Wow! I must add that I do not think I would have seen a comment like this posted by Bruce Perens 10 years ago. Of course, I completely agree with the sentiment.
Rod Dixon Sent from my iPhone On Dec 16, 2011, at 6:24 PM, Bruce Perens <br...@perens.com> wrote: > OSI should deny certification of this license for the reasons already > discussed, and because: > > It is not the product of a legal professional. > > I've been calling these "crayon licenses", taking a line from an old Monty > Python sketch about a dog license with the word "dog" crossed out and "cat" > written in, in crayon. > > Crayon, in this case, is a metaphor for the poor legal qualification of the > authors. Crayon licenses show a lack of understanding of copyright law, > license structure, and most important: what would happen if the license were > to be interpreted in court. We had an excuse for writing such things in the > early days of Open Source when no lawyer would help us. We no longer have > that excuse. > > Crayon licenses harm Open Source developers because they don't do what the > developer expects. My most poignant experience with one was working on the > appeal of Jacobsen v. Katzer. Bob Jacobsen, an innocent Open Source > developer, essentially lost his case in the lower court due to the poor > drafting of the Artistic License 1.0, one of the initial Open Source > licenses, when the judge found it to be tantamount to the public domain. This > loss would also have been very damaging to Open Source in general, had it > been allowed to stand. Bob suffered very significant damage from this case. > We are very fortunate that he persevered, and that we were able to overturn > the decision on appeal. > > OSI should no longer approve crayon licenses, due to the potential they have > to damage our own community. > > Thanks > > Bruce Perens > <bruce.vcf> > _______________________________________________ > License-discuss mailing list > License-discuss@opensource.org > http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
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