To OSI License Discussion subscribers,
From: Russell Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
I'm going to propose a change the Open Source Definition at our board meeting next Thursday. It is simply this:We need to clarify to what extent this goes.
0) A license may not restrict use or modification of a lawfully obtained copy of a work.
Anybody have problems with this? Does this have any problems?
If this is simply stating that an OSI-certified license must allow people to use and modify copies of Open Source works they have received lawfully, then it won't make a large difference to the existing license landscape, since no-one here that I know of would give props to a license that contained such restrictions.
If, however, this clause goes further into saying that no conditions can be imposed on the use or modification of copies of Open Source works that people have received lawfully, then we have to contend with a number of license invalidations (by this I mean licenses no longer being OSD-compliant). As has already been noted, the GPL and LGPL licenses, which are perhaps the most widely-used of all, could be invalidated by this.
Perhaps adding the term 'reasonable' to the clause would help. However, this means that, in addition to evaluating the terms of submitted licenses and their implications, we would also have to evaluate the intended application of those licenses. I doubt that we could agree on whether or not that falls within the purview of this list.
We are back at the familiar crossroads, where one path leads to the moral high ground, and the other leads to practical feasibility. Until this issue is clarified, we won't know which path to take, but I suspect the latter is the well-beaten one.
Cheers, Nathan.
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