On Wed, May 22, 2019 at 10:19 PM Rick Moen <[email protected]> wrote:
> A limiting example can illustrate why: Today, I declare that a codebase > is 2-clause BSD licensed. I post tarballs with compiled binaries. > [...] > > Is that software covered by an open source licence? Absolutely. Is the > software open source? Not really until someone finds a source tree. > Why? Because OSD #2 specifically forbids it: software whose source is not available not Open Source by definition. > Hypothetical #2: Now that someone has found the missing source code, it > transpires that its algorithms are encumbered by strongly asserted > patent rights (let's say, 'RAND' terms) in the Kingdom of Ruritania, and > nowhere else. The newly discovered Ruthenian patent will expire > December 31, 2019. > > With this revelation, is my open source code _still_ open source? Well, it's at least more debatable, because there is no clause like #2 that relates to the absence of patent rights. There probably doesn't exist source code against which *some* patent claim can't be asserted, and whether it succeeds has more to do with who can afford to pay their lawyers longer. Latveria obviously doesn't have submarines, since Doomstadt is the eighth city of the Siebenburg (Saxon Transylvania). John Cowan http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan [email protected] My confusion is rapidly waxing For XML Schema's too taxing: I'd use DTDs / If they had local trees -- I think I best switch to RELAX NG.
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