in the absence of a license statement on a license itself, then the license can only be re-used under the terms of fair use, just like anything else that is published without a license?
Grahame On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 5:44 AM, Lawrence Rosen <[email protected]> wrote: > A recent thread on the legal-discuss@ list at Apache asked whether someone > could take the Apache License 2.0 and revise it for their own purposes. > After a side trip I took into the esoteric question about whether a > copyright license could itself be copyrighted, I bring the discussion to > this license-discuss@ list at OSI along with a bit of history. (I’m copying > the legal-discuss@apache list only for closing the circle.) > > > > In the olden days, open source licenses usually contained a copyright > statement and the identification of a “license steward”. This person or > organization (e.g., RMS/FSF for the GPL licenses; IBM for the CPL; and > Mitchell Baker at what was then the Mozilla Project for the MPL) reputedly > had exclusive control over future license versions. Indeed, Mitchell took > offense at that time because, without her permission, I had revised the MPL > license into a version I thought was easier to read and understand (the > Jabber license, since deprecated). > > > > Whether or not the license steward role was legally significant, it > certainly raised control issues in the community and created animosity over > license language purity even where personal offense was not intended. Even > though the goal was to change the license for some presumably good legal > effect, some people still took offense when their “own” words were changed. > > > > When I released the AFL/OSL licenses in early drafts, I omitted any > declaration of license steward but I asserted with a copyright notice that I > was the author of those licenses. Several people (including, I remember, > Mitchell Baker) complained that I was claiming control over a license that > people might want to enhance or change. Nobody trusted that I personally (or > my heirs) would forever have the good of the community at heart. > > > > I agreed with them. That was my incentive to write section 16 of those > licenses, which declared authorship but disclaimed control over changes. > This section 16 also carefully prohibited what was then characterized as > “relicensing” of existing works; declared that the name of the license was > exclusive; and reminded the world that only OSI could bless a revised > license as “open source”. > > > > Here’s what section 16 of the OSL says: > > > > 16) Modification of This License. This License is Copyright © 2005 Lawrence > Rosen. Permission is granted to copy, distribute, or communicate this > License without modification. Nothing in this License permits You to modify > this License as applied to the Original Work or to Derivative Works. > However, You may modify the text of this License and copy, distribute or > communicate your modified version (the "Modified License") and apply it to > other original works of authorship subject to the following conditions: (i) > You may not indicate in any way that your Modified License is the "Open > Software License" or "OSL" and you may not use those names in the name of > your Modified License; (ii) You must replace the notice specified in the > first paragraph above with the notice "Licensed under <insert your license > name here>" or with a notice of your own that is not confusingly similar to > the notice in this License; and (iii) You may not claim that your original > works are open source software unless your Modified License has been > approved by Open Source Initiative (OSI) and You comply with its license > review and certification process. > > > > Most licenses nowadays omit declarations of license stewardship and don’t > even mention the ownership of future derivative versions. For example – and > this was the gist of the question on the Apache legal-discuss@ list – the > Apache License 2.0 says nothing about the right to create derivative > versions of the license. > > > > In this ambiguous situation, what is the default rule for derivative works > of open source licenses? My assertion is that all open source licenses may > freely be copied or modified into different versions; permission from a > license steward is never necessary to do that because these are functional > legal documents for which copyright protection is inappropriate. (In an > email at Apache, I characterized my copyright notice on my own licenses as > “chutzpah”.) Without OSI approval, however, nobody responsible will call the > modified license an “open source license”. > > > > Do you agree? > > > > /Larry > > > > Lawrence Rosen > > Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm (www.rosenlaw.com) > > 3001 King Ranch Rd., Ukiah, CA 95482 > > Office: 707-485-1242 > > > > > _______________________________________________ > License-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss > -- ----- http://www.healthintersections.com.au / [email protected] / +61 411 867 065 _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
