Hi Hillel First of all, thanks for taking the time to join this discussion. A key question for us is whether and how we can find projects using a license that is being suggested for removal / de-certification. It's encouraging to see news about this discussion reached you and you we willing to engage in this discussion.
On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 8:39 PM Hillel Coren <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi again, > > To follow up on my email yesterday... to start there many AAL projects on > GitHub. > > https://github.com/search?q=attribution+assurance+license&type=Code > That's interesting. One would hope a formal OSI process (where this discussion may be headed) would have found this too. If attribution based license are no longer considered OSS we'd need to > change our model to offer our core app as OSS and sell closed-source > modules to generate income. This is worse for everyone involved. > > With our current approach users have all the code, if they don't want to > pay to remove our branding they can simply comment out the code. With > separate modules that would no longer be possible. > > I would guess one of the goals of your organisation is to give more people > access to more code, removing these license could have the opposite effect > by making less code open-source. > > I have to add, I find it pretty ironic that your own site uses an > attribution based license, the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 > International License :) > > Note by the way that I'm not the one actively for or against the AAL at the moment. But I do understand the objection people have raised against it. So I have a question for you, so that we could better understand your motivations: The specific text of the AAL that is problematic is this: *"each time the resultingexecutable program or a program dependent thereon is launched, aprominent display (e.g., splash screen or banner text) of the Author'sattribution information"* Attribution as such is not a problem for open source licenses. In fact it's quite common that some form of attribution is required! The problem here is that the license requires attribution in a too specific way. The Open Source Definition <https://opensource.org/osd-annotated> requires that licenses must not restrict the software to a specific technology. So for example, I should be allowed to copy your software and use it for technology that doesn't have a display at all. (A robot, or network router...) To compare, the GPL (which nobody is suggesting to remove) has a similar requirement without running into this problem:* "If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display Appropriate Legal Notices; however, if the Program has interactive interfaces that do not display Appropriate Legal Notices, your work need not make them do so."* If there were an AAL 2.0 that had an attribution requirement like the GPL (and I could even imagine going a bit further without it being a problem for the OSD) then would you be willing to upgrade to such AAL 2.0? henrik -- [email protected] +358-40-5697354 skype: henrik.ingo irc: hingo www.openlife.cc My LinkedIn profile: http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/henrik-ingo/3/232/8a7
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