FSF. The fear is that someone could take GPL code, privately modify the hell out of it and then use it to deploy an online application. If the majority of software were to move in this direction then the old style GPL would become exactly the opposite of what it was intended to do. I suppose the idea is that even if software becomes something that is mostly executed remotely that the ability to deploy and modify it independently still be preserved.
I'm not sure if that will fly or not. I'm not terribly worried about it in any case. I'm far more worried about the rumors that the FSF intends to un-LGPL major libraries like glibc and GPL them. That would make it necessary for the distros to fork the last LGPLed versions. It would be chaos while a whole slew of new maintainerships is sorted out. Note well that would NOT "make commercial software on Linux impossible!!". It WILL, however, definitely give the Linux marketplace additional uncertainly that it does not need right now.
But is it really possible to file a civil suit against an inanimate object?
I don't think that this would invalidate EULAs, because an EULA says something along the lines of "you have to accept this to use the software." The GPL explicitly says the opposite -- "You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works." Thus the GPL is explicitly not an EULA (partly because the FSF thinks EULAs shouldn't hold up in court, so wants the GPL to work without being an EULA).
As for damages, I'm not sure the courts would go along with that. It's possible, but the courts tend to deal much better with "I'm suing you for [x] in damages," which they understand, than these sorts of non-monetary issues, which they don't.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
There's a compelling article on GPL enforceability here, worth a read and a think.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Can someone explain how Linux is doing something good for the community by creating an operating system incompatible with MS Windows?
Choice is your friend.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
The GPL "infects" only code linked into the same executable program. This one infects any derivative work, and has no "mere aggregation" clause like the GPL does. It may not be OK to put any other software on the same CD-ROM as code licensed under the OSL, as the CD-ROM as a whole could be considered a derivative work. An OSL program will need to be kept rigidly isolated from other software to a far greater extent than a GPL program.
The licenses appear to be DFSG compliant, but the OSL is so deeply flawed that you might not be able to put an OSL program on the same CD-ROM as a GPL program, because the OSL is so viral that it claims to infect the whole CD-ROM (a CD-ROM is a derivative work of every program on it; the GPL has a "mere aggregation" clause that explicitly permits the GPL program to be in the same distribution as non-GPL programs), and the OSL conflicts with the GPL.
The OSI can't help you, because the terms you are asking for conflict with the Open Source Definition. You seek to forbid profit, to forbid profit violates open source.
but is it really smart to mix up copyrights and patents in the same legal document?
:P It would REALLY segregate the software world into open/closed sides.
It's exactly as smart as allowing patents and copyright to cover the same thing (like software). No more. No less.
But seriously, if clauses like that are actually legal, holy shit. Put something like that into the GPL and if ANYONE in your company sues some OS programmer for patent infringement and you're using Linux for ANY of your internal computers... *LICK*. You have o stop using your Linux boxes IMMEDIATELY. Or else it's a DMCA violation, I'm sure.
Although my vote doesn't count for much, I hope the FSF is willing to add a clause like this into the GPL, or is at least willing to allow the GPL to fork and let people decide. If not, I would recommend dumping Linux and moving to a fork of *BSD with a clause like this added.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
"The Open Source Initiative approved two new licenses."
And if you don't use an "approved" license what happens? You don't get to use the OSI logo?
I don't know whether the patent clauses in these new licenses work out correctly for that purpose, but I wouldn't dismiss the idea. Something like it may well be the best protection from silly patents we can get for open source software.
RMS hates it when you call the GPL "viral". Please don't annoy RMS gratuitiously. A term which is more accurate and less inflammatory is "reciprocal".
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
You have no license to change the text of the license. This is common language, even in open source licenses. The GPL is copyrighted, and you are not permitted to make changes.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Yeah, I know that you're trying to flame us, but you failed utterly. You didn't read the licenses, did you? Admit it.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
These licences all say, "the only terms under which you can copy this work is if you agree to this licence."
The Open Software License forms a contract. It's only the GPL that claims not to be a contract. But both are reciprocal licenses.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Only a copyright holder has standing to sue. To sue, you would have to be a contributor to the project.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The Open Source Definition doesn't let you stop people from profiting from your code. Sorry.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The problem is very simple. Say I am a commercial developer who licenses the XYZ library from another company, and distributed it in a program which also includes getopt or some other GNU library.
According to Section 2b of the GPL: "You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."
So the entire application as distributed must be made GPL, including the XYZ library licensed from a third-party. This is why the GPL is a dangerous, viral license and is why we should all be using BSD.
And how can we re-implement GNU software if we have had access to the source code? Having seen the source-code of the bash shell in college, can I write my own shell without putting myself or my company at risk of a lawsuit?
The GPL is a work developed by a man who is wholly dedicated to wiping out intellectual property as it exists today. It must be interpeted through those lenses.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
GPL = GPL Public Licence.
Now what does GPL stand for?
Stack overflow. :)
The GPL can be summed up as thus:
"You can do whatever you want with this code, but you must pass along this same freedom to someone who wishes to do the same with what you produce with it".
I don't see what the problem is. Someone who wants to use GPL code in an "embrace and extend" project is prohibited by copyright law from doing so, just as someone who wanted to use MS code would be prohibited.
So how come stuff like this never gets modded as troll?
Whether you like the GPL or not is a matter of personal opinion, but any regular reader who claims that he doesn't understand why anyone could dislike viral licensing is either dumb as a post or he is being facetious.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
That was a trivial example.
Including GPL'd code might be easier than you think. What if used another library that had a BSD or other license, but incorporated code that was GPL without disclosing it at first?
What if you are running a non-GPL open source project and one of your unpaid developers contributes GPLd code from another app? An entire release of your software is now polluted by the GPL.
And when you say that you cannot remember entire libraries in detail, this is true. But companies HAVE sued because former employees or contractors have seen or had access to proprietary source code and subsequently developed some similar application. In these cases, whether they remembered what they saw or even saw anything wasn't an issue -- only access was.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
No, you misunderstood what I said. :)
...any license containing this "Mutual Termination for Patent Action" clause
:) (j/k for humor impaired)
I'm aware that by invoking the right granted to 'YOU' by 'this license', 'YOU' has no implied right to use this software. It's the same case as in any other licenses, because without explicitly stated otherwise, the owner of the software is the creator himself. 'YOU' have no right whatsoever to use this software unless there's a license specified.
This is the statement in question:
That's is to say, you are not only being invoked of the right granted by 'this licenses', but also other products that has this exact statement in their licenses, even you are not going to sue other products with this license.
Therefore, the patent owners must think very carefully before suing a software infringement bearing this license, because the implication would be forfeiting of the right of using ALL other products with this license!
The more softare has licenses bearing this statement, the harder to sue for patent infringement - isn't it exactly the world domination with softare?
I'm glad that OSI has thought of this term before Microsoft did. Oh wait, the others might follow....
No shit, Sherlock.
That's a RESTRICTION, which you GNU zealots don't seem to be able to get through your thick heads. It's not an immoral restriction, but it IS a restriction. The GPL gives people some freedoms not given through normal copyright law, but it does not give all freedoms. Stop deluding yourselves and others.
So your last point is no problem, it is possible under any license, even public domain.
There certainly are lots of examples of "not for profit" licenses, even though RMS does not like them.
Female Prison Rape in NY
The problem is that Company A simply cannot rely on software developers to be rational and agree to terms on a new license. Anyone could create an open source project specifically to force the company that owns the patent to give it up or stop using OSS software. The legal department of any company with software patents (Apple, IBM, etc.) will make sure no software with this license makes its way into any of their products. This only prevents a lot of companies with good intentions from contributing to open source software.