Die 30. 03. 16 et hora 11.12.46 Sam Ellis quoted this “NoNuclear” license: > “You acknowledge that this software is not designed, licensed or intended > for use in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear > facility.”.
Matija: > FWIW, this would most probably fail the freedom 0 of the Free Software > definition – the freedom of everyone to run it – and be considered a “further > restriction”. Phil: > I agree with your assessment; it is restrictive. On the other hand it seems > to me that in this case the restriction is a practical one motivated by > liability reasons, not a philosophical one which I believe the freedoms are > intended to protect. To me, that’s a distinction without a difference. *All* license selections are based on philosophical reasons; there are no exceptions. Even saying you’re “just making a pragmatic decision” is itself a philosophy. If the license just said, “You acknowledge that this software is not designed or intended for use…” then I could see the claim that it’s primarily just liability protection, but the license text specifically says it is not *licensed* for a use. That goes *way* beyond just warning users for purposes of liability protection - that forbids *use*. This example is *not* an open source software license, or a Free software license. It fundamentally fails the Free Software Definition and it fundamentally fails the Open Source Definition. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. But I *do* think it’s reasonable to have SPDX license identifiers for licenses like this. I wouldn’t want such a license in my dependency tree, so having a specific identifier for it (so I can discuss and avoid it) is very valuable. Too many people would label that a "BSD-ish" license; the more exacting SPDX license id could help me identify and root that license out. I think the problem is that the “SPDX License List” is *NOT*, at this point, a list of open source software licenses. Perhaps that was its original purpose, but things have changed. Instead, it’s a list of useful shorthand license identifiers, for use in license expressions, which are primarily open source software licenses or licenses similar to open source software licenses. This was made clear in the text shown earlier: > the SPDX Legal Team does not require (1) strict compliance… Since the SPDX legal team isn't requiring strict compliance with the definitions of "open source software" or "Free software", then it should *NOT* be making any statements that imply that it is. Besides, there are at least 4 other groups that do that kind of license analysis to determine if a license meets the OSD or FSD: OSI, FSF, Debian, and Fedora. Instead of redoing their analysis, the SPDX legal team should focus on determining canonical texts, determining what is the "same" or "different", and giving each license a unique canonical license identifier (with matching license text). That is a very *valuable* service. I recommend that the "SPDX License List" text be changed from: > The SPDX License List is a list of commonly found open source licenses and > exceptions for the purposes of being able to easily and efficiently identify > such licenses and exceptions in an SPDX document (or elsewhere)... to: > The SPDX License List is a list of commonly found licenses and exceptions, > including many open source software licenses and licenses similar to open > source software licenses, for the purposes of being able to easily and > efficiently identify such licenses and exceptions in an SPDX document (or > elsewhere)... You might also rename the "SPDX License List" to the "SPDX License Identifier List". --- David A. Wheeler _______________________________________________ Spdx-legal mailing list Spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org https://lists.spdx.org/mailman/listinfo/spdx-legal
