Re: [License-discuss] How licenses treat patents

[John Cowan]

Lawrence Rosen scripsit:

> * The FOSS license does not contain a patent license.

The issue appears to be whether there is a difference for OSI purposes
between licenses that withhold patent rights and those which are silent
about them.  My view is that there is not, but others disagree.

> There are many examples of patent-encumbered software where the
> copyright owner doesn't own and can't license the patent. This is
> the problem of third party patents and patent trolls and university
> professors and US government employees.

Inevitably so.  In the nature of patents, no one can claim to indemnify
a recipient against all possible patents.  At most we can ask that
the licensor himself license those which he has.

-- 
John Cowan  http://www.ccil.org/~cowanco...@ccil.org
A rabbi whose congregation doesn't want to drive him out of town isn't
a rabbi, and a rabbi who lets them do it isn't a man.--Jewish saying
___
License-discuss mailing list
License-discuss@opensource.org
http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss

[License-discuss] How licenses treat patents

[Lawrence Rosen]

Simon Phipps wrote in relation to CC0: 

> ... Had they persisted, I believe OSI would have needed to face the issue 

> of how licenses treat patents.

 

There really aren't too many alternative ways for FOSS licenses to treat 
patents:

 

* The FOSS license does not contain a patent license.

* There is a patent license for the FOSS work as distributed.

* There is a patent license for the FOSS work as distributed and its 
derivative works.

* There is a patent license for all FOSS works.

* The patent license is royalty-free and unencumbered for the 
implementation of a standard.

 

I'm aware of FOSS-compatible licensing examples of each of these. 

 

There are also sloppy licenses where at first read the scope of the patent 
license isn't obvious. For example, the GPLv2 prohibits distribution if a 
patent encumbrance is actually encountered – but without offering a patent 
licenses directly.

 

There are many examples of patent-encumbered software where the copyright owner 
doesn't own and can't license the patent. This is the problem of third party 
patents and patent trolls and university professors and US government 
employees. 

 

I know of an example of FOSS software where the patent claims are licensed 
separately (and for a fee) to almost the entire software industry already – but 
separately from the FOSS copyright license. Certain important codecs are 
licensed that way.

 

There are even examples where the copyright owner is willing to grant a patent 
license for most FOSS applications but excludes certain applications. The 
Oracle/Sun/Java TCK licensing is an example of that.

 

Given this wide assortment of alternatives, do you expect OSI to bless any one 
in particular?

 

Probably the only grand solution to the "patent problem" is the one proposed by 
Richard Stallman and lots of others: Prohibit software patents entirely. But 
that ain't gonna happen in our lifetimes, so I hope OSI doesn't waste its time 
traveling down that particular long and winding road.

 

/Larry

 

Lawrence Rosen

Rosenlaw & Einschlag (  www.rosenlaw.com) 

3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482

Cell: 707-478-8932   Fax: 707-485-1243

 

From: Simon Phipps [mailto:si...@webmink.com] 
Sent: Sunday, May 4, 2014 4:05 PM
To: license-discuss@opensource.org
Cc: Karl Fogel
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Can OSI take stance that U.S. public domain is 
open source?

 

On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 9:13 PM, John Cowan mailto:co...@mercury.ccil.org> > wrote:


I continue to think that our CC0 decision was wrong insofar as it can
be read as saying that the CC0 license is not an open-source (as opposed
to OSI Certified) license.  There may be reasons not to certify it,
but not to deny that it is open source.

 

We did not decide against CC0. The discussion was certainly at a low point when 
Creative Commons withdrew it from the approval process, but that's what 
happened, not an OSI denial. Had they persisted, I believe OSI would have 
needed to face the issue of how licenses treat patents.

 

S. 

___
License-discuss mailing list
License-discuss@opensource.org
http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss

Re: [License-discuss] Can OSI take stance that U.S. public domain is open source?

[John Cowan]

Simon Phipps scripsit:

> We did not decide against CC0. The discussion was certainly at a low point
> when Creative Commons withdrew it from the approval process, but that's
> what happened, not an OSI denial. Had they persisted, I believe OSI would
> have needed to face the issue of how licenses treat patents.

I stand corrected.

-- 
John Cowan  http://www.ccil.org/~cowanco...@ccil.org
"Any legal document draws most of its meaning from context.  A telegram
that says 'SELL HUNDRED THOUSAND SHARES IBM SHORT' (only 190 bits in
5-bit Baudot code plus appropriate headers) is as good a legal document
as any, even sans digital signature." --me
___
License-discuss mailing list
License-discuss@opensource.org
http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss

Re: [License-discuss] Can OSI take stance that U.S. public domain is open source?

