Well, I have finally plowed through all nineteen pages of the Adaptive Public License, and here are my comments on it.
This is a semi-reciprocal license like the MPL: you must share changes by issuing derivative works under the APL, but APL works can be embedded into a Larger Work (capitalized terms are defined in the APL) issued under any license. This is a family of licenses, with the following optional features: 1) The Original Contributor can choose to license patents (in which case all Subsequent Contributors must also); by default, patents are not licensed. 2) The Original Contributor (but not Subsequent Contributors) can require an attribution to be displayed in a splash-screen or similarly. 3) The APL requires publication of changes, but not if they are used only internally and not distributed to Third Parties. The Original Contributor gets to choose the definition of Third Parties from five given choices; by default, the broadest definition is used (thus maximally restricting what counts as internal deployment). SHOW-STOPPER: Though the APL is MPL-ish in nature, it has a few provisions modeled after the GPL, but intensified in such a way that I believe they violate OSD #1. In particular, Section 3.2 requires that any distribution of Executable code charge no more than the distribution cost. This means that binary packages of the APLed work can't be put on CD-ROMs that are sold above cost, as most distro makers do. We have held in the past that this sort of thing makes a license not open source. Section 3.3(b) makes the same requirement, but only in respect of source code distributed separately from Executable code. The GPL also makes this restriction, and it is a reasonable one: it prevents people from freely distributing the Executable form and holding the source for ransom. (This could only happen in practice in the case of a Subsequent Work.) LESSER POINTS: The license should make clear that CD and DVD distribution count as Electronic Distribution, though they are not performed over a wire. The requirement to make the source of Subsequent Works available for three full years in all cases except internal deployment is burdensome. CONCLUSION: If the offending language in Section 3.2 is removed, the AFL should be passed as an open source license. -- "By Elbereth and Luthien the Fair, you shall [EMAIL PROTECTED] have neither the Ring nor me!" --Frodo http://www.ccil.org/~cowan -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3