6 ms·

Some Notes for License Submitters

39 points by jashkenas 8y ago

jashkenas 8y ago
Since there appears to be interest (hurrah!), some highlights from the thread: Perens: "There are already too many Open Source licenses. If we never accepted another, that would not be a particularly bad thing." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003371.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Mitchell: "Plain English legal drafting is making inspiring headway, as a craft. Open source licensing shouldn't cut itself out of the benefits." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003372.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Tzeng: "It strikes me that there's no real reason for the rest of us to bother being here if the "old hands" decide what to do regardless of the consensus of the list. Evidently any license submission can be delayed indefinitely." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003375.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Randall: "But, one thing open source and free software have demonstrated is that chaotic, rowdy groups of humans can accomplish amazing things together, even despite (and sometimes because of) all their imperfections. Please be patient with us, but persistent. I promise you will get an answer." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003410.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Perens: "There aren't that many actually useful variations on the licenses that actually pass the OSD. There are actually only three useful licenses, a gift-style, a sharing-with-rules-style, and something in between. Given Affero and GPL3 terms on those three, essentially all purposes for Open Source can be carried out. All else is embellishment." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003413.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Villa: "I'm pretty sure that, contra Bruce, it isn't OSI's position that open source needs to stay forever trapped in amber, but a reasonable outside observer (like Kyle!) could certainly conclude otherwise." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003418.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Fontana: "I'm generally struck by how conservative, technically and perhaps legally clueless and hidebound contemporary proprietary software license agreements tend to be - though not in the same way as open source licenses, which are vulnerable to similar criticisms." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003419.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Perens (quoting): " > A bolder new license might consider: What does an economically viable open source look like? My usual answer for this is that if you have to ask how you're going to make money, you're the wrong person to make Open Source. Nowhere in the mission of OSI is any mandate to provide authors with a viable business method." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003423.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Mitchell: "Hacker-types still favor MIT/BSD over Apache 2.0. Facebook followed suit after the PATENTS tragicomedy. If you don't trust FSF---or OSI for that matter---and you don't have a legal department large enough for an open licensing wonk, you want a license you can read. You want a purpose-built tool that directly expresses your purpose, and little more." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003425.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Perens: "We are asking of you only one thing. Go forth and use your license. We are not stopping you. Just don't call it Open Source." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003426.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o...
- andrewbinstock 8y ago
  Open source licensing is vastly too complicated. IMHO it needs a menu-like system similar to the Creative Commons options. I think OSI should bite the bullet and lead the way on this change: work with the community to define the options and then say that all future licenses will use the menu system.
- kemitchell 8y ago
  FYI: The "Mitchell" quoted above and the "Kyle" mentioned above are the same dog.
- MrBingley 8y ago
  > My usual answer for this is that if you have to ask how you're going to make money, you're the wrong person to make Open Source. Nowhere in the mission of OSI is any mandate to provide authors with a viable business method. Indeed, it is a principle of open source that people can freeload off your work. As soon as an author restricts their work to non-commercial use or commercial-with-a-fee (which is entirely reasonable), it is no longer considered "open source". > We are asking of you only one thing. Go forth and use your license. We are not stopping you. Just don't call it Open Source. Go ahead, call it open source. The OSI has no trademark over the term, and the idea that their narrow definition is the only "official" one is a load of crap. There is plenty of room for what constitutes open source that doesn't fall underneath their umbrella. Edit: I understand this opinion is controversial. If you disagree, please comment and explain why.
  - kemitchell 8y ago
    > Indeed, it is a principle of open source that people can freeload off your work. As soon as an author restricts their work to non-commercial use or commercial-with-a-fee (which is entirely reasonable), it is no longer considered "open source". I'd challenge that. Under copyleft and other "share-alike" or "reciprocal" licenses, loading isn't free for everyone, in particular those who create software. There's a cost in sharing source and rights for new code. I think the community as a whole has forgotten that, because copyleft licenses have fallen behind the times. With a glaring, unpatched vulnerability like the ASP loophole affecting most copyleft code, the terms of the licenses no longer implement the deal their authors wanted to make. Which is why I proposed the license in the second quote you pulled.
mabynogy 8y ago
Programmers should be paid for their work on OSS projects.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- kemitchell 8y ago
  That’s why I’m working on https://licensezero.com/ https://licensezero.com/!
  - ognarb 8y ago
    What's the difference between your licence and the licensing model of qt?
    - kemitchell 8y ago
      The strength of the share-alike requirements in the free, public license. I believe Qt us GPL, and partially LGPL. L0-9 (and a forthcoming evolution, the Parity public license) closes the ASP loophole, requires sharing of changes even if you avoid distribution, and covers programs written or improved with licenses developer tools. That makes the model work better, and for more kinds of software. The real difference, however, is making the kind of mode Trolltech and MySQL and other companies have run, and making it available to individual developers, on a turnkey basis. All you need is a Stripe account.
- pdfernhout 8y ago
  Or we could have a Basic Income for all so that anyone who wanted to create FOSS could without having to take a paying job. Or we could have better 3D printers, gardening robots, materials extractors, portable recycling equipment, and printable solar panels so that programmers making FOSS would not need to engage with the exchange economy much. Or we could expand the gift economy (which FOSS is part of) to more of the material world (e.g. Freecycle). Or the US government could repeal most drug laws and convert freed-up prisons into places where FOSS programmers or others who wanted to make free public digital works could hang out and get free room and board and so on (or maybe build nicer accommodations to the same goals). Or the filing or holding of non-freely-licensed copyrights by non-profits (e.g. most universities who already employ a lot of people to do programming) could be determined to be "self-dealing" by Congress or maybe just the IRS: https://pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html https://pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors... "Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations." Or in the absence of such a legal ruling, foundations and other donors could require grantees to sign a pledge to only create free and open source works: "Pledge to only fund and create free software and free content" https://pdfernhout.net/pledge-to-only-fund-and-create-free-works.html https://pdfernhout.net/pledge-to-only-fund-and-create-free-w... Or programmers could keep creating FOSS in their spare time both for its own sake and in the hopes the growing quantitative mass of FOSS eventually leads to a qualitative shift towards a post-scarcity society.