[Simon Phipps]

On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 9:13 PM, John Cowan  wrote:
>
>
> I continue to think that our CC0 decision was wrong insofar as it can
> be read as saying that the CC0 license is not an open-source (as opposed
> to OSI Certified) license.  There may be reasons not to certify it,
> but not to deny that it is open source.


We did not decide against CC0. The discussion was certainly at a low point
when Creative Commons withdrew it from the approval process, but that's
what happened, not an OSI denial. Had they persisted, I believe OSI would
have needed to face the issue of how licenses treat patents.

S.
___
License-discuss mailing list
License-discuss@opensource.org
http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss

Re: [License-discuss] Can OSI take stance that U.S. public domain is open source?

[John Cowan]

Henrik Ingo scripsit:

> Is the US governments exclusion of patents that explicit? 

The only thing that makes the U.S. Government different from any other
actor in IP law is that it cannot (and therefore its employees acting in
the scope of their employment cannot) acquire copyright on any works it
has created.  It can and does hold copyright that has been transferred
to it by other creators, and it can and does acquire patents.

That is what makes the NOSA 1.3 important as an OSI certified license.
It allows any U.S. government agency to open-source its works fully.

> John keeps asking for statements like above to always be based on
> specific OSD paragraphs. Maybe that's a good idea. I'll try to express
> my judgement of CC0:

Thanks.  I'll have to reflect further on your specifics about #5, #6,
#8, and #10.  As I said before, I think #1 is a reasonable argument
against CC0 but #7 is not.

-- 
John Cowan  http://www.ccil.org/~cowanco...@ccil.org
But that, he realized, was a foolish thought; as no one knew better than
he that the Wall had no other side.
--Arthur C. Clarke, "The Wall of Darkness"
___
License-discuss mailing list
License-discuss@opensource.org
http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss

Re: [License-discuss] Can OSI take stance that U.S. public domain is open source?

[Henrik Ingo]

Richard,

I just wanted to call out a neat statistical trick you just made:

On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 9:06 PM, Richard Fontana  wrote:
> On Sun, 04 May 2014 11:48:13 -0500
> Karl Fogel  wrote:
> I don't know offhand the current count of OSI-approved licenses but I
> think it is around 70. In a typical traditional server/desktop Linux
> distro, the numbers of distinct licenses regarded *reasonably* by the
> communities of users and distributors of that distro as "open
> source" must number at least in the several hundreds. (Think of
> the universe of licenses covering packages considered
> DFSG-conformant in Debian, since the criteria are at least superficially
> very similar to the OSD, its descendant.)

Sure. But it isn't at bad as you make it sound. The above sounds like
more than half of the licenses in Debian (as an example of the distro
with most packages) are not OSI certified. At the same time, Debian
has over 37k packages and what stats we have from blackduck and other
sources make me comfortable in guessing that safely more than 99% and
probably more than 99,9% of Debian packages do use an OSI certified
license. From this point of view I'd say we are doing very well here.

I obviously agree that it is important that reality and OSI converge,
but at the same time it serves no useful purpose to spend time
certifying things like GPLv1.


>> ...but I think we do need to come to some sort of solution soon.  The
>> U.S. government is going to keep releasing what is (obviously) open
>> source software into the public domain; CC0 is also becoming more
>> popular in non-software works and will inevitably make inroads into
>> software too.
>
> I'm going to out myself here and say that I believe CC0 is obviously
> lowercase-o, lowercase-s open source despite the clause about patents.
> That doesn't mean the OSI should have approved it, that doesn't mean
> the OSI should recommend its use in its current form or cease its
> current practice of recommending against its use. I have a similar view
> of US government public domain works (with the added problem that it is
> clear that many intellectual property lawyers working across different
> US government agencies are confused over what 17 USC 105 means).
>
> Yes, US works that are public domain worldwide are obviously open
> source, but as with CC0 this has some implications for how licenses that
> explicitly mention disposition of patent rights should be treated.

