I have a revised version of the SPL, which incorporates some of
the comments Rod made on the last version. I've also been talking
to several people who wish to use my software in conjunction with
software under the Apache/BSD license, and so I have added a section
which I believe allows them to do that.
I am especially interested to hear people's comments on section (3),
which allows use of the SPL with other open source licenses. It's new
material, and so it's the most likely to have problems.
I have dropped the language about consultants from the SPL, since
Rod thinks that this would not be feasible. Instead I will do as
he suggested and offer a separate license for consulting use.
Also, I've dropped the "beneficial owner" clause. I still want to
include some language like that, but it's going to be difficult to
get right. It occurs to me that I could do the beneficial owner
statement as a separate release later, independent of whatever license
my software is released under. So I will work on that as a separate
document, not directly related to the license itself.
I'm hoping that the SPL will become a generally useful license, and I'm
very glad to have your comments, as well as those of everyone else on
the list. Everyone's comments have been extremely useful.
I've attached the annotated version of the license below. Text, HTML,
postscript, and PDF versions are available here:
http://shimari.com
Thanks again!
Justin
- - -
Simple Public License
Version 0.20
"Our software" refers to the copyrighted work licensed under this
agreement. "We", "us", and "our" refer to the copyright owners. "You"
and "your" refer to each licensee. You are granted the non-exclusive rights
set forth in this agreement provided you agree to and comply with all of
its conditions. You indicate your acceptance of these terms by any use of
our software.
Any member of the public can be "you". "We" include all of the copyright
holders. "Our software" has been placed under this license, probably in
a statement attached to the software itself.
This is how you wind up coming to accept this agreement: you don't get to
use the software unless you do.
(1) "USE AND COPY OUR SOFTWARE FOR FREE"
You may use, display, and perform our software free of charge. You may
copy and distribute our software on its own, or as part of an aggregate
collection, provided that you copy all of it.
Basic rights of use. I specifically mention aggregate collections so that
they aren't treated as derived works.
(2) "SHARE IMPROVEMENTS"
You may improve our software provided that prior to any public or third
party use you distribute the improved version to the public, including all
source code, free of charge, through an electronic medium customarily used
for software exchange. An improvement is an alteration to the source code,
structure, sequence, or organization of our software, including alterations
performed by linking or patching.
You grant the following irrevocable, non-exclusive, worldwide rights to
your improved version: any recipient may use it under this agreement,
and we may copy, display, perform, adapt, and sublicense it.
This is the basic copyleft. Note that it is weakened by section 3.
The phrase "prior to any public or third party use" is intended to capture
modified versions of the software that are not distributed, but are put up
on a public application server. I want modifications to those as well.
The phrase "electronic medium" is intended to include email, websites,
public CVS archives, ftp sites, and so forth.
Your improvement must not cause our software to depend on additional
software unless that additional software is distributed to the public under
a license which allows everyone to use and distribute it free of charge;
also, under any patent claim licensable by you which would be infringed by
use of your improvement, you grant to each recipient a worldwide
non-exclusive royalty-free patent license to use, sell, import, and
transfer the improvement as part of our software or adaptations of it.
You can't fool the world into relying on your modifications, and then
pull the rug out from under everyone and announce your patent and/or
charge a lot of money for the software you've created dependencies on.
(3) "COMBINE OUR SOFTWARE WITH YOUR WORK"
You may include or otherwise combine an unmodified copy of our software
as a whole, plus a compiled version of it, with your own separate source
materials to create a combined work. You may distribute your combined
work to anyone provided your separate source materials form a bona fide
application which you distribute to the public, free of charge and including
all source code, under any open source license approved by the Open Source
Initiative (opensource.org) or under this agreement.
You can combine our software with other