39 points by jashkenas 8y ago

Since there appears to be interest (hurrah!), some highlights from the thread: Perens: "There are already too many Open Source licenses. If we never accepted another, that would not be a particularly bad thing." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003371.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Mitchell: "Plain English legal drafting is making inspiring headway, as a craft. Open source licensing shouldn't cut itself out of the benefits." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003372.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Tzeng: "It strikes me that there's no real reason for the rest of us to bother being here if the "old hands" decide what to do regardless of the consensus of the list. Evidently any license submission can be delayed indefinitely." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003375.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Randall: "But, one thing open source and free software have demonstrated is that chaotic, rowdy groups of humans can accomplish amazing things together, even despite (and sometimes because of) all their imperfections. Please be patient with us, but persistent. I promise you will get an answer." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003410.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Perens: "There aren't that many actually useful variations on the licenses that actually pass the OSD. There are actually only three useful licenses, a gift-style, a sharing-with-rules-style, and something in between. Given Affero and GPL3 terms on those three, essentially all purposes for Open Source can be carried out. All else is embellishment." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003413.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Villa: "I'm pretty sure that, contra Bruce, it isn't OSI's position that open source needs to stay forever trapped in amber, but a reasonable outside observer (like Kyle!) could certainly conclude otherwise." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003418.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Fontana: "I'm generally struck by how conservative, technically and perhaps legally clueless and hidebound contemporary proprietary software license agreements tend to be - though not in the same way as open source licenses, which are vulnerable to similar criticisms." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003419.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Perens (quoting): " > A bolder new license might consider: What does an economically viable open source look like? My usual answer for this is that if you have to ask how you're going to make money, you're the wrong person to make Open Source. Nowhere in the mission of OSI is any mandate to provide authors with a viable business method." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003423.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Mitchell: "Hacker-types still favor MIT/BSD over Apache 2.0. Facebook followed suit after the PATENTS tragicomedy. If you don't trust FSF---or OSI for that matter---and you don't have a legal department large enough for an open licensing wonk, you want a license you can read. You want a purpose-built tool that directly expresses your purpose, and little more." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003425.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o... Perens: "We are asking of you only one thing. Go forth and use your license. We are not stopping you. Just don't call it Open Source." http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.opensource.org/2018-June/003426.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-review_lists.o...