Is the US governments exclusion of patents that explicit? I mean I
don't contest it as a fact, but to a layman I don't expect legislation
to be coherent or 100% intentional. Politics to me seems much more
like a one hand giveth, one taketh away kind of situation. Kind of
like the discussion whether the US government works truly are
worldwide public domain or just "except for all the other countries
but US" public domain. It's messy reality and there's nothing we can
do about it. (Another analogue: do software patents exist in Europe or
not? That's a good ice breaker for conversation, but I wouldn't want
OSI to assume "no" as the correct answer for purposes of certifying
licenses.)

CC0 otoh had an explicit sentence excluding patent rights, that to me
seems much more problematic.

As we are going on the record then, I see a distinction between CC0
being intentionally wrong and US public domain works just being an
imperfect legal construct.


John keeps asking for statements like above to always be based on
specific OSD paragraphs. Maybe that's a good idea. I'll try to express
my judgement of CC0:

The patent clause in CC0 fails in OSD compliance because:

§1: it explicitly reserves the right to restrict some party or any
party from selling, giving away and redistributing, now or at a future
time. It also explicitly reserves the right to ask for royalties for
such sale or redistribtuion.

§5 and §6: even if the license text itself is neutral, it reserves the
right for the licensor to discriminate between recipients of the
license such as prohibiting some recipients from using or
redistributing the software, or requiring royalties for some type of
use or users. For example separating commercial/non-commercial,
geographically or just tactically or even arbitrarily. I should note
that this would be a very likely way of enforcing ones patent rights.

§7: excluding a patent grant fails the intent of this paragraph,
though technically the rights actually included in CC0 do satisfy this
paragraph.

§8 and §10: I see similar risks here: it is likely that a patent
holder could enforce patents in a way that fail to meet the intent of
these paragraphs, even if the license text otherwise is neutral here.




henrik





-- 
henrik.i...@avoinelama.fi
+358-40-5697354skype: henrik.ingoirc: hingo
www.openlife.cc

My LinkedIn profile: http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/henrik-ingo/3/232/8a7
___
License-discuss mailing list
License-discuss@opensource.org
http://proj

Re: [License-discuss] Can OSI take stance that U.S. public domain is open source?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting John Cowan (co...@mercury.ccil.org):

[Appreciating and agreeing with what you say, FWIW, but I have one thing
to add.]

> In the end, certification is just a convenience to the users: it says
> that a group of fairly knowledgeable people are willing to stand behind
> the cliam that each certified license conforms to the OSD.

In my opinion, this is a particularly important function because of
firms that publish deliberately deceptive licensing, such as sneaking
extremely problematic and intrusive badgeware clauses, having the effect
of greatly deterring all third-party commercial reuse, into what is
publicly claimed to be [A]GPL v3 licensing using the 'legal notices or
author attributions' incorporate-by-reference feature in section 7 of
[A]GPL v3.

SugarCRM, one of the main drivers of the badgeware model - back in the
days when OSI was being arm-twisted by that gang of OSBC regulars in the
advocacy effort that resulted in certification of dead-on-arrival
minimal badgeware licence CPAL - appears to have pioneered this style of
Section 7 hokery:  The sponsoring firm behind a Web 2.0 hosted
application claims in all the public marketing materials that the
software is open source under GPLv3 or APGLv3, disclosing _only_ in
obscure, not-easily-noticed places that they actually mean GPLv3 or
APGLv3 with additional restrictions encumbering commercial third-party
reuse.

Admittedly, OSI's licence-certification program doesn't do much to stop
this sort of chicanery, but at least OSI makes clear that its
certificaiton program certifies specific licence texts and not also
Everyone's Vaguely Similar Imitation Licences with Concealed
Anti-Competition Restrictions.

(As an aside, I also think SugarCRM and imitators' use of section 7, 
when last I checked on that usage[1], vastly exceeded the permitted scope
of notice, e.g., the only notices that may be required to be included
somewhere in the interactive user interface display are a copyright notice 
and warranty disclaimer if applicable:  That is made clear in the
licence text's definition of Appropriate Legal Notices.  Requiring a
company logo on every single user interace screen of the work and all
derivative works exceed greatly what section 7 permits, not to mention
requiring UI display of legal notices beyond the copyright notice and
warranty disclaimer.  This misuse is particularly egregious since
the section 7 wording was edited to its present state at the request 
of SugarCRM, Inc., according to Richard Fontana's post to debian-legal
a couple of years ago.[2])


[1] 
http://linuxgazette.net/159/misc/lg/sugarcrm_and_badgeware_licensing_again.html
[2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2011/12/msg00045.html 
Richard opines in this post that SugarCRM's logo requirement as 
of mid-2007, in his judgement complied with FSF's intent about how 
intrusive badgeware might be and still remain free software.  I respect
Richard highly and of course believe him.  By 2009, when I last checked
SugarCRM's terms, they were excessive enough that IMO, if FSF still
thinks that's not out of bounds for free software, they've lost their
collective minds.

