As non lawyer to non-lawyer, I had a similar read at first, but the word “licensed” in there gave me pause. I’m interested in the lawyers’ take, but still feel that License List purposes we have luxury of not having to resolve whether it meets the strict definition.
From: <spdx-legal-boun...@lists.spdx.org<mailto:spdx-legal-boun...@lists.spdx.org>> on behalf of Philippe Ombredanne <pombreda...@nexb.com<mailto:pombreda...@nexb.com>> Date: Thursday, March 31, 2016 at 3:12 AM To: Sam Ellis <sam.el...@arm.com<mailto:sam.el...@arm.com>> Cc: "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 License/Exception Request: BSD-3-Clause-NoNuclear On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 1:12 PM, Sam Ellis <sam.el...@arm.com<mailto:sam.el...@arm.com>> wrote: Please consider adding the following license to the SPDX license list: Full name: BSD 3-clause w/nuclear disclaimer Short identifier: BSD-3-Clause-NoNuclear URL: http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/licenses/bsd.txt OSI approved: No Explanation: This is a variant of BSD-3-Clause commonly found in Java-related code released by Sun/Oracle, with a warranty disclaimer at the bottom regarding nuclear use: “You acknowledge that this software is not designed, licensed or intended for use in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility.”. One way to handle this is to add it as a new license type, and another would be to capture the nuclear portion as an exception. In the following two examples, there is also a minor difference in the first few sentences of the warranty section, so if these are deemed significant then it might need two separate licenses, and if insignificant then it might be possible to handle these via a template. Note the licensor differs in these cases, so that needs to be templated too. A plain text copy of the license is also attached to this email. I am not a lawyer and I see several claiming on this list that this license would not comply with various FLOSS definitions. But how this extra clause would be a use restriction of any kind? If I am running a nuclear facility in my backyard and I want to use a fine piece of code using this license, am I restricted in anyway to do so by this license? The way I read this is that I am not restricted at all. I just need to acknowledge that this was not created for this purpose, whatever this means practically. And then I can run my power plant happily thereafter with this code. So at best this may be an extra warranty disclaimer and warranties are disclaimed already anyway. Now there may be other constraints that apply to me outside of this license: I may be obliged by a regulation or law to use software that was designed for this nuclear purpose. But this is not part of this license at all. So IMHO even in the field of nuclear facilities, there is no direct usage restriction in *this* license. Does this make sense legally? FWIW, this license is recognized by Debian as a BSD and used for packages in the main archive. -- Cordially Philippe Ombredanne _______________________________________________ Spdx-legal mailing list Spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org<mailto:Spdx-legal@lists.spdx.org> https://lists.spdx.org/mailman/listinfo/spdx-legal
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