Subject: [TOOLS-DEVELOPMENT] Jorges OSL Comments

From: Ray Pelletier <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2007 10:24:00 -0400

My preference is generally to go with as simple a license as possible.
For general Open Source use, the MIT or BSD licenses are very good,
simple choices.  The only reason NOT to go with one of these is if you
want to impose special restrictions.  In particular, when Ray says
"freely distribute", do you mean "distribute without restriction" or
"distribute for free".  If the former, then MIT or BSD would be fine.
If the latter, then you will need to customize one of these licenses or
go with something else.

I have reservations about OSL for a number of reasons:

-- its coverage of "Derivative Works", which is reminiscent of the GPL
(and may make some companies nervous),

-- the "warranty" that license (IETF Trust?) would be required to make
under Section 7,

-- defensive suspension clause in Section 10 (which will potentially
limit widespread use of the software).

Were there specific reasons that you picked OSL?  Maybe I don't
appreciate the benefits that you see here.

Regards,
Jorge

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:27:08 +0200

> (and may make some companies nervous),

I don't think we care in this case do we? This is not like a small fix to
Linux contaminating a company's whole software product. This is for
small isolated tools with very little commercial value.

> -- the "warranty" that license (IETF Trust?) would be required to make

Yes, we would have to be certain that the original authors have given\
consent. No way out of that - but would we want to avoid that anyway?

> limit widespread use of the software).

Yes. That isn't really a problem in this case, since we care about the
s/w being available to the IETF community and to our contractors,
but don't care about the rest of the world.

    Brian