Hi Josh, > Wanted to quickly share with you all that, with your encouragement, I've > continued > pursuing BTC License in hopes of garnering enough adoption to eventually make > it > a viable SPDX License List contender.
Thank you for the link to the blog. Whilst gaining adoption certainly helps to get onto the SPDX license list, it is not the only consideration. The fundamental blocker here is that BTC is substantially identical to ISC and therefore from the SPDX point of view they are the same license. Since we may have different understanding of the word license it may help to consider the issue using different terms: copyright notice to mean the lines of the form ‘Copyright © ….’, and legal terms to mean the listing of rights and obligations in order to use the software. SPDX exists to help make it easier to comply with the legal terms when using open source software. It does so by cataloguing the common sets of legal terms found in open source code and ensuring that each unique set of legal terms has a unique identifier and name. The common identifier means we can communicate easily and concisely amongst each other, knowing that we all refer to the same legal terms. Requiring unique legal terms for each identifier is an important property, as it helps us to avoid unnecessary legal work when reviewing legal terms that are identical. SPDX does not consider the copyright notice to be relevant for the purposes of identification, because generally the exact names/authors in the copyright notice do not affect the rights and obligations that exist to a user of that software. Thus, when SPDX uses the term license, it principally means the legal terms, and the existence and form of any copyright notices is less important. From your perspective, it sounds like you consider the uniqueness of a license to take into account both the legal terms as well as the specific form of the copyright notice. This is a perfectly valid alternative view point, but we must realise that this differs from SPDX, and unless somebody changes their definition then no progress will be made. SPDX has some good reasons for choosing this particular stance, as outlined above, so I think it is unlikely a change will come from SPDX 😊 Return to your idea, allowing users of software to financially compensate developers is a worthy goal. However, I am not convinced that introducing a newly named license that differs only from ISC by copyright notice is the best way to achieve this. The software world already has too many licenses and the decision to introduce a new one in my opinion should really only be done as a last resort. Every differently named license adds more work for users to determine legal compliance (even if only to check that the legal terms are the same as terms that have already been reviewed). What are the alternatives? I think that rather than pitching this as a new license, just instead pitch it as a different form of copyright notice. An obvious benefit of doing so is that this can be applied to any license, not just ISC. Whether the form of copyright notice proposed actually fulfils any legal requirements for such notices ought to be considered and is something that I cannot advise on. Additional or alternative ways to apply the idea are to list such details in the AUTHORS or MAINTAINERS files that accompany many projects or on the project website. I think the idea is more likely to take off if it can be more broadly applied in different ways. Sam. IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any medium. Thank you.
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