Re: New OSI approved licenses

[Richard Fontana]

Yes, changing should not be inconvenient; I recently created those
pages and haven't publicized the URLs beyond updating the global lists
of OSI approved licenses on the website.


On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 09:38:58PM +, Philip Odence wrote:
> +1, thanks, Richard. 
> We may need to tweak the short identifiers, at least the one with a “+” 
> because
> that is an operator in the license expression language. 
> We appreciate your keeping us in the loop; it would be great if we could get
> involved even sooner in the process. Ideally, we could settle on an identifier
> before you create a URL, so we could keep those consistent. You mention that
> the license text is CURRENTLY at the URLs; does that imply there is still
> flexibility to change?
> Thanks,
> Phil
> 
> From: <spdx-legal-boun...@lists.spdx.org> on behalf of Paul <pmad...@cox.net>
> Date: Monday, January 18, 2016 at 8:06 PM
> To: Richard Fontana <font...@opensource.org>, "spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org" <
> spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org>
> Subject: Re: New OSI approved licenses
> 
> Thank you Richard.  The SPDX legal team will review the licenses for
> inclusion on the SPDX license list.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Paul Madick
> SPDX Legal Team co-lead
> 
> On 1/17/2016 5:50 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> 
> Greetings spdx-legal,
> 
> The OSI recently approved three new licenses:
> Licence Libre du Québec – Permissive (LiLiQ-P) v1.1
> Licence Libre du Québec – Réciprocité (LiLiQ-R) v1.1
> Licence Libre du Québec – Réciprocité forte (LiLiQ-R+) v1.1
> 
> (of some historical significance as the first non-English-language
> OSI-approved licenses)
> 
> The texts of the licenses are currently at
> http://opensource.org/licenses/LiLiQ-P-1.1
> http://opensource.org/licenses/LiLiQ-R-1.1
> http://opensource.org/licenses/LiLiQ-Rplus-1.1
> respectively, but they do not include the 'English translation' given
> on those pages following the license texts themselves.
> 
> I am hoping that the SPDX group will be willing to designate a short
> identifier for these licenses. FWIW, as can be seen, the license
> steward refers to the suite as 'LiLiQ' and uses the abbreviations
> 'LiLiQ-P', 'LiLiQ-R' and 'LiLiQ-R+' respectively.
> 
>Richard
>   
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Re: New OSI approved licenses

[Philip Odence]

Great. Thanks.

From: Richard Fontana <font...@opensource.org<mailto:font...@opensource.org>>
Date: Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 4:41 PM
To: Phil Odence 
<pode...@blackducksoftware.com<mailto:pode...@blackducksoftware.com>>
Cc: Paul <pmad...@cox.net<mailto:pmad...@cox.net>>, Richard Fontana 
<font...@opensource.org<mailto:font...@opensource.org>>, 
"spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org<mailto:spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org>" 
<spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org<mailto:spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org>>
Subject: Re: New OSI approved licenses

Yes, changing should not be inconvenient; I recently created those
pages and haven't publicized the URLs beyond updating the global lists
of OSI approved licenses on the website.


On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 09:38:58PM +, Philip Odence wrote:
+1, thanks, Richard.
We may need to tweak the short identifiers, at least the one with a “+” because
that is an operator in the license expression language.
We appreciate your keeping us in the loop; it would be great if we could get
involved even sooner in the process. Ideally, we could settle on an identifier
before you create a URL, so we could keep those consistent. You mention that
the license text is CURRENTLY at the URLs; does that imply there is still
flexibility to change?
Thanks,
Phil
From: 
<spdx-legal-boun...@lists.spdx.org<mailto:spdx-legal-boun...@lists.spdx.org>> 
on behalf of Paul <pmad...@cox.net<mailto:pmad...@cox.net>>
Date: Monday, January 18, 2016 at 8:06 PM
To: Richard Fontana <font...@opensource.org<mailto:font...@opensource.org>>, 
"spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org<mailto:spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org>" <
spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org<mailto:spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org>>
Subject: Re: New OSI approved licenses
Thank you Richard.  The SPDX legal team will review the licenses for
inclusion on the SPDX license list.
Best,
Paul Madick
SPDX Legal Team co-lead
On 1/17/2016 5:50 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
 Greetings spdx-legal,
 The OSI recently approved three new licenses:
 Licence Libre du Québec – Permissive (LiLiQ-P) v1.1
 Licence Libre du Québec – Réciprocité (LiLiQ-R) v1.1
 Licence Libre du Québec – Réciprocité forte (LiLiQ-R+) v1.1
 (of some historical significance as the first non-English-language
 OSI-approved licenses)
 The texts of the licenses are currently at
 http://opensource.org/licenses/LiLiQ-P-1.1
 http://opensource.org/licenses/LiLiQ-R-1.1
 http://opensource.org/licenses/LiLiQ-Rplus-1.1
 respectively, but they do not include the 'English translation' given
 on those pages following the license texts themselves.
 I am hoping that the SPDX group will be willing to designate a short
 identifier for these licenses. FWIW, as can be seen, the license
 steward refers to the suite as 'LiLiQ' and uses the abbreviations
 'LiLiQ-P', 'LiLiQ-R' and 'LiLiQ-R+' respectively.
Richard

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Re: New OSI approved licenses

[Paul]

Thank you Richard.  The SPDX legal team will review the licenses for 
inclusion on the SPDX license list.


Best,

Paul Madick
SPDX Legal Team co-lead

On 1/17/2016 5:50 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:

Greetings spdx-legal,

The OSI recently approved three new licenses:
Licence Libre du Québec – Permissive (LiLiQ-P) v1.1
Licence Libre du Québec – Réciprocité (LiLiQ-R) v1.1
Licence Libre du Québec – Réciprocité forte (LiLiQ-R+) v1.1

(of some historical significance as the first non-English-language
OSI-approved licenses)

The texts of the licenses are currently at
http://opensource.org/licenses/LiLiQ-P-1.1
http://opensource.org/licenses/LiLiQ-R-1.1
http://opensource.org/licenses/LiLiQ-Rplus-1.1
respectively, but they do not include the 'English translation' given
on those pages following the license texts themselves.

I am hoping that the SPDX group will be willing to designate a short
identifier for these licenses. FWIW, as can be seen, the license
steward refers to the suite as 'LiLiQ' and uses the abbreviations
'LiLiQ-P', 'LiLiQ-R' and 'LiLiQ-R+' respectively.

