Open Software License

Last updated

Open Software License
AuthorLawrence Rosen
Latest version3.0
Publisher 2002, Lawrence Rosen
SPDX identifierOSL-1.0, OSL-1.1, OSL-2.0, OSL-2.1, OSL-3.0
FSF approved Yes [1]
OSI approved Yes
GPL compatible No [1]
Copyleft Yes
Website opensource.org/licenses/OSL-3.0   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

The Open Software License (OSL) [2] is a software license created by Lawrence Rosen. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has certified it as an open-source license, but the Debian project judged version 1.1 [3] [4] to be incompatible with the DFSG. The OSL is a copyleft license, with a termination clause triggered by filing a lawsuit alleging patent infringement.

Contents

Many people in the free software and open-source community feel that software patents are harmful to software, and are particularly harmful to open-source software. [5] The OSL attempts to counteract that by creating a pool of software which a user can use if that user does not harm it by attacking it with a patent lawsuit.

Key features

Patent action termination clause

The OSL has a termination clause intended to dissuade users from filing patent infringement lawsuits:

10) Termination for Patent Action. This License shall terminate automatically and You may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to You by this License as of the date You commence an action, including a cross-claim or counterclaim, against Licensor or any licensee alleging that the Original Work infringes a patent. This termination provision shall not apply for an action alleging patent infringement by combinations of the Original Work with other software or hardware. [6]

Warranty of provenance

Another goal of the OSL is to warrant provenance. [7]

7) Warranty of Provenance and Disclaimer of Warranty. Licensor warrants that the copyright in and to the Original Work and the patent rights granted herein by Licensor are owned by the Licensor or are sublicensed to You under the terms of this License with the permission of the contributor(s) of those copyrights and patent rights. [6]

Network deployment is distribution

OSL explicitly states that its provisions cover derivative works even when they are distributed only through online applications:

5) External Deployment. The term "External Deployment" means the use, distribution, or communication of the Original Work or Derivative Works in any way such that the Original Work or Derivative Works may be used by anyone other than You, whether those works are distributed or communicated to those persons or made available as an application intended for use over a network. As an express condition for the grants of license hereunder, You must treat any External Deployment by You of the Original Work or a Derivative Work as a distribution under section 1(c). [6]

Linking does not create a derivative work

OSL in section 1(a) authorizes licensees to reproduce covered software "as part of a collective work," as distinct from the Original Work or a Derivative Work. In section 1(c), only Derivate Works or copies of the Original Work are made subject to the license, not collective works. Derivative Work is defined in section 1(b) as being created when the licensee exercise their ability "to translate, adapt, alter, transform, modify, or arrange the Original Work." [6]

Rosen has written: [8]

The verbs used in § 1(b) ["translate, adapt, alter, transform, modify, or arrange"] reflect the kinds of activities that we generally do to create derivative literary or other expressive works, and those things—not functional linking—create Derivative Works as defined in this license. As a result, linking an unchanged Original Work with another independently-written work does not, absent more, create a Derivative Work subject to § 1(b); such an act is merely the incorporation of a copy of that Original Work into a collective work, authorized by § 1(a).

Comparison with the LGPL and GPL

The OSL is intended to be similar to the LGPL. [9] Note that the definition of Derivative Works in the OSL does not cover linking to OSL software/libraries so software that merely links to OSL software is not subject to the OSL license.

The OSL is not compatible with the GPL. [10] It has been claimed that the OSL is intended to be legally stronger than the GPL (with the main difference "making the software available for use over the Internet requires making the source code available" [11] that is the same goal as the even newer GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL), that is compatible with GPLv3), [11] however, unlike the GPL, the OSL has never been tested in court and is not widely used.

Assent to license

The restriction contained in Section 9 of the OSL reads:

If You distribute or communicate copies of the Original Work or a Derivative Work, You must make a reasonable effort under the circumstances to obtain the express assent of recipients to the terms of this License. [6]

In its analysis of the OSL the Free Software Foundation claims that "this requirement means that distributing OSL software on ordinary FTP sites, sending patches to ordinary mailing lists, or storing the software in an ordinary version control system, can arguably be a violation of the license and would subject violators to possible termination of the license. Thus, the OSL makes it challenging to develop software using the ordinary tools of Free Software development." [1]

Rosen contradicts this, stating in an explanation of his license that "most open source projects and commercial distributors already use appropriate procedures to obtain the manifest assent of their licensees, so this OSL 3.0 requirement is not intended to require something different than what now happens in ordinary software distribution practice." [12]

Distribution

If the FSF claim is true then the main difference between the GPL and OSL concerns possible restrictions on redistribution. Both licenses impose a kind of reciprocity condition requiring authors of extensions to the software to license those extensions with the respective license of the original work.

Patent action termination clause

The patent action termination clause, described above, is a further significant difference between the OSL and GPL.

Further provisions

Later versions

It is optional, though common for the copyright holder to add “or any later version” to the distribution terms in order to allow distribution under future versions of the license. This term is not directly mentioned in the OSL. However, it would seem to violate section 16, which requires a verbatim copy of the license.