___
License-discuss mailing list
License-discuss@opensource.org
http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss

Re: [License-discuss] Can OSI take stance that U.S. public domain is open source?

[John Cowan]

Karl Fogel scripsit:

> After all, the *definition* of "open source" is supposed to be just
> "whatever complies with the OSD".  And our certification process is
> also "Does this comply with the OSD?"...  So the two shouldn't diverge;
> to the extent that they do, we have a problem.

Actually, that's only part of our process.  We also are supposed to
"discourage vanity and duplicative licenses".  We have neither the
resources nor the desire (I think) to certify all the unique licenses
that companies have cooked up for their products, to say nothing of all
the skrillions of BSD and MPL variants out there.  So I think the two
must and should diverge: arse [sic] longa, vita brevis.

What is more, we don't certify a license unless the license steward
asks us to.  When I proposed that the MSPL be certified, the request
was (rightly) rejected, because I am not the steward; later, the actual
steward did request it and it was certified.  At neither time did anyone
say the license was not open-source.

In the end, certification is just a convenience to the users: it says
that a group of fairly knowledgeable people are willing to stand behind
the cliam that each certified license conforms to the OSD.  We don't
and can't claim to have a comprehensive list.  We know that uncertified
but compliant licenses are Out There, and new ones can and will appear
indefinitely.

> But in the long run I think we have two mutually exclusive choices:
> 
>   1) Have licenses out in the world that are OSD-compliant, and that we
>  informally agree are "open source", but that we don't certify.

This is not a choice, it's an accomplished fact.

>  This will cause growing divergence between "what is open source"
>  and "what the OSI has approved".  That would be very, very bad.

Bad or not, it is inevitable.

>   2) Officially certify any license (or PD status / PD dedication) that
>  is OSD-compliant as open source, but for most of them attach
>  commentary explaining why most people probably shouldn't use it and
>  why one should one of the popular licenses instead.

That would be a return to our original process, when we tried to do
just that.  Not only did we fail, we got substantial pushback that
what we were doing is not what users needed, so we adopted our current,
more conservative process.

> I completely agree, by the way, that we can be active about requiring
> certain kinds of patent promises.  E.g., maybe we wouldn't certify PD
> itself for software works, but would certify PD *when accompanied by* a
> particular patent non-assertion text.  

Unless you can show how a failure to mention patents, or even a completely
adverse mention of them ("no patent rights whatsoever") contravenes the
OSD, this position contradicts your above position of "certify anything
that conforms".  You can't have it both ways.

-- 
John Cowan  http://www.ccil.org/~cowanco...@ccil.org
The peculiar excellence of comedy is its excellent fooling, and Aristophanes's
claim to immortality is based upon one title only: he was a master maker
of comedy, he could fool excellently.  Here Gilbert stands side by side
with him.  He, too, could write the most admirable nonsense.  There has
never been better fooling than his, and a comparison with him carries
nothing derogatory to the great Athenian. --Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way
___
License-discuss mailing list
License-discuss@opensource.org
http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss

Re: [License-discuss] Can OSI take stance that U.S. public domain is open source?

[Richard Fontana]

On Sun, 04 May 2014 11:48:13 -0500
Karl Fogel  wrote:

> IMHO it would be a long-term problem for the OSI (and for open source
> in general, given the useful standardization/certification role OSI
> plays) to have there be licenses that we call "open source" but don't
> certify.
> 
> After all, the *definition* of "open source" is supposed to be just
> "whatever complies with the OSD".  And our certification process is
> also "Does this comply with the OSD?"...  So the two shouldn't
> diverge; to the extent that they do, we have a problem.
[...]
> But in the long run I think we have two
> mutually exclusive choices:
> 
>   1) Have licenses out in the world that are OSD-compliant, and that
> we informally agree are "open source", but that we don't certify.
>  This will cause growing divergence between "what is open source"
>  and "what the OSI has approved".  That would be very, very bad.

I consider it important to understand, and acknowledge, that this
divergence already exists in most people's minds (i.e. those people who
have enough knowledge of what's going on in the real world).
It exists in my own mind. 

