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Novell License Draft 1.0 Submitted for Review
Bruce Perens writes "Novell has submitted its Open Source license for review. You can find it, and a few details about license-review, here. "
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Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I've got to take comments on these issues back to Novell. Please think them through, folks.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Hi all!
Wasn't there an outstanding copyright-court-case with some people from the open-source-community?
Why should we (the open source community) trust Novell ? Why should we trust Novell while court case 9704-339 (4th Judicial District Court) is still outstanding ?
For those of you who don't know, this court case
alleges (using the evidence of contractors who
worked for Novell as well as internal Novell
documents), that much of Novell's BorderManager
product (a closed source product) was based on the Squid proxy server (a GPL product).
Why should we trust a company who thinks the following of us :
"..... Once again we must balance the costs in-house development of "comparable code" against the costs and risks of simply taking their code and using it... this last group of copyright holders could be particularly troublesome for Novell to deal with.... "
If Novell now also favours the open-source-method, this could mean a view things:
1.) It's "we too" (marketing!)
2.) They really fear, that Micros~1 and their
Active-Directory could make Novell obsolete. So
they use coopetition-tactics to hurt them
(so they are Linux-friendly as long as it's favorable for them)
We'll see. Currently Novell might be ally, but who know's what they'll do in the near future? The license is a bit loose on prohibiting mayor changes to the license. They could (IMHO! I'm no lawyer) in the next version of the licence change it to their very own rules...
As far as I can see there are very few differences between the GPL and NCL. There are no "hidden" details that would give Novell any rights to your work. Like the GPL dirivitive works get put under the NCL.
Unlike the GPL the NCL doesn't specificly mention what would happen in the event of a patent dispute or other restrictions such as export laws.
The NCL has one last interesting feature. By agreeing to it you also agree to how any breaches of the agreement will be handled. In paragraph 5 the NCL specificly states how any breaches shall be handled. And it states that the costs incured in any legal battle will be payed by the "losing" side. Interesting...
I can understand the need for about three versions of Open Source license
a) a BSD type license
b) a GPL type licence
c) a "commercial" license which allows the originator some rights over how his code is used to prevent forking and 'embrace & extend' by rivals. i.e. a sort of you can see the source, propose modifications and fixes, but we retain control over distribution license.
Why do people keep coming up with their own variations on a theme ?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I'm beginning to wonder about the proliferation of licenses in a slightly new light:
What if it's not merely a problem to have new licenses pop up that are more complex, more restrictive, more Gotcha-Source(where users presume rights that some small clause shoved into five words restrict) than the standard, rather simple to generally understand but well defined and heavily thought out GPL, LGPL, and BSD licenses?
What if it's a significant worry to have licenses that aren't complex enough?
After all, we talk alot about the benefits of Open Source turning the copyright system inside out upon itself, protecting situations where others restrict further usage of code beyond what the original authors ever intended. I like the Novell License for its simplicity and its lack of Gotchas for the user, but I have to wonder if there's not some small aspect of a ticking time bomb for Novell built into it?
There's a reason for every single clause in the GPL. The arguments are publically available and quite searchable. (Is there an annotated GPL out there, incidentally?) Novell's license isn't nearly as extensive, which could create a situation where *cough* a certain devious company sets up a front startup to Embrace and Extend Novell's code in a manner so as to make them anexample to the industry.
The GPL closes loopholes. It almost feels like the only reasons for this Novell license to exist are to leave them open.
There's a dark side to that. As far as I know, copyright law is set up such that one has no rights to the content beyond that which is explicitly granted. It is not inconcievable that Novell could be forced(or has individuals counting on being able to) to go to court to try to reclose a loophole that never should have been there in the first place, making a whole bunch of noise about the inadequacy of Open Source in the process.
It's a Media War, and all that.
Now, I doubt this is what Novell is up to. They've been doing some pretty cool stuff for Linux. (Windows 9x is another matter.) But they're going down a dangerous road.
I offer an alternative: Give us differential licenses! People like to refer to licenses using phrases like "GPL but you can't fork" or "BSD but you need to advertise in Playboy" or whatnot. If there's a pressing freedom or restriction that needs to be embedded in the license, ship the GPL with a patch. There will be some noise made, and your license should not include GPL in the name, but at leaast it would be simple to derive what specific changes you desired.
It's just not clear from the Novell license why, say, they didn't just go with BSD. And that's a problem.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
The liscense looks good, however the lawspeak words like "hereto", "thereof" etc. are annoying. I want a liscense agreement written in C or PERL. Then we'll know what we're agreeing to. Also, why are parts of the agreement IN CAPS? The lawyers are hurting my ears.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.