[OpenLayers-Dev] MOTION: simplified license

[christopher.schmidt at nokia.com]

On May 10, 2011, at 2:28 PM, ext Schuyler Erle wrote:

> I am +100 on this. :) Do the CLAs permit us to simply relicense by consensus of the steering committee?

"2. Grant of Copyright License.  Subject to the terms and conditions of
   this Agreement, You hereby grant to the Maintainer and to
   recipients of software distributed by the Maintainer a perpetual,
   worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable
   copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of,
   publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your
   Contributions and such derivative works."

In other words: the OpenLayers project has a right to give out the
contributions that are made in any reasonable way. The primary limit
on that is:

"In return, the Maintainer shall not use Your Contributions in a way that
is contrary to the public benefit."

I think that everyone can agree that this change would be to the public
benefit :)

Insofar as we can release at all, I see no reason to believe that we can't
release under whichever license the contributors to the project wish to 
release under.

-- Chris

> SDE
> 
> (sent from my mobile)
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: <christopher.schmidt at nokia.com>
> Sender: openlayers-dev-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
> Date: Tue, 10 May 2011 17:25:47 
> To: <eric.lemoine at camptocamp.com>
> Cc: <dev at openlayers.org>
> Subject: Re: [OpenLayers-Dev] MOTION: simplified license
> 
> 
> On May 10, 2011, at 12:16 PM, ext Eric Lemoine wrote:
> 
>> On Tuesday, May 10, 2011, Tim Schaub <tschaub at opengeo.org> wrote:
>>> On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 10:01 AM, Eric Lemoine
>>> <eric.lemoine at camptocamp.com> wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday, May 10, 2011, Tim Schaub <tschaub at opengeo.org> wrote:
>>>>> Hey-
>>>>> 
>>>>> We've had discussions previously about adopting a license that has
>>>>> more widespread use than our modified BSD license.  The motivation for
>>>>> making a change is increase the likelihood that others can use
>>>>> OpenLayers without having to direct specific licensing questions to a
>>>>> very small pool of people (perhaps a pool of one).
>>>>> 
>>>>> The 2-clause BSD, referred to as "Simplified BSD License" or "FreeBSD
>>>>> License" looks good to me
>>>>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#2-clause).
>>>>> 
>>>>> This license differs from our current license
>>>>> (http://svn.openlayers.org/trunk/openlayers/license.txt) in a number
>>>>> of ways:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 1) The 2-clause license omits the non-endorsement clause.  Our current
>>>>> license says that nobody can use the OpenLayers name to endorse
>>>>> products that use OpenLayers without specific written permission.  To
>>>>> my knowledge, we have given specific written permission once.  There
>>>>> are enough other uses of the OpenLayers name in promoting software
>>>>> that uses OpenLayers that I think we are not going to enforce this
>>>>> non-endorsement clause.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 2) The 2-clause license doesn't contain any language about patent
>>>>> rights.  Our current language about patent rights is not included in
>>>>> other common forms of the BSD (OpenLayers and FeatureServer are the
>>>>> two uses I could quickly find).  Removing this specific language would
>>>>> align our license with licenses used by many other projects - reducing
>>>>> the chance of licensing questions that are specific to our project.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I'm open to hearing proposals to use another license.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I'm +1 on changing to the 2-clause BSD.
>>>> 
>>>> Tim, I'm just concerned about this regarding the 2-clause BSD:
>>>> 
>>>> "The Free Software Foundation, which refers to the license as the
>>>> FreeBSD License, states that it is compatible with the GNU GPL."
>>>> 
>>>> (extracted from the wikipedia page)
>>> 
>>> Please elaborate on this.  It says the FSF thinks the 2-clause BSD is
>>> compatible with the GPL.  I don't see a negative there.
>> 
>> Sorry Tim. I was confused. +1 from me.
> 
> +1.
> 
> -- Chris
> 
>> -- 
>> Eric Lemoine
>> 
>> Camptocamp France SAS
>> Savoie Technolac, BP 352
>> 73377 Le Bourget du Lac, Cedex
>> 
>> Tel : 00 33 4 79 44 44 96
>> Mail : eric.lemoine at camptocamp.com
>> http://www.camptocamp.com
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