andrewbinstock 8y ago
Open source licensing is vastly too complicated. IMHO it needs a menu-like system similar to the Creative Commons options. I think OSI should bite the bullet and lead the way on this change: work with the community to define the options and then say that all future licenses will use the menu system.
kemitchell 8y ago
FYI: The "Mitchell" quoted above and the "Kyle" mentioned above are the same dog.
MrBingley 8y ago
> My usual answer for this is that if you have to ask how you're going to make money, you're the wrong person to make Open Source. Nowhere in the mission of OSI is any mandate to provide authors with a viable business method. Indeed, it is a principle of open source that people can freeload off your work. As soon as an author restricts their work to non-commercial use or commercial-with-a-fee (which is entirely reasonable), it is no longer considered "open source". > We are asking of you only one thing. Go forth and use your license. We are not stopping you. Just don't call it Open Source. Go ahead, call it open source. The OSI has no trademark over the term, and the idea that their narrow definition is the only "official" one is a load of crap. There is plenty of room for what constitutes open source that doesn't fall underneath their umbrella. Edit: I understand this opinion is controversial. If you disagree, please comment and explain why.
- kemitchell 8y ago
  > Indeed, it is a principle of open source that people can freeload off your work. As soon as an author restricts their work to non-commercial use or commercial-with-a-fee (which is entirely reasonable), it is no longer considered "open source". I'd challenge that. Under copyleft and other "share-alike" or "reciprocal" licenses, loading isn't free for everyone, in particular those who create software. There's a cost in sharing source and rights for new code. I think the community as a whole has forgotten that, because copyleft licenses have fallen behind the times. With a glaring, unpatched vulnerability like the ASP loophole affecting most copyleft code, the terms of the licenses no longer implement the deal their authors wanted to make. Which is why I proposed the license in the second quote you pulled.

mabynogy 8y ago

Programmers should be paid for their work on OSS projects.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
kemitchell 8y ago
That’s why I’m working on https://licensezero.com/ https://licensezero.com/!
- ognarb 8y ago
  What's the difference between your licence and the licensing model of qt?
  - kemitchell 8y ago
    The strength of the share-alike requirements in the free, public license. I believe Qt us GPL, and partially LGPL. L0-9 (and a forthcoming evolution, the Parity public license) closes the ASP loophole, requires sharing of changes even if you avoid distribution, and covers programs written or improved with licenses developer tools. That makes the model work better, and for more kinds of software. The real difference, however, is making the kind of mode Trolltech and MySQL and other companies have run, and making it available to individual developers, on a turnkey basis. All you need is a Stripe account.
pdfernhout 8y ago
Or we could have a Basic Income for all so that anyone who wanted to create FOSS could without having to take a paying job. Or we could have better 3D printers, gardening robots, materials extractors, portable recycling equipment, and printable solar panels so that programmers making FOSS would not need to engage with the exchange economy much. Or we could expand the gift economy (which FOSS is part of) to more of the material world (e.g. Freecycle). Or the US government could repeal most drug laws and convert freed-up prisons into places where FOSS programmers or others who wanted to make free public digital works could hang out and get free room and board and so on (or maybe build nicer accommodations to the same goals). Or the filing or holding of non-freely-licensed copyrights by non-profits (e.g. most universities who already employ a lot of people to do programming) could be determined to be "self-dealing" by Congress or maybe just the IRS: https://pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html https://pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors... "Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations." Or in the absence of such a legal ruling, foundations and other donors could require grantees to sign a pledge to only create free and open source works: "Pledge to only fund and create free software and free content" https://pdfernhout.net/pledge-to-only-fund-and-create-free-works.html https://pdfernhout.net/pledge-to-only-fund-and-create-free-w... Or programmers could keep creating FOSS in their spare time both for its own sake and in the hopes the growing quantitative mass of FOSS eventually leads to a qualitative shift towards a post-scarcity society.