Moved to license-discuss, since it's not specifically about CAL. On 5/11/2019 1:48 PM, Smith, McCoy wrote: > > I’m with Luis on this. I laid out a test at CopyleftConf on how I > personally think the decision process should go: > > 1. Licenses should be evaluated solely on their fidelity to the > standards of freedom/openness, and the quality of their drafting in > meeting those standards > > a. Experimentation is not necessarily a bad thing > > b. Even failed experimentation > > 2. >
<snip> > I do think it ought to be made clear, though, whether Freedom Zero is > part of the OSD. I think we’ve had some debate in the past as to > whether it was (I think it is inherently so, but I don’t see that the > OSD makes that explicitly clear). If it is not, I don’t see how > that’s a valid reason to reject any license. > McCoy, A hard rule of "if you can't name an OSD the license doesn't meet it must be approved" doesn't leave room for stuff that we all clearly agree doesn't belong, what I think of as the Section 101 problem for open source licenses.* What if it's just outside the concept? Say I write a license that is a grant of all patent and copyright rights but as the only condition of the license you have to come to my house and feed my goats on Fridays. I don't see any definition that doesn't comply with, so it should be approved as an open source license? You can contort OSD 5 and 6 to justify it, "you're excluding people who don't live near you!/are allergic to goats!/are doing more socially beneficial things on Fridays!" As Richard Fontana said earlier in the CAL thread, you can rationalize OSD 5 & 6 to claim discrimination for any limitation. GPL discriminates against those who won't add their name to a modified file (Section 2(a)) because they are being harassed for working in free software. So I am skeptical of any theory under OSD 5 & 6 because you can always find someone who hypothetically is being discriminated against. How do you address the "outside of the scope" problem? Pam Pamela S. Chestek Chestek Legal PO Box 2492 Raleigh, NC 27602 919-800-8033 [email protected] www.chesteklegal.com *A reference to Section 101 of the Patent Act, which describes what is patentable subject matter. There is a school of thought that patents cannot be invalidated simply because they don't meet the requirements of Section 101.
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