From: Larry Rosen > > You are obligated under two licenses, one from the licensor > in Taiwan > > and the other from the licensor in France. Nothing unusual > here with > > respect to the OSL. > > From: David Woolley [mailto:david@;djwhome.demon.co.uk] > Two licenses with different effective terms; there is not one > OSL, but one for each of the 100+ countries in the world. It > means you need to > know whose bit of the code you are actually modifying, > something that, in real life, is likely to be difficult to > do, unless the licence requires that derivative works only be > distributed as patches to the virgin code.
Huh? I meant two instantiations of the same license. What makes you think the terms of the OSL are different, or will be interpreted differently, in those other countries? It is true that the OSL -- and all other licenses -- must be interpreted in light of the laws of the jurisdiction in which the case is brought. Will every court interpret every license the same way? Of course not. Even the GPL hasn't been tested in any jurisdiction. While the Berne Convention is adopted almost everywhere, there are local differences with respect even to copyright law. For example, some here have argued that the term "derivative work" means different things in different jurisdictions, and that term is all over the GPL too. What's the specific problem with enforceability of the OSL in Taiwan? France? UK? Please don't try to make the lives of open source licensors and licensees seem any more difficult than it needs to be. In most places around the world where it matters, open source software can be licensed consistently. I challenge everyone to identify any part of the OSL (or AFL) that is illegal in any country or will be enforced locally in a way different from the consensus expectations of the open source community. If we've got problems with those licenses, help me fix them, or at least let's warn people not to license software from "The State of Unfreedonia." /Larry Rosen -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