I don't know offhand the current count of OSI-approved licenses but I
think it is around 70. In a typical traditional server/desktop Linux
distro, the numbers of distinct licenses regarded *reasonably* by the
communities of users and distributors of that distro as "open
source" must number at least in the several hundreds. (Think of
the universe of licenses covering packages considered
DFSG-conformant in Debian, since the criteria are at least superficially
very similar to the OSD, its descendant.)  

To me the bigger problem has always been the use of "open source" to
label things that are not reasonably considered OSD-compliant
(regardless of whether a license has been certified by the OSI). 

>   2) Officially certify any license (or PD status / PD dedication)
> that is OSD-compliant as open source, but for most of them attach
>  commentary explaining why most people probably shouldn't use it
> and why one should one of the popular licenses instead.
> 
> (1) is a disaster.  It will defeat much of the point of the OSI, in
> the long run.

But (1) is where we are today, and where we always have been, except
that the OSI is the one institution that can't easily admit this. 

> We're sort of doing the complement of (2) right now, with the "Popular
> Licenses" section. 

Sort of except that OSI does not consider the issue of certification if
no one (or no one with authority, in the typical case) submits a
license for approval. One effect of this is that legacy licenses are
unlikely to be OSI-approved (although we've seen a few license
submissions of this sort), which may be fine. But we shouldn't pretend
that just because a license was never submitted for OSI approval, it
must fail the OSD. An interesting example someone brought up some time
ago is that the OSI apparently never certified GPLv1, not surprisingly
since it's seen little (explicit) use since 1991, though usage is not
zero. 

> ...but I think we do need to come to some sort of solution soon.  The
> U.S. government is going to keep releasing what is (obviously) open
> source software into the public domain; CC0 is also becoming more
> popular in non-software works and will inevitably make inroads into
> software too.

I'm going to out myself here and say that I believe CC0 is obviously
lowercase-o, lowercase-s open source despite the clause about patents.
That doesn't mean the OSI should have approved it, that doesn't mean
the OSI should recommend its use in its current form or cease its
current practice of recommending against its use. I have a similar view
of US government public domain works (with the added problem that it is
clear that many intellectual property lawyers working across different
US government agencies are confused over what 17 USC 105 means). 

Yes, US works that are public domain worldwide are obviously open
source, but as with CC0 this has some implications for how licenses that
explicitly mention disposition of patent rights should be treated.
 
> I completely agree, by the way, that we can be active about requiring
> certain kinds of patent promises.  E.g., maybe we wouldn't certify PD
> itself for software works, but would certify PD *when accompanied by*
> a particular patent non-assertion text.  We'd have a lot of leverage
> to do so, given that refusing to make that non-assertion promise,
> when asked for it, would draw attention to the fact that the party
> has now publicly decided not to be open source enough for the OSI.
> So I'm not saying we should just certify PD and CC0 and be done with
> it -- it's more complex than that.

I agree.

- RF
___
License-discuss mailing list
License-discuss@opensource.org
http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss

Re: [License-discuss] Can OSI take stance that U.S. public domain is open source?

[Karl Fogel]

John Cowan  writes:
>I continue to think that our CC0 decision was wrong insofar as it can
>be read as saying that the CC0 license is not an open-source (as opposed
>to OSI Certified) license.  There may be reasons not to certify it,
>but not to deny that it is open source.

[warning: long]

IMHO it would be a long-term problem for the OSI (and for open source in
general, given the useful standardization/certification role OSI plays)
to have there be licenses that we call "open source" but don't certify.

After all, the *definition* of "open source" is supposed to be just
"whatever complies with the OSD".  And our certification process is also
"Does this comply with the OSD?"...  So the two shouldn't diverge; to
the extent that they do, we have a problem.

The distinction we are being pushed toward, I think, is the subset of
open source licenses (that is, OSD-compliant licenses) that the OSI
would *recommend* for use.  Er, if we did recommending :-).  Right now,
we don't, officially.  We're edging into it warily, though, with the
rearrangement of the http://opensource.org/licenses/ page, which starts
off with the "Popular Licenses" section.

This is not a criticism, by the way.  Such tentative steps are the right
way to get there.  But in the long run I think we have two mutually
exclusive choices:

  1) Have licenses out in the world that are OSD-compliant, and that we
 informally agree are "open source", but that we don't certify.
 This will cause growing divergence between "what is open source"
 and "what the OSI has approved".  That would be very, very bad.