  Richard
  
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Re: New OSI-approved licenses

[J Lovejoy]

Hi Rob, 

I did not add any explanatory text as per your request.  Like you said, we can 
cross that bridge if/when we get questions.

By way of background or reminder for those who don’t know all the history:  
The point of the SPDX License List is to provide a reliable way to identify 
common open source licenses.  The short identifiers are key here - whether used 
in an SPDX document, or used in a host of other places where being able to 
refer to a license in a concise and reliable way is helpful. When the OSI 
declared their support for SPDX some years ago and began to include the SPDX 
short identifiers in brackets after the license names and then changed the URLs 
to use the short identifiers, this was great alignment in terms of spreading 
the word and encouraging consistency. There was actually a fair amount of work 
involved; making sure SPDX had all OSI-approved licenses on the SPDX License 
List meant taking a very thorough look at the list, license text, etc.  I am 
forever grateful for the awesome collaborative effort we enjoyed to this end, 
thanks specifically to (former) OSI board members, Karl Fogel, John Cowan, and 
Luis Villa.

At that time, the OSI had not approved a new license in some time, so it was 
easy to get up-to-date.  What we failed to establish, although it has been 
talked about on a couple occasions, was a process for making sure that when OSI 
approves a new license, SPDX gets a heads-up so we can also add it to the SPDX 
License List, including the important task of determining the short identifier, 
which the OSI can then include and use as they do/have.  We will certainly be 
looking to improve that communication going forward.

Of course, even that may not have helped in this rather odd (I hope) situation 
of someone submitting a license to the OSI who was not the author of the 
license, under a different name, and after it had already been submitted/added 
to the SPDX License List by the license’s author. As stated previously, the 
best outcome here, was if the person who submitted the license to OSI to 
understand the importance of a consistent way to identify the same license and 
concede to changing the OSI submission to the name you had already been using, 
as the author of the license. 

I can understand your frustration and having the same license under two 
different names (anywhere for that matter!) is not optimal.  

In any case, I think an important thing to note here and which seems to have 
gotten lost in the thread is the reason you stated as to why you submitted it 
to SPDX: 
"Either Samsung or Sony (I forget which) asks me to submit the the 
toybox
license to SPDX to simplify their internal paperwork:
http://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-June/001443.html;

People and companies are using the SPDX License List.  We never can really 
quantify who and how, but that a big company asked you to submit your license 
to be on the SPDX License List is a great indicator of the usefulness of the 
SPDX License List.  :)

In any case, thanks for all your input and time.


Thanks,
Jilayne

SPDX Legal Team co-lead
opensou...@jilayne.com


> On Dec 17, 2015, at 5:12 PM, Rob Landley  wrote:
> 
> On 12/17/2015 02:46 PM, J Lovejoy wrote:
>>> On Dec 17, 2015, at 1:25 PM, Rob Landley  wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 12/17/2015 12:38 PM, J Lovejoy wrote:
 That sounds like a reasonable result, all things considered.
>>> 
>>> I don't care what OSI does.
>>> 
 I’ll add a note to the Notes field of Zero Clause BSD License
 to the same effect on the upcoming release of the SPDX License List.
>>> 
>>> Please don't. Pretty please?
>>> 
>>> 
>> Hi Rob,
>> 
>> What I had in mind was: where it says “Note” on this page
>> http://spdx.org/licenses/0BSD.html, to add something along
>> the lines of capturing the following facts:
> 
> It's not the wording. It's acknowledging their mistake's existence.
> 
>> "There is a license that the OSI approved after this license was added
>> to the SPDX License List and which is identical to this license, but
>> referred to there as "Free Public License 1.0.0”. Apart from the name,
>> the only difference is that the Free Public License is used without a
>> copyright notice, whereas the Zero Clause BSD License has generally
>> been used with a copyright notice.  This difference, as per the SPDX
>> License List Matching Guidelines, is inconsequential for matching
> purposes."
>> 
>> By adding some info, we avoid someone later asking why there are there
>> are different names for essentially the same license on SPDX and OSI.
> 
> And by adding that info, I get those questions, so I need to update my
> license.html page to preemptively explain about OSI. I was hoping not to
> open that can of worms.
> 
> Could you maybe wait for somebody to ask about it first? I honestly
> don't believe anyone reads OSI's licensing page anymore. I do expect
> them to read SPDX's.
> 
>> Please feel free 

RE: New OSI-approved licenses

[Wheeler, David A]

Jilayne:
> That sounds like a reasonable result, all things considered.

I agree.  In fact, I think listing both "0BSD" and "FPL-1.0.0" is a great 
solution, especially if the SPDX website includes notices with each similar to 
the text at https://opensource.org/licenses/FPL-1.0.0:
> Note: There is a license that is identical to the Free Public License 1.0.0 
> called the Zero Clause BSD License. Apart from the name, the only difference 
> is that the Zero Clause BSD License has generally been used with a copyright 
> notice, while the Free Public License is used without a copyright notice.

I think this is a fine result:
- People who know the name of either license can now look it up
- Both sides who strongly prefer their name get their name
- For those who care, we now have documentation about the subtly different way 
they're typically used.

--- David A. Wheeler

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Re: New OSI-approved licenses

[Rob Landley]

On 12/17/2015 12:38 PM, J Lovejoy wrote:
> That sounds like a reasonable result, all things considered.

I don't care what OSI does.

> I’ll add a note to the Notes field of Zero Clause BSD License
> to the same effect on the upcoming release of the SPDX License List.

Please don't. Pretty please?

Rob
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Re: New OSI-approved licenses

[Richard Fontana]

I discussed the issue with Christian Bundy. He does not wish to change
the name of the license. With respect to the Zero Clause BSD License I
have therefore retained the existing approach on the OSI website:

https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical (Zero Clause BSD included
in list, with "0BSD" identifier, with cross reference to Free Public
License)

https://opensource.org/licenses/FPL-1.0.0 (explanatory note
acknowledges existence of identical Zero Clause BSD License)

Richard



On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 12:12:47PM -0600, Rob Landley wrote:
> Back home from traveling, I believe the ball is still in your court on this?
> 
> Rob
> 
> On 12/10/2015 08:58 AM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> > I don't think that is a good idea.
> > 
> > I have described the situation to Christian Bundy, the person who
> > submitted the Free Public License, with a link to this discussion. He
> > said he would get back to me by the end of the week. If Christian does
> > not recommend otherwise I will keep things as they currently are on
> > the OSI website.
> > 
> > Richard
> > 
> > 
> > On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 07:31:00AM +, J Lovejoy wrote:
> >> Having more of a think on this - It may be more appropriate for Rob to 
> >> talk to the “Free Public License” folks.  
> >> Rob - your thoughts?  
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Jilayne
> >>
> >>
> >>>
> >>> On Tue, Dec 08, 2015 at 06:56:09AM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
>  Hi Jilayne,
> 
>  No but that was my thought as well after reading Rob's response. I
>  will check.
> 
>  Thanks,
>  Richard
> 
> 
>  On Tue, Dec 08, 2015 at 08:16:15AM +, J Lovejoy wrote:
> > Richard,
> >
> > Has anyone from OSI gone back to the folks who submitted the “Free 
> > Public License” and ask if they mind or care if the name that Rob 
> > prefers is used instead of the one they suggested?  Seems like that 
> > could potentially be an easy solution.
> >
> > Jilayne
> >
> > SPDX Legal Team co-lead
> > opensou...@jilayne.com
> >
> >
> >> On Dec 8, 2015, at 6:17 AM, Rob Landley  wrote:
> >>
> >> The tl;dr of this whole email is "I humbly ask SPDX to retain both its
> >> original long and short names for zero clause BSD as the only SDPX
> >> approved name for this license".
> >>
> >> On 12/07/2015 01:56 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> >>> On Mon, Dec 07, 2015 at 07:30:18PM +, J Lovejoy wrote:
> >>> 3) While I have no inherent problem with the name 'Zero Clause BSD
> >>> License', it does bother me that the name has 'BSD' in it but the
> >>> license text is not clearly descended from the BSD license family.
> >>
> >> "I have no problem, and here it is..."
> >>
> >>> In this sense both the name and the identifier are flawed. There is no
> >>> parallelism between the Zero Clause BSD License and the well-known
> >>> 3-clause and 2-clause BSD licenses. I would probably not be objecting
> >>> to the identifier if it were '0ISC' rather than '0BSD' because the
> >>> Zero Clause BSD License is a stripped-down ISC license, not a
> >>> stripped-down BSD license.
> >>
> >> So you still haven't looked back at the SPDX approval process for zero
> >> clause BSD and noticed they raised that objection then, and got an 
> >> answer?
> >>
> >> http://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-June/001457.html
> >>
> >> If the association between this license and ISC was important, why
> >> didn't OSI's name for it mention ISC instead of making up a new name?
> >>
> >> This is not the only public domain license derived from BSD licenses in
> >> the wild. Here's one that did it by cutting down (I think, they don't
> >> bother to specify) FreeBSD's license:
> >>
> >> http://openwall.info/wiki/john/licensing
> >>
> >> And that page links to another project using a variant that cut it down
> >> a different way (also removing the virality but keeping the 
> >> disclaimer).
> >> Lots of people have done this lots of ways over the years.
> >>
> >> And yet despite the many possible starting and ending points to strip
> >> licenses down to public domain variants, OSI approved _exactly_ the 
> >> same
> >> text I chose. Which wasn't even submitted to OSI until a month after
> >> SPDX published their decision to approve it, a year after Android 
> >> merged
> >> it, and two and a half years after I'd publicly started using it on a
> >> project that Linux Weekly News has covered multiple times.
> >>
> >> Not noticing _me_ is understandable, although it's not like I was being
> >> quiet about it (unless you consider giving licensing talks ala
> >> https://archive.org/download/OhioLinuxfest2013/24-Rob_Landley-The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Copyleft.mp3
> >> and http://2014.texaslinuxfest.org/content/rise-and-fall-copyleft.html
> 

Re: New OSI-approved licenses

[Rob Landley]

Back home from traveling, I believe the ball is still in your court on this?

Rob

On 12/10/2015 08:58 AM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> I don't think that is a good idea.
> 
> I have described the situation to Christian Bundy, the person who
> submitted the Free Public License, with a link to this discussion. He
> said he would get back to me by the end of the week. If Christian does
> not recommend otherwise I will keep things as they currently are on
> the OSI website.
> 
> Richard
> 
> 
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 07:31:00AM +, J Lovejoy wrote:
>> Having more of a think on this - It may be more appropriate for Rob to talk 
>> to the “Free Public License” folks.  
>> Rob - your thoughts?  
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Jilayne
>>
>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 08, 2015 at 06:56:09AM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
 Hi Jilayne,

 No but that was my thought as well after reading Rob's response. I
 will check.

 Thanks,
 Richard


 On Tue, Dec 08, 2015 at 08:16:15AM +, J Lovejoy wrote:
> Richard,
>
> Has anyone from OSI gone back to the folks who submitted the “Free Public 
> License” and ask if they mind or care if the name that Rob prefers is 
> used instead of the one they suggested?  Seems like that could 
> potentially be an easy solution.
>
> Jilayne
>
> SPDX Legal Team co-lead
> opensou...@jilayne.com
>
>
>> On Dec 8, 2015, at 6:17 AM, Rob Landley  wrote:
>>
>> The tl;dr of this whole email is "I humbly ask SPDX to retain both its
>> original long and short names for zero clause BSD as the only SDPX
>> approved name for this license".
>>
>> On 12/07/2015 01:56 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
>>> On Mon, Dec 07, 2015 at 07:30:18PM +, J Lovejoy wrote:
>>> 3) While I have no inherent problem with the name 'Zero Clause BSD
>>> License', it does bother me that the name has 'BSD' in it but the
>>> license text is not clearly descended from the BSD license family.
>>
>> "I have no problem, and here it is..."
>>
>>> In this sense both the name and the identifier are flawed. There is no
>>> parallelism between the Zero Clause BSD License and the well-known
>>> 3-clause and 2-clause BSD licenses. I would probably not be objecting
>>> to the identifier if it were '0ISC' rather than '0BSD' because the
>>> Zero Clause BSD License is a stripped-down ISC license, not a
>>> stripped-down BSD license.
>>
>> So you still haven't looked back at the SPDX approval process for zero
>> clause BSD and noticed they raised that objection then, and got an 
>> answer?
>>
>> http://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-June/001457.html
>>
>> If the association between this license and ISC was important, why
>> didn't OSI's name for it mention ISC instead of making up a new name?
>>
>> This is not the only public domain license derived from BSD licenses in
>> the wild. Here's one that did it by cutting down (I think, they don't
>> bother to specify) FreeBSD's license:
>>
>> http://openwall.info/wiki/john/licensing
>>
>> And that page links to another project using a variant that cut it down
>> a different way (also removing the virality but keeping the disclaimer).
>> Lots of people have done this lots of ways over the years.
>>
>> And yet despite the many possible starting and ending points to strip
>> licenses down to public domain variants, OSI approved _exactly_ the same
>> text I chose. Which wasn't even submitted to OSI until a month after
>> SPDX published their decision to approve it, a year after Android merged
>> it, and two and a half years after I'd publicly started using it on a
>> project that Linux Weekly News has covered multiple times.
>>
>> Not noticing _me_ is understandable, although it's not like I was being
>> quiet about it (unless you consider giving licensing talks ala
>> https://archive.org/download/OhioLinuxfest2013/24-Rob_Landley-The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Copyleft.mp3
>> and http://2014.texaslinuxfest.org/content/rise-and-fall-copyleft.html
>> and such to be "quiet").
>>
>> I could even understand not noticing what Android was doing, although
>> the rest of the industry seems to be paying attention. (The android
>> command line is not a peripheral part of android, I got invited to Linux
>> Plumber's to talk about this a couple months back,
>> https://linuxplumbersconf.org/2015/ocw/proposals/2871 and yes I went
>> over the licensing aspect at length in that talk and oh look,
>> https://lwn.net/Articles/657139/ not only covers my talk by they linked
>> to my license page, using my license's name as the link text. September
>> 14 is 2 weeks after the submission OSI acted upon, so presumably right
>> during OSI's analysis period?)
>>
>> OSI failing to notice any of 

