On 02/01/2012 05:25 PM, Karl Fogel wrote:
An hypothesis:
If a license is already approved as open source, and the copyright
holder adds an exception that merely indicates that under certain
circumstances they will not enforce certain terms of the license, then
the distribution terms are still "open source".
The logic is that anyone who receives a copy of the software clearly has
all the rights guaranteed them by the base license, and in the general
case no one can compel a copyright holder to enforce things they choose
not to enforce anyway. In other words, things like the classpath
exception are not really changes to the license at all. They are rather
promises -- a form of estoppel, in which recipients can depend on the
license holder to not exercise certain powers they might otherwise have
exercised.
The first part sounds plausible. An additional permission should not
invalidate it complying with the OSD, as long as you can choose to
forget or ignore the exception and say "I just want my GPL." That
applies to GPL + classpath exception. In fact, it explicitly says (for
modified versions, but the modification could be trivial), "If you do
not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version."
However, I think this *is* an additional license, rather than just
estoppel or covenant not to sue.
IANAL. TINLA.
Matt Flaschen
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