----- Original Message ----- From: Ken Arromdee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: November 15, 1999 12:40 PM Subject: Re: Apple Public Source License - is it OSI certified? > Personally I object to the APSL because of Apple's right to withdraw it > if there is a claim of infringement. The problem is that this means that > the janitor's mother-in-law could say "I think the whole thing infringes" > and the entire source code would be withdrawn; the license doesn't require > that the claim be one which is made in court. (And the clause requiring > Apple to un-withdraw the rights if they win in court doesn't apply if it never > _goes_ to court.) > Paragraph 9.1 of the APSL states that they may suspend your rights to the *Affected Original Code*. This means withdrawing only the code under contention, and that Apple cannot widthdraw the entire code base, only their original contributions. Bruce Perens writes: "If termination due to an infringement claim is to be allowed at all, it should be explicitly limited to the particular source-code lines that are considered to infringe upon an existing patent. This would make it possible for the free software community to "write around the problem" and create a non-infringing version. " But this issue raises an interesting point: if my company releases some source code which is later found to infringe a third-party's copyright, I clearly cannot continue licensing the infringing code. Furthermore, *you* may not be able to continue to use or redistribute the affected code anyways, so Apple's right to withdraw its license may not be such a big deal. IMO, current Open Source licenses are vague regarding the results of infringement suits on Open Source code. Raymond Luk [EMAIL PROTECTED]