Re: New OSI-approved licenses

[J Lovejoy]

Richard,

Has anyone from OSI gone back to the folks who submitted the “Free Public 
License” and ask if they mind or care if the name that Rob prefers is used 
instead of the one they suggested?  Seems like that could potentially be an 
easy solution.

Jilayne

SPDX Legal Team co-lead
opensou...@jilayne.com


> On Dec 8, 2015, at 6:17 AM, Rob Landley  wrote:
> 
> The tl;dr of this whole email is "I humbly ask SPDX to retain both its
> original long and short names for zero clause BSD as the only SDPX
> approved name for this license".
> 
> On 12/07/2015 01:56 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
>> On Mon, Dec 07, 2015 at 07:30:18PM +, J Lovejoy wrote:
>> 3) While I have no inherent problem with the name 'Zero Clause BSD
>> License', it does bother me that the name has 'BSD' in it but the
>> license text is not clearly descended from the BSD license family.
> 
> "I have no problem, and here it is..."
> 
>> In this sense both the name and the identifier are flawed. There is no
>> parallelism between the Zero Clause BSD License and the well-known
>> 3-clause and 2-clause BSD licenses. I would probably not be objecting
>> to the identifier if it were '0ISC' rather than '0BSD' because the
>> Zero Clause BSD License is a stripped-down ISC license, not a
>> stripped-down BSD license.
> 
> So you still haven't looked back at the SPDX approval process for zero
> clause BSD and noticed they raised that objection then, and got an answer?
> 
> http://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-June/001457.html
> 
> If the association between this license and ISC was important, why
> didn't OSI's name for it mention ISC instead of making up a new name?
> 
> This is not the only public domain license derived from BSD licenses in
> the wild. Here's one that did it by cutting down (I think, they don't
> bother to specify) FreeBSD's license:
> 
> http://openwall.info/wiki/john/licensing
> 
> And that page links to another project using a variant that cut it down
> a different way (also removing the virality but keeping the disclaimer).
> Lots of people have done this lots of ways over the years.
> 
> And yet despite the many possible starting and ending points to strip
> licenses down to public domain variants, OSI approved _exactly_ the same
> text I chose. Which wasn't even submitted to OSI until a month after
> SPDX published their decision to approve it, a year after Android merged
> it, and two and a half years after I'd publicly started using it on a
> project that Linux Weekly News has covered multiple times.
> 
> Not noticing _me_ is understandable, although it's not like I was being
> quiet about it (unless you consider giving licensing talks ala
> https://archive.org/download/OhioLinuxfest2013/24-Rob_Landley-The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Copyleft.mp3
> and http://2014.texaslinuxfest.org/content/rise-and-fall-copyleft.html
> and such to be "quiet").
> 
> I could even understand not noticing what Android was doing, although
> the rest of the industry seems to be paying attention. (The android
> command line is not a peripheral part of android, I got invited to Linux
> Plumber's to talk about this a couple months back,
> https://linuxplumbersconf.org/2015/ocw/proposals/2871 and yes I went
> over the licensing aspect at length in that talk and oh look,
> https://lwn.net/Articles/657139/ not only covers my talk by they linked
> to my license page, using my license's name as the link text. September
> 14 is 2 weeks after the submission OSI acted upon, so presumably right
> during OSI's analysis period?)
> 
> OSI failing to notice any of that doesn't surprise me. But OSI didn't
> notice what _SPDX_ was doing, despite claiming to want to use SPDX
> identifiers and thus having pretty much a DUTY to keep up there, and is
> now asking SPDX to change to accommodate the results.
> 
> That's the part I don't get.
> 
> P.S. The JTR "BSD-like" license above recently came back to my attention
> because although it was initially introduced just for new code (in an
> otherwise GPLv2 project), a few days ago they started a concerted effort
> to clean out their existing codebase so it can all go under this public
> domain "BSD" license:
> 
> http://www.openwall.com/lists/john-users/2015/12/04/2
> 
> I.E. This GPL->PD trend is ongoing, and likely to continue for the
> foreseeable future. That's why it's been a big enough issue for me to
> keep talking about it at conferences for almost three years now.
> 
> I seem to be unusually careful in how I handle licensing for an open
> source developer, but people who _haven't_ been a plaintiff in multiple
> GPL enforcement suits and who weren't hired as a consultant by IBM's
> lawyers to help defend against the SCO lawsuit and _don't_ respond to
> people like Bruce Perens with https://busybox.net/~landley/forensics.txt
> are generally doing this stuff in a much more ad-hoc way that
> intentionally keeps lawyers as far away as possible. So legal groups may
> not be promptly hearing directly 

Re: New OSI-approved licenses

[J Lovejoy]

Thanks Richard - that would be great.  Let us know what you find out!

Jilayne


> On Dec 8, 2015, at 12:01 PM, Richard Fontana  wrote:
> 
> (Forwarding this to spdx-legal.)
> 
> On Tue, Dec 08, 2015 at 06:56:09AM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
>> Hi Jilayne,
>> 
>> No but that was my thought as well after reading Rob's response. I
>> will check.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Richard
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Dec 08, 2015 at 08:16:15AM +, J Lovejoy wrote:
>>> Richard,
>>> 
>>> Has anyone from OSI gone back to the folks who submitted the “Free Public 
>>> License” and ask if they mind or care if the name that Rob prefers is used 
>>> instead of the one they suggested?  Seems like that could potentially be an 
>>> easy solution.
>>> 
>>> Jilayne
>>> 
>>> SPDX Legal Team co-lead
>>> opensou...@jilayne.com
>>> 
>>> 
 On Dec 8, 2015, at 6:17 AM, Rob Landley  wrote:
 
 The tl;dr of this whole email is "I humbly ask SPDX to retain both its
 original long and short names for zero clause BSD as the only SDPX
 approved name for this license".
 
 On 12/07/2015 01:56 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 07, 2015 at 07:30:18PM +, J Lovejoy wrote:
> 3) While I have no inherent problem with the name 'Zero Clause BSD
> License', it does bother me that the name has 'BSD' in it but the
> license text is not clearly descended from the BSD license family.
 
 "I have no problem, and here it is..."
 
> In this sense both the name and the identifier are flawed. There is no
> parallelism between the Zero Clause BSD License and the well-known
> 3-clause and 2-clause BSD licenses. I would probably not be objecting
> to the identifier if it were '0ISC' rather than '0BSD' because the
> Zero Clause BSD License is a stripped-down ISC license, not a
> stripped-down BSD license.
 
 So you still haven't looked back at the SPDX approval process for zero
 clause BSD and noticed they raised that objection then, and got an answer?
 
 http://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-June/001457.html
 
 If the association between this license and ISC was important, why
 didn't OSI's name for it mention ISC instead of making up a new name?
 
 This is not the only public domain license derived from BSD licenses in
 the wild. Here's one that did it by cutting down (I think, they don't
 bother to specify) FreeBSD's license:
 
 http://openwall.info/wiki/john/licensing
 
 And that page links to another project using a variant that cut it down
 a different way (also removing the virality but keeping the disclaimer).
 Lots of people have done this lots of ways over the years.
 
 And yet despite the many possible starting and ending points to strip
 licenses down to public domain variants, OSI approved _exactly_ the same
 text I chose. Which wasn't even submitted to OSI until a month after
 SPDX published their decision to approve it, a year after Android merged
 it, and two and a half years after I'd publicly started using it on a
 project that Linux Weekly News has covered multiple times.
 
 Not noticing _me_ is understandable, although it's not like I was being
 quiet about it (unless you consider giving licensing talks ala
 https://archive.org/download/OhioLinuxfest2013/24-Rob_Landley-The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Copyleft.mp3
 and http://2014.texaslinuxfest.org/content/rise-and-fall-copyleft.html
 and such to be "quiet").
 
 I could even understand not noticing what Android was doing, although
 the rest of the industry seems to be paying attention. (The android
 command line is not a peripheral part of android, I got invited to Linux
 Plumber's to talk about this a couple months back,
 https://linuxplumbersconf.org/2015/ocw/proposals/2871 and yes I went
 over the licensing aspect at length in that talk and oh look,
 https://lwn.net/Articles/657139/ not only covers my talk by they linked
 to my license page, using my license's name as the link text. September
 14 is 2 weeks after the submission OSI acted upon, so presumably right
 during OSI's analysis period?)
 
 OSI failing to notice any of that doesn't surprise me. But OSI didn't
 notice what _SPDX_ was doing, despite claiming to want to use SPDX
 identifiers and thus having pretty much a DUTY to keep up there, and is
 now asking SPDX to change to accommodate the results.
 
 That's the part I don't get.
 
 P.S. The JTR "BSD-like" license above recently came back to my attention
 because although it was initially introduced just for new code (in an
 otherwise GPLv2 project), a few days ago they started a concerted effort
 to clean out their existing codebase so it can all go under this public
 domain "BSD" license:
 
 http://www.openwall.com/lists/john-users/2015/12/04/2

Re: New OSI-approved licenses

[J Lovejoy]

HI All,

Having a bit of a hard time following this, as I think Rob may have confused 
who was speaking on which organization’s behalf (Richard is coming from the OSI 
perspective, here)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the suggestion seems to be:

OSI has now posted the "Free Public License 1.0.0" and wants to use the short 
identifier FPL-1.0.0 

This license is, according to the SPDX Matching Guidelines, the same license 
the Rob submitted previously and which was added to SPDX License List v2.2 as 
"BSD Zero Clause License” using the short identifier 0BSD

Now, the OSI wants SPDX to change its short identifier to FPL-1.0.0 - is that 
right?  And if so, why would you want us to do that?  

We endeavor not to change the short identifiers unless there is an extremely 
compelling reason and users of the SPDX License List (of which there are many) 
rely on us to not make such changes unnecessarily.  I’m not sure I see the 
compelling reason here, especially when, as Rob has now told us, part of the 
reason he submitted the license to be on the SPDX License List was as per the 
request of a large company using the SPDX short identifiers.  

We do have some flexibility with the full name, which would be reasonably to 
change to something like, "BSD Zero Clause / Free Public License 1.0.0” 
(clunky, perhaps) and then also add a note as Richard did explaining the 
similarity-yet-name-variation-possibility.  However, changing the short 
identifier is a much more serious consideration. We have a legal call this 
Thursday, so any info as to why we should change that part or if my above idea 
would be amenable to all would be helpful.

Thanks,

Jilayne

SPDX Legal Team co-lead
opensou...@jilayne.com


> On Dec 5, 2015, at 12:36 PM, Richard Fontana  wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Dec 05, 2015 at 12:57:43AM -0600, Rob Landley wrote:
>> As far as I can tell, OSI continues to be unaware that unlicense.org or
>> creative commons zero even exist.
> 
> The OSI is aware of them. There's actually been interest for some time
> in getting OSI approval of a license (or license-like instrument) in
> this category, what I've recently been calling 'ultrapermissive'. CC0
> was actually submitted by Creative Commons for OSI approval a few
> years ago. The submission was withdrawn because of controversy over
> clause 4a in CC0 ("No ... patent rights held by Affirmer are waived,
> abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this
> document."). The Unlicense hasn't been submitted for approval.
> 
> I have now modified http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical to
> include Zero Clause BSD License (0BSD) with a cross reference to the
> Free Public License, and I have also added the following prefatory
> text to http://opensource.org/licenses/FPL-1.0.0:
> "Note: There is a license that is identical to the Free Public License
> 1.0.0 called the Zero Clause BSD License. Apart from the name, the
> only difference is that the Zero Clause BSD License has generally been
> used with a copyright notice, while the Free Public License has
> generally been used without a copyright notice."
> 
> Hopefully that will remove whatever possibility there was of anyone
> thinking the Zero Clause BSD License (for those who choose to call it
> that) is not now OSI-approved by virtue of the approval of the Free
> Public License.
> 
> However I still recommend that the SPDX group come up with a short
> identifier for the Free Public License that is different from "0BSD";
> I'm going to pretend that it would be "FPL-1.0.0".
> 
> Richard
> 
> 
> 

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Re: New OSI-approved licenses

[Richard Fontana]

On Mon, Dec 07, 2015 at 07:30:18PM +, J Lovejoy wrote:
> Correct me if I’m wrong, but the suggestion seems to be:
> 
> OSI has now posted the "Free Public License 1.0.0" and wants to use the short 
> identifier FPL-1.0.0 

Well that identifier (or something else that bears some similarity to
the license name as approved by the OSI) is my own suggestion, not the
view of the whole OSI board. I haven't bothered to explain this issue
to the board, as I'm not sure it's that significant.

> This license is, according to the SPDX Matching Guidelines, the same license 
> the Rob submitted previously and which was added to SPDX License List v2.2 as 
> "BSD Zero Clause License” using the short identifier 0BSD
> 
> Now, the OSI wants SPDX to change its short identifier to FPL-1.0.0 - is that 
> right?  And if so, why would you want us to do that?  

My reasoning is as follows:

1) The license that was submitted to and approved by the OSI is called
the 'Free Public License 1.0.0'. I note that Rob Landley chose not to
submit the Zero Clause BSD License for OSI approval as of course is
his prerogative.

2) I think it is confusing to have a short identifier that looks
nothing like the name of the thing, especially given that most if not
all of the SPDX short identifiers have some clear relationship to the
name of the license being identified.

3) While I have no inherent problem with the name 'Zero Clause BSD
License', it does bother me that the name has 'BSD' in it but the
license text is not clearly descended from the BSD license family. In
this sense both the name and the identifier are flawed. There is no
parallelism between the Zero Clause BSD License and the well-known
3-clause and 2-clause BSD licenses. I would probably not be objecting
to the identifier if it were '0ISC' rather than '0BSD' because the
Zero Clause BSD License is a stripped-down ISC license, not a
stripped-down BSD license.

4) Since I am coming at this from a viewpoint that is biased in favor
of the name of the license as submitted to the OSI, I can only object
to the idea that OSI should be expected to apply the identifier '0BSD'
to a license called the Free Public License 1.0.0.

5) For some time there's been some desire on the part of the OSI to
make use of the SPDX identifiers, and you can see evidence of this on
the OSI website. But I think with the Free Public License 1.0.0 and
also the recently-approved eCos License version 2.0 this policy has
reached a breaking point. In the case of eCos we can't seriously be
expected to entertain use of a short identifier that is longer than
the name of the license.

> We endeavor not to change the short identifiers unless there is an extremely 
> compelling reason and users of the SPDX License List (of which there are 
> many) rely on us to not make such changes unnecessarily.  I’m not sure I see 
> the compelling reason here, especially when, as Rob has now told us, part of 
> the reason he submitted the license to be on the SPDX License List was as per 
> the request of a large company using the SPDX short identifiers.  

I'm not suggesting that the identifier be changed, but rather that two
identifiers be adopted, each being considered equally official in an
SPDX sense. 

Ultimately, the issue isn't too important, but I simply can't bring
myself to use "0BSD" on the OSI website in the manner in which other
SPDX short identifiers have now been used. (Although as noted I did
use '0BSD' in my cross-referencing of the Zero Clause BSD License to
the Free Public License.) Similarly, I can't bring myself to use the
lengthy GPL exception identifier in connection with the eCos License.

Richard



> We do have some flexibility with the full name, which would be reasonably to 
> change to something like, "BSD Zero Clause / Free Public License 1.0.0” 
> (clunky, perhaps) and then also add a note as Richard did explaining the 
> similarity-yet-name-variation-possibility.  However, changing the short 
> identifier is a much more serious consideration. We have a legal call this 
> Thursday, so any info as to why we should change that part or if my above 
> idea would be amenable to all would be helpful.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Jilayne
> 
> SPDX Legal Team co-lead
> opensou...@jilayne.com
> 
> 
> > On Dec 5, 2015, at 12:36 PM, Richard Fontana  wrote:
> > 
> > On Sat, Dec 05, 2015 at 12:57:43AM -0600, Rob Landley wrote:
> >> As far as I can tell, OSI continues to be unaware that unlicense.org or
> >> creative commons zero even exist.
> > 
> > The OSI is aware of them. There's actually been interest for some time
> > in getting OSI approval of a license (or license-like instrument) in
> > this category, what I've recently been calling 'ultrapermissive'. CC0
> > was actually submitted by Creative Commons for OSI approval a few
> > years ago. The submission was withdrawn because of controversy over
> > clause 4a in CC0 ("No ... patent rights held by Affirmer are waived,
> > abandoned, surrendered, 

Re: New OSI-approved licenses

[Richard Fontana]

On Sat, Dec 05, 2015 at 12:57:43AM -0600, Rob Landley wrote:
> As far as I can tell, OSI continues to be unaware that unlicense.org or
> creative commons zero even exist.

The OSI is aware of them. There's actually been interest for some time
in getting OSI approval of a license (or license-like instrument) in
this category, what I've recently been calling 'ultrapermissive'. CC0
was actually submitted by Creative Commons for OSI approval a few
years ago. The submission was withdrawn because of controversy over
clause 4a in CC0 ("No ... patent rights held by Affirmer are waived,
abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this
document."). The Unlicense hasn't been submitted for approval.

I have now modified http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical to
include Zero Clause BSD License (0BSD) with a cross reference to the
Free Public License, and I have also added the following prefatory
text to http://opensource.org/licenses/FPL-1.0.0:
"Note: There is a license that is identical to the Free Public License
1.0.0 called the Zero Clause BSD License. Apart from the name, the
only difference is that the Zero Clause BSD License has generally been
used with a copyright notice, while the Free Public License has
generally been used without a copyright notice."

Hopefully that will remove whatever possibility there was of anyone
thinking the Zero Clause BSD License (for those who choose to call it
that) is not now OSI-approved by virtue of the approval of the Free
Public License.

However I still recommend that the SPDX group come up with a short
identifier for the Free Public License that is different from "0BSD";
I'm going to pretend that it would be "FPL-1.0.0".

Richard



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Re: New OSI-approved licenses

[Rob Landley]

Did this ever get resolved?