  2) Officially certify any license (or PD status / PD dedication) that
 is OSD-compliant as open source, but for most of them attach
 commentary explaining why most people probably shouldn't use it and
 why one should one of the popular licenses instead.

(1) is a disaster.  It will defeat much of the point of the OSI, in the
long run.

We're sort of doing the complement of (2) right now, with the "Popular
Licenses" section.  Whether it's useful to limit ourselves to labeling
some licenses preferable, or should do the other side as well and label
other licenses as "yeah, it's open source, but we don't recommend using
it for new code unless you have no choice" is, of course, a complicated
political question.  We don't need to resolve it in this thread...

...but I think we do need to come to some sort of solution soon.  The
U.S. government is going to keep releasing what is (obviously) open
source software into the public domain; CC0 is also becoming more
popular in non-software works and will inevitably make inroads into
software too.

These works are all basically OSD-compliant, and will be treated by
people as open source.  If we don't find some way to incorporate those
terms into our certification process, it's the certification mark that
will be hurt in the long run, not the licenses / PD statuses.  That's
why I'm so worried by threads like that one I saw on GitHub that started
this.  Those folks are crying out for us to provide clarity, even if
they don't know it yet :-), and we must find a way to do so.

I completely agree, by the way, that we can be active about requiring
certain kinds of patent promises.  E.g., maybe we wouldn't certify PD
itself for software works, but would certify PD *when accompanied by* a
particular patent non-assertion text.  We'd have a lot of leverage to do
so, given that refusing to make that non-assertion promise, when asked
for it, would draw attention to the fact that the party has now publicly
decided not to be open source enough for the OSI.  So I'm not saying we
should just certify PD and CC0 and be done with it -- it's more complex
than that.

But the current limbo is not stable, and will inevitably damage the
remarkable unanimity we currently have around OSI certification.  We'll
have to solve this, probably sooner rather than later.

Best,
-K
___
License-discuss mailing list
License-discuss@opensource.org
http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss

Re: [License-discuss] Can OSI take stance that U.S. public domain is open source?

[Henrik Ingo]

On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 10:34 PM, Richard Fontana
 wrote:
> On Sat, 3 May 2014 22:07:19 +0300
> Henrik Ingo  wrote:
>
>> Does the US government grant itself patents,
>
> Yes.
>
>> and if so, what does it
>> do with those patents?
>
> Many are licensed to the private sector for revenue.

That is so perverse I cannot even formulate words to explain how I
feel about that...

Wrt the original question it seems there are good grounds to ask
federal employees to pony up an actual open source license, especially
one of those that includes a patent license. That said, it seems most
will agree that the public domain copyright is for all intents and
purposes open source. I suppose this is comparable to how artistic
license is open source but preferably you'd use a better license.

henrik



-- 
henrik.i...@avoinelama.fi
+358-40-5697354skype: henrik.ingoirc: hingo
www.openlife.cc

My LinkedIn profile: http://fi.linkedin.com/pub/henrik-ingo/3/232/8a7
___
License-discuss mailing list
License-discuss@opensource.org
http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss

Re: [License-discuss] Can OSI take stance that U.S. public domain is open source?

[John Cowan]

Henrik Ingo scripsit:

> The analoguous explanation for why cc0 didn't qualify is that it
> explicitly said "you get rights a and b but not c", with c a necessary
> right to copy and use the software. It should be obvious that - even
> if you'd disagree wrt patents - at least for some values of c that is
> clearly not open source.

Yes, but c (patent rights) is not granted to *anyone* by CC0.  Whether
those rights are necessary or not, they don't come within the ambit of
OSD #7, which is about indirect distributees getting the same rights as
direct distributees.  Here, neither kind get any patent rights, so #7
is not triggered.

You could argue that selling is a patent right, and OSD #1 is violated
if a patent restricts you from selling software distributed under CC0.
But #1 reads to me as a restriction on the license, which contains no
such provision.

If the open-source nature of CC0 is to be disproved, it must be shown that
it violates some clause of the OSD.  This is distinct from the prudence
or otherwise of certifying the license.

-- 
John Cowan  http://www.ccil.org/~cowanco...@ccil.org
It was dreary and wearisome.  Cold clammy winter still held sway in this
forsaken country.  The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark
greasy surfaces of the sullen waters.  Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed
up in the mists like ragged shadows of long-forgotten summers.
--LOTR, "The Passage of the Marshes"
___
License-discuss mailing list
License-discuss@opensource.org
http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss