Re: JasPer License Issues: Some Potentially Good News
On 2004-01-30 02:50:32 +0000 Michael Adams <mdadams@ece.uvic.ca> wrote:
BTW, the new license was largely copied from the open-source-certified
X11 license.
There is no such thing as "open-source-certified" that I know of.
There is no "X11 license" certified by OSI. What do you mean here?
wdiff says it is extensively different to the current ones used by
X.org and the XFree86 Project. It is closer to the XFree86 Project's
one, so I start from that base.
Image Power has added condition 3 and I wonder if this is
alright. The IBM Public License (certified by the Open Source
Initiative) also seems to have a similar type of clause. So, this
appears not to go against the spirit of open source.
It looks very broad. I think it should limit itself to the offending
user and infringement action concerning the Software, at least. Having
your licence terminate because the upstream accused the JasPer project
of infinging their copyright on some other software would be very
annoying.
Do IBM have one public licence or many? Certainly, IBM's "Common
Public Licence" has a very different clause to this, limited in scope
and only about patents.
On to the licence. The top bit is the same as XFree86's licence 1.0,
up until:
including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge,
publish, distribute, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit
persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the
following conditions:
Why was sublicense deleted from the list of granted rights in the
XFree86 Project licence? That act is referred to in clause three.
Clause 1 is fine, but 2 and 3 are new (but we already have examples of
2). The disclaimer has been extensively reworded BUT STILL APPEARS TO
BE IN POINTLESS CAPITALS TO MAKE IT HARD TO READ.
CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE. THE USER
ACKNOWLEDGES THAT NO ASSURANCES ARE PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS
THAT THE SOFTWARE DOES NOT INFRINGE THE PATENT OR OTHER INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY RIGHTS OF OTHER PARTIES.
Is it valid to talk about "Intellectual Property Rights" under your
local laws? Should you spell out "Patents, Copyrights or Trademarks"
instead? This is in two places in your disclaimer.
--
MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
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