at the beginning of august, I posted a custom liscence for OSI approval.
since most of the members where on vacation, I repost it now in order to discuss it, improve it and make it OSI compliant.
the previous name of this liscence is PAL, which I moved to TESTAMENT, since this name suits more.
please can you review it?
I'm not an organisation, I'm simply a developer that want to share it's work but wanting to keep some control on the project.
as stated in the liscence the main base is the artistic liscence.
thanks a lot for your time used to make this liscence OSI (else I can't use sourceforge services anymore)
The TESTAMENT
Preamble
this liscence is a mix of artistic liscence, the mozilla public liscence and my
additions (those can be found on www.opensource.org)
The intent of this document is to state the conditions under which a Package may
be copied, such that the Copyright Holder maintains some semblance of artistic
control over the development of the package, while giving the users of the
package the right to use and distribute the Package in a more-or-less
customary fashion, plus the right to make reasonable modifications.
This liscence try
* to prevent the "artists" from too restrictive limitations,
* fix a maintainer succession mechanism that prevent a maintainer to be
"ejected"
* provide a mutual linkage mechanism with "forkers"
Definitions:
* "Package" refers to the collection of files distributed by the Copyright
Holder, and derivatives of that collection of files created through
textual modification.
* "Standard Version" refers to such a Package if it has not been modified,
or has been modified in accordance with the wishes of the Copyright
Holder.
* "Copyright Holder" is whoever is named in the copyright or copyrights for
the package.
* "Maintainer" is the means each entity that at a certain point of time in
in charge of coordination
* "Contributor" means each entity that creates or contributes to the creation
of Modifications.
* "You" means an individual or a legal entity exercising rights under, and
complying with all of the terms of, this License or a future version
of this
License. For legal entities, "You" includes any entity which controls,
is
controlled by, or is under common control with You. For purposes of
this
definition, "control" means
(a) the power, direct or indirect, to cause the direction or
management of
such entity, whether by contract or otherwise, or
(b) ownership of fifty percent (50%) or more of the outstanding shares
or
beneficial ownership of such entity.
* "Reasonable copying fee" is whatever you can justify on the basis of media
cost, duplication charges, time of people involved, and so on. (You
will not
be required to justify it to the Copyright Holder, but only to the
computing
community at large as a market that must bear the fee.)
* "Freely Available" means that no fee is charged for the item itself, though
there may be fees involved in handling the item. It also means that
recipients of the item may redistribute it under the same conditions
they
received it.
* "original author whishes" means a file where the original author has written
his whishes concerning the evolution of the software.
* "orignal" means the files that you have obtained
* "independent CVS" means a system that is able to keep history of
modifications on which the maintainer don't have all the rigths (such
as
file deletion). a good exemple is the sourceforge CVS.
* "forkers" means a person/group/legal entity that use 5.c) or 5.a) or 6.a) or
6.c) of this liscence
* "end user" a user that use a package build on this work (larger work, the
binairies of this package) in short a non developing entity
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1. You may make and give away verbatim copies of the source form of the Standard
Version of this Package without restriction, provided that you duplicate all
of the original copyright notices and associated disclaimers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
2. You must include a copy of the original author whishes in the distribution and
maintainer may modify it according :
* the original text must remain intact
* your addition to the text must be easely identifiable as maintainer
modification
* only the maintainer is allowed to modify this file
* the whishes must not prevent the use, and not prevent the software to evolve
and not prevent the software from being pulled out the public domain
* this file must contain at least the name of the maintainer even if he don't
want to make addition to whishes (this is for keeping trace of
successive
maintainer for 11. )
this ensure that things forgotten by previous maintainer be fixed, while still
allowing the maintainers/author to prevent the project of overgrowing. this is
to encourage people making small, precise but usable applications/libraries
(for exemple a math librairy should not display text).
---------------------------------------------------------------------
3.* You are strongly encouraged to make additionnal work that complete this package
and distribute it on the side of this package,
* these packages have no limitations except the one given by their licenses.
* these works can be "larger" work, additional functionalities...
* in case of larger work you must inform the end user of use of this package
---------------------------------------------------------------------
4. You may apply bug fixes, portability fixes and other modifications derived
from the Public Domain or from the Copyright Holder.
* A Package modified in such a way shall still be considered the Standard
Version _as_long_these_modification_comply_to_original_author_whishes.
* these modifications should be submitted to the maintainer which MUST accept
them and include them into the standard version.
* the maintainer is responsible of keeping tracks of the modifications
* for patch : the patch file must be copied into a directory (this
means that
the contributor has the work to make it indentifiable has his
work if he
whish so)
* for members of the team that maintain the work : an independent CVS
will
record the modifications
4.1. The Initial Developer hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free,
non-exclusive license, subject to third party intellectual property claims:
(a) to use, reproduce, modify, display, perform, sublicense and distribute
the Original Code (or portions thereof) with or
without Modifications,
or as part of a Larger Work; and
(b) under patents now or hereafter owned or controlled by Initial Developer,
to make, have made, use and sell ("Utilize") the Original Code
(or portions thereof), but solely to the
extent that any such patent is
reasonably necessary to enable You to Utilize
the Original Code
(or portions thereof) and not to any greater
extent that may be
necessary to Utilize further Modifications or
combinations.