On 11/17/2015 12:51 AM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 01:32:44AM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
 2) Free Public License 1.0.0
 Text of approved license contained within:

https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2015-August/001104.html
>>>
>>>  We have added as of v2.2 - http://spdx.org/licenses/0BSD.html -
although it was submitted using a different name as suggested by the
submitter (who I think said he authored the license… or at least seemed
to know a lot about it’s origins and the suggested name, which we went
with - see
http://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-June/001443.html for
that thread).
>>>
>>> Would the OSI oppose the name we already went with??
>>
>> Hmm, I think this is really a case of two people independently
>> inventing approximately the same thing at about the same time,

Given the timeline, it's more likely they copied the license from Android.

March 2013:

I start using this license:
http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2013-March/000794.html

November 2014:

Android merges toybox to replace toolbox:
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=76861#c11

January 2015:

Linux Weekly News covers toybox's addition to Android:
https://lwn.net/Articles/629362/

May 2015:

Android-M preview containing toybox distributed to developers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Marshmallow

June 2015:

Either Samsung or Sony (I forget which) asks me to submit the the toybox
license to SPDX to simplify their internal paperwork:
http://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-June/001443.html

August 30, 2015:

These guys submit the license to OSI.
https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2015-August/001104.html

I didn't submit my public domain equivalent license to OSI because their
lawyer wrote an article literally comparing public domain software to
abandoning trash by the side of a highway
(http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6225 paragraph 5), and if you
google for "Linux Public Domain" it's still the second hit.

>> where
>> 'invention' means removing some language from an existing short
>> license.

Yes, it is a minor variant of an existing BSD license.

Specifically, the OpenBSD template license
(http://www.openbsd.org/policy.html links to
http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/share/misc/license.template?rev=HEAD)
which is why I felt justified in calling it a BSD license.

There were already "2 clause", "3 clause", and "4 clause" BSD licenses
commonly referred to, "zero clause" to mean public domain didn't seem
like a stretch (and is also what the Creative Commons guys chose with
CC0). It also makes it easy for corporate legal departments that have
approved existing BSD licenses to rubber-stamp another.

I chose this name for a reason. In the "copyleft vs bsd" axis, this is
more BSD than BSD. "Free" is the Free Software Foundation's rallying cry
(and the reason OSI had to come up with "Open Source" to counter "Free
Software"). Sticking the word "Free" on a public domain equivalent
license (as far from copyleft as you can get) is either intentionally
confusing or deeply clueless.

Part of my attraction to public domain licensing is trying to counteract
the damage GPLv3 did to the community at large when it fragmented
copyleft into incompatible factions. There's no such thing as "The GPL"
anymore, Linux and Samba implement two ends of the same protocol, are
both GPL, and neither can use the other's code. Copyleft is now a
significant _barrier_ to code reuse within copylefted projects.

The result seems to be a generation of programmers who are lumping
software copyrights in with software patents as "too dumb to live", and
taking a napster-style civil disobedience approach, opting out of
licensing their code at ALL until the whole corrupt intellectual
property edifice collapses under its own weight. "No License Specified"
continues to be the most common license on github _after_ its CEO made a
big push to standardize on MIT licensing as a default. The percentage
has gone _up_ in the past year:

https://speakerdeck.com/benbalter/open-source-licensing-by-the-numbers?slide=41

If I just wanted a public domain license I could have grabbed creative
commons zero (or the libtomcrypt license or unlicense.org or...) but I
wanted the strategic advantage of the name "Zero Clause BSD" because the
ability to say "we're more BSD than BSD" is an easy sell that
short-circuits a lot of explanation.

Attaching the Free Software Foundation's codeword "Free" to a
non-copyleft license is... odd. Saying "when we use the word 'Free' we
mean something different than when the Free Software Foundation uses the
word 'Free'" is not an argument I want to make, especially not to people
who have developed an _aversion_ to copyleft.

> Looks like Rob Landley was using it a year or more earlier:
> https://lwn.net/Articles/608082/

According to http://landley.net/hg/toybox/rev/264b9da809df since March

Re: New OSI-approved licenses

[Richard Fontana]

Not really. I respect your desire to keep the name of the license
you've been using and appreciate your policy objections to the name of
the Free Public License; however I have no inclination to ask the OSI
to change the name of the approved license (which seems to differ from
0BSD in one respect, namely the normative non-inclusion of a template
copyright notice). 

I think then, if we assume that 0BSD and the Free Public License are
really the same license from the SPDX world view standpoint, that this
may unfortunately be the first departure from the trend of OSI
endorsing the use of SPDX short names (I think the one for the
recently-approved eCos license is a little problematic too). I
encourage the SPDX group to consider coming up with a new short name
for the Free Public License without altering the status of 0BSD.

- RF



On Fri, Dec 04, 2015 at 07:37:55PM -0600, Rob Landley wrote:
> Did this ever get resolved?
> 
> On 11/17/2015 12:51 AM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 01:32:44AM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
>  2) Free Public License 1.0.0
>  Text of approved license contained within:
> 
> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2015-August/001104.html
> >>>
> >>>  We have added as of v2.2 - http://spdx.org/licenses/0BSD.html -
> although it was submitted using a different name as suggested by the
> submitter (who I think said he authored the license… or at least seemed
> to know a lot about it’s origins and the suggested name, which we went
> with - see
> http://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-June/001443.html for
> that thread).
> >>>
> >>> Would the OSI oppose the name we already went with??
> >>
> >> Hmm, I think this is really a case of two people independently
> >> inventing approximately the same thing at about the same time,
> 
> Given the timeline, it's more likely they copied the license from Android.
> 
> March 2013:
> 
> I start using this license:
> http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2013-March/000794.html
> 
> November 2014:
> 
> Android merges toybox to replace toolbox:
> https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=76861#c11
> 
> January 2015:
> 
> Linux Weekly News covers toybox's addition to Android:
> https://lwn.net/Articles/629362/
> 
> May 2015:
> 
> Android-M preview containing toybox distributed to developers:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Marshmallow
> 
> June 2015:
> 
> Either Samsung or Sony (I forget which) asks me to submit the the toybox
> license to SPDX to simplify their internal paperwork:
> http://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-June/001443.html
> 
> August 30, 2015:
> 
> These guys submit the license to OSI.
> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2015-August/001104.html
> 
> I didn't submit my public domain equivalent license to OSI because their
> lawyer wrote an article literally comparing public domain software to
> abandoning trash by the side of a highway
> (http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6225 paragraph 5), and if you
> google for "Linux Public Domain" it's still the second hit.
> 
> >> where
> >> 'invention' means removing some language from an existing short
> >> license.
> 
> Yes, it is a minor variant of an existing BSD license.
> 
> Specifically, the OpenBSD template license
> (http://www.openbsd.org/policy.html links to
> http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/share/misc/license.template?rev=HEAD)
> which is why I felt justified in calling it a BSD license.
> 
> There were already "2 clause", "3 clause", and "4 clause" BSD licenses
> commonly referred to, "zero clause" to mean public domain didn't seem
> like a stretch (and is also what the Creative Commons guys chose with
> CC0). It also makes it easy for corporate legal departments that have
> approved existing BSD licenses to rubber-stamp another.
> 
> I chose this name for a reason. In the "copyleft vs bsd" axis, this is
> more BSD than BSD. "Free" is the Free Software Foundation's rallying cry
> (and the reason OSI had to come up with "Open Source" to counter "Free
> Software"). Sticking the word "Free" on a public domain equivalent
> license (as far from copyleft as you can get) is either intentionally
> confusing or deeply clueless.
> 
> Part of my attraction to public domain licensing is trying to counteract
> the damage GPLv3 did to the community at large when it fragmented
> copyleft into incompatible factions. There's no such thing as "The GPL"
> anymore, Linux and Samba implement two ends of the same protocol, are
> both GPL, and neither can use the other's code. Copyleft is now a
> significant _barrier_ to code reuse within copylefted projects.
> 
> The result seems to be a generation of programmers who are lumping
> software copyrights in with software patents as "too dumb to live", and
> taking a napster-style civil disobedience approach, opting out of
> licensing their code at ALL until the whole corrupt intellectual
> property edifice collapses under its own 

