[copyleft-next] Inbound-outbound clause and licensor promise

Richard Fontana fontana at sharpeleven.org
Mon Feb 11 04:00:49 UTC 2013


On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 02:43:32PM +0200, Engel Nyst wrote:
> I'd submit for discussion the (re)introduction of an inbound-outbound
> clause for contributions, and the possibility to use it as the place where
> the upstream licensor makes an explicit promise: to keep the software
> under copyleft.

Here's an idea for an alternative way to do it. It's kind of in line
with the idea of getting rid of the "(A)GPL relicensing" section and
just modifying the copyleft requirement clause for distributing
Derived Works, to simplify the license structure (possibly at the
expense of understandability though?).

Define 'Patch' or 'Upstream Contribution' to mean something like a
work You Distribute for inclusion in {something that would mean
'Covered Work that We would create} (with no explicit indication of
licensing).

Then, add this to the set of things that are 'Derived Works'. (Perhaps
replace 'Derived Work' with some better term.) That's because
sometimes what you submit upstream won't actually fall within that
definition as it currently exists.

Unfortunately, it's less obvious than your Apache-influenced
solution.

A possible problem with both solutions, and I think the thing that
ended up bothering me about simple reuse of the Apache language, is
that 'We' aren't necessarily equivalent to the upstream project.  But
maybe that isn't really a significant problem. No one seems to worry
about it in the case of the Apache License, and even the ASF appears
to rely on the existence of this clause to justify its non-use of a
CLA for certain classes of contributions.

As for the explicit promise part, which is your enhancement of the
Apache License provision: as I think I said in my earlier response,
this shouldn't have to be necessary since it restates the copyleft
requirement.

To put it another way: We're talking about a situation where, to use
the terminology of the license, We Distribute the Received Work to You
under copyleft-next, and You (becoming a new instance of 'We' for a
new instance of copyleft-next) Distribute a Derived Work to Us
(becoming a new instance of 'You') under copyleft-next.

- RF








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