4.2. Each Contributor hereby grants You a world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive
license, subject to third party intellectual property claims:
(a) to use, reproduce, modify, display, perform, sublicense and
distribute
the Modifications created by such Contributor (or portions
thereof)
either on an unmodified basis, with other
Modifications, as Covered Code
or as part of a Larger Work; and
(b) under patents now or hereafter owned or controlled by
Contributor, to
Utilize the Contributor Version (or portions
thereof), but solely to the
extent that any such patent is reasonably
necessary to enable You to
Utilize the Contributor Version (or portions
thereof), and not to any
greater extent that may be necessary to
Utilize further Modifications or
combinations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
5. You may otherwise modify your copy of this Package in any way, provided that
you insert a prominent notice in each changed file stating how and when you
changed that file, and provided that you do at least ONE of the following:
a)place your modifications in the Public Domain or otherwise make them
Freely Available, such as by posting said modifications to
Usenet or an
equivalent medium, or placing the modifications on a major
archive site
such as ftp.uu.net, or by allowing the Copyright Holder to
include your
modifications in the Standard Version of the Package.
you must inform the maintainer of such modifications.
b)use the modified Package only within your corporation or organization.
c)rename any non-standard executables so the names do not conflict with
standard executables, which must also be provided, and provide
a separate
manual page for each non-standard executable that clearly documents
how it
differs from the Standard Version. the name must use as base
name the
original name
d)make other distribution arrangements with the Copyright Holder.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. You may distribute the programs of this Package in object code or executable
form, provided that you do at least ONE of the following:
a)distribute a Standard Version of the executables and library files,
together with instructions (in the manual page or equivalent) on where to
get the Standard Version.
b)accompany the distribution with the machine-readable source of the Package
with your modifications.
c)accompany any non-standard executables with their corresponding Standard
Version executables, giving the non-standard executables non-standard
names,
and clearly documenting the differences in manual pages (or equivalent),
together with instructions on where to get the Standard Version.
d) make other distribution arrangements with the Copyright Holder.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
7.* You may charge a reasonable copying fee for any distribution of this Package.
* You may charge any fee you choose for support of this Package.
* You may not charge a fee for this Package itself. However, you may
distribute this Package
in aggregate with other (possibly commercial) programs as part of a
larger
(possibly commercial) software distribution provided that you do not
advertise
this Package as a product of your own.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
8.The scripts and library files supplied as input to or produced as output from
the programs of this Package do not automatically fall under the copyright of
this Package, but belong to whomever generated them, and may be sold
commercially, and may be aggregated with this Package.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
9.subroutines supplied by you and linked into this Package shall not
be considered part of this Package.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
10. The name of the Copyright Holder may not be used to endorse or promote products
derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
11. maintainer succession matter :
some required definitions :
* "small projects" means project that contain less than 2000 code lines
* "code lines" means sources striped of comments/includes/text destined to
be read by a user, configuration/documentation excluded.
* "large projects" is the prjects that can't be caracterized as small one
* "modification" means addition,removal but not move of source, in case
of move followed by a addition/removal the only changes that are taken into
account is the addition/removal
you are granted a right to become the maintainer of standard package according
:
a) the old maintainer isn't reachable
b) the old maintainer can still retake the maintainer title as long as :
* the source's code lines hasn't been modified more than 30% on large
projects
* on small projects there is no limitations
c) the liscence isn't modified (but still can be completed in a way that the
previous maintainer rights aren't decreased)
When you become the maintainer you inherit all the project related material
(such as websites, forums...)
when maintainer resurection
You must restitute all the rights to previous maintainer (this include website
ownership, forums...)
You become automatically team member with rights to influence the way the
software will evolve :
* each request sumbmitted must be done publicly
* they will receive an answer publicly
* this answer must contain an explaination why the request as been
denied
* this explaination must be based on technical issue (no "I don't like
this"
allowed)
In all case the mechanism must be performed in a friendly fashion : you are
not here to crush each other but to improve the software... remember you
have a common interest in the project!
in case of non friendly fashion the "rule breaker" (the maintainer or the
old maintainer) will lose all the rights related to this paragraph and can
loose it's status however it's strongly recommended to achieve a
compromise
as it will prevent forks (which are against end-user)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
12. forkers related maters
people using 5.a) 5.c) 6.a) 6.C) are called forkers
for the end user sake we must warn it of presence of both parties (so he can
make choices with knowledge) for this, the current maintainer of this package
and the forkers must provide linkages on their web :
* both parties MUST have a link to other part
* the link must be visible easely (1 link max from the top of the site)
* in case their is no maintainer you should resonably think of taking the
maintainership
* both parties must inform other of changes related to web hosting.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
13. THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES,
INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
The End