Re: New OSI-approved licenses

[Richard Fontana]

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 10:24:34PM -0700, J Lovejoy wrote:

> > The OSI recently approved three licenses as Open Source:
> > 
> > 1) eCos License version 2.0 (under the 'Legacy Approval' process)
> > Text of approved license contained within:
> > https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2014-August/000853.html
> > 
> > Note that the interesting part of this license is identical to
> > http://spdx.org/licenses/eCos-exception-2.0.html#licenseExceptionText
> 
> The short identifier is already defined for SPDX using the “with” operator 
> and the exception identifier. It would be:
> 
>   GPL-2.0+ WITH eCos-exception-2.0

Ah, okay. That makes sense. The only issue is that for some time there
has been a desire for the URLs for licenses on the OSI website to
match the SPDX short identifier. I think we will probably use 'eCos'
for the URL rather than 'GPL-2.0+ WITH eCos-exception-2.0' and to that
extent we will have to change the current practice of honoring the
SPDX identifiers.
 
> Unless anyone thinks otherwise, I would think that license expression could 
> be noted on the OSI site in the same way the other SPDX identifiers are??

I believe what's currently done is that the SPDX identifier is used in
two contexts, in the general list of OSI-approved licenses and in the
URLs. I don't see a problem with using 'GPL-2.0+ WITH
eCos-exception-2.0' in the list but as noted I think it would be
problematic to use it in the URL.

> This does raise for us the question as to whether we need to add an “OSI 
> Approved” column to the exceptions list.  To my knowledge, this is the only 
> GPL exception that has been specifically approved by OSI, is that right?

There is one other, the wxWindows Library License:
http://opensource.org/licenses/WXwindows
Not to mention LGPL version 3.

> > 2) Free Public License 1.0.0
> > Text of approved license contained within:
> > https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2015-August/001104.html
> 
>  We have added as of v2.2 - http://spdx.org/licenses/0BSD.html -  although it 
> was submitted using a different name as suggested by the submitter (who I 
> think said he authored the license… or at least seemed to know a lot about 
> it’s origins and the suggested name, which we went with - see 
> http://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-June/001443.html for that 
> thread).
> 
> Would the OSI oppose the name we already went with??

Hmm, I think this is really a case of two people independently
inventing approximately the same thing at about the same time, where
'invention' means removing some language from an existing short
license. The one possible textual difference is that the Free Public
License does not normatively contain a copyright notice (at least, in
the discussion on the license-review list, it seemed to be assumed
that the license would be used without a copyright notice, and no
actual or template copyright notice was part of the text submitted by
the license submitter).

I can't see OSI wanting to identify this as '0BSD', in part because it
is not actually based directly on the BSD license contrary to what Rob
Landley seemed to be saying. I mean, I personally would be opposed to
OSI referring to this as '0BSD' because I think it can only possibly
be confusing. And this license is actually a relatively important one
as it fills a significant gap in the policy range of OSI-approved
licenses.

So with all respect to Mr. Landley I would like to ask the SPDX group
to consider changing '0BSD' to 'FPL' (if that's available) or else
something closer to 'Free Public License'. 

(From the SPDX perspective, I gather the presence or absence of the
copyright notice at the top does not affect whether it is treated as
the same license? Unlike the current situation with the BSD or MIT or
ISC licenses, when the Free Public License is published on the OSI
website there will not be a template copyright notice.)

> > 3) OSET Foundation Public License version 2.1
> > We don't quite have a canonical license document here yet (the license
> > that was approved was a conceptually-typo-corrected version of a
> > redline document).
> 
> Great - we’ll need the license text - do you want to just let us know when 
> you have the final version?

Sure, I'll have that ready soon.

Thanks,
Richard
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Re: New OSI-approved licenses

[Richard Fontana]

On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 01:32:44AM -0500, Richard Fontana wrote:
> > > 2) Free Public License 1.0.0
> > > Text of approved license contained within:
> > > https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2015-August/001104.html
> > 
> >  We have added as of v2.2 - http://spdx.org/licenses/0BSD.html -  although 
> > it was submitted using a different name as suggested by the submitter (who 
> > I think said he authored the license… or at least seemed to know a lot 
> > about it’s origins and the suggested name, which we went with - see 
> > http://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx-legal/2015-June/001443.html for that 
> > thread).
> > 
> > Would the OSI oppose the name we already went with??
> 
> Hmm, I think this is really a case of two people independently
> inventing approximately the same thing at about the same time, where
> 'invention' means removing some language from an existing short
> license.

Looks like Rob Landley was using it a year or more earlier:
https://lwn.net/Articles/608082/

Decided to copy in Rob Landley here. Rob: the license contained herein
https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review/2015-August/001104.html
was recently approved by the Open Source Initiative under the name
'Free Public License 1.0.0', and it has only now come to light (for
me, or anyone associated with the OSI) that you have been using an
essentially identical license (apart from presence/absence of an
initial copyright notice) which you call 'Zero Clause BSD'.

Richard

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