Open software that uses the OSL

Open software that used the OSL

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free software</span> Software licensed to be freely used, modified and distributed

Free software, libre software, or libreware is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program. Computer programs are deemed "free" if they give end-users ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU</span> Free software collection

GNU is an extensive collection of free software, which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operating systems popularly known as Linux. Most of GNU is licensed under the GNU Project's own General Public License (GPL).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU Lesser General Public License</span> Free-software license

The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own software without being required by the terms of a strong copyleft license to release the source code of their own components. However, any developer who modifies an LGPL-covered component is required to make their modified version available under the same LGPL license. For proprietary software, code under the LGPL is usually used in the form of a shared library, so that there is a clear separation between the proprietary and LGPL components. The LGPL is primarily used for software libraries, although it is also used by some stand-alone applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open-source license</span> Software license allowing source code to be used, modified, and shared

Open-source licenses are legal licenses which facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict the modification and sharing of creative works. Free and open-source software licenses use existing legal structures for an inverse purpose. They grant freedoms to promote sharing or collaboration. They grant the recipient the rights to use the software, examine the source code, modify it, and distribute the modifications. These licenses target computer software. Open-source licenses can also cover hardware, infrastructure, drinks, books, and music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apache License</span> Free software license developed by the ASF

The Apache License is a permissive free software license written by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). It allows users to use the software for any purpose, to distribute it, to modify it, and to distribute modified versions of the software under the terms of the license, without concern for royalties. The ASF and its projects release their software products under the Apache License. The license is also used by many non-ASF projects.

The Mozilla Public License (MPL) is a free and open-source weak copyleft license for most Mozilla Foundation software such as Firefox and Thunderbird. The MPL license is developed and maintained by Mozilla, which seeks to balance the concerns of both open-source and proprietary developers; it is distinguished from others as a middle ground between the permissive software BSD-style licenses and the General Public License. So under the terms of the MPL, it allows the integration of MPL-licensed code into proprietary codebases, but only on condition those components remain accessible.

A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law, all software is copyright protected, in both source code and object code forms, unless that software was developed by the United States Government, in which case it cannot be copyrighted. Authors of copyrighted software can donate their software to the public domain, in which case it is also not covered by copyright and, as a result, cannot be licensed.

The Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) is a free and open-source software license, produced by Sun Microsystems, based on the Mozilla Public License (MPL). Files licensed under the CDDL can be combined with files licensed under other licenses, whether open source or proprietary. In 2005 the Open Source Initiative approved the license. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) considers it a free software license, but one which is incompatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL).

The IBM Public License (IPL) is a free open-source software license written and occasionally used by IBM. It is approved by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and described as an "open-source license" by the Open Source Initiative.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eclipse Public License</span> Free software license similar to the Common Public License

The Eclipse Public License (EPL) is a free and open source software license most notably used for the Eclipse IDE and other projects by the Eclipse Foundation. It replaces the Common Public License (CPL) and removes certain terms relating to litigations related to patents.

This comparison only covers software licenses which have a linked Wikipedia article for details and which are approved by at least one of the following expert groups: the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the Debian Project and the Fedora Project. For a list of licenses not specifically intended for software, see List of free-content licences.

The Affero General Public License is a free software license. The first version of the Affero General Public License (AGPLv1), was published by Affero, Inc. in March 2002, and based on the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPLv2). The second version (AGPLv2) was published in November 2007, as a transitional license to allow an upgrade path from AGPLv1 to the GNU Affero General Public License.

License proliferation is the phenomenon of an abundance of already existing and the continued creation of new software licenses for software and software packages in the FOSS ecosystem. License proliferation affects the whole FOSS ecosystem negatively by the burden of increasingly complex license selection, license interaction, and license compatibility considerations.

License compatibility is a legal framework that allows for pieces of software with different software licenses to be distributed together. The need for such a framework arises because the different licenses can contain contradictory requirements, rendering it impossible to legally combine source code from separately-licensed software in order to create and publish a new program. Proprietary licenses are generally program-specific and incompatible; authors must negotiate to combine code. Copyleft licenses are commonly deliberately incompatible with proprietary licenses, in order to prevent copyleft software from being re-licensed under a proprietary license, turning it into proprietary software. Many copyleft licenses explicitly allow relicensing under some other copyleft licenses. Permissive licenses are compatible with everything, including proprietary licenses; there is thus no guarantee that all derived works will remain under a permissive license.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free-software license</span> License allowing software modification and redistribution

A free-software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but the rights-holder of a piece of software can remove these restrictions by accompanying the software with a software license which grants the recipient these rights. Software using such a license is free software as conferred by the copyright holder. Free-software licenses are applied to software in source code and also binary object-code form, as the copyright law recognizes both forms.

BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD license was used for its namesake, the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix-like operating system. The original version has since been revised, and its descendants are referred to as modified BSD licenses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyleft</span> Practice of mandating free use in all derivatives of a work

Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, freedoms refers to the use of the work for any purpose, and the ability to modify, copy, share, and redistribute the work, with or without a fee. Licenses which implement copyleft can be used to maintain copyright conditions for works ranging from computer software, to documents, art, scientific discoveries and even certain patents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU General Public License</span> Series of free software licenses

The GNU General Public License is a series of widely used free software licenses or copyleft that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general use and was originally written by Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), for the GNU Project. The license grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition. These GPL series are all copyleft licenses, which means that any derivative work must be distributed under the same or equivalent license terms. It is more restrictive than the Lesser General Public License and even further distinct from the more widely used permissive software licenses BSD, MIT, and Apache.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU Free Documentation License</span> Copyleft license primarily for free software documentation

The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license. Copies may also be sold commercially, but, if produced in larger quantities, the original document or source code must be made available to the work's recipient.

Open source license litigation involves lawsuits surrounding open-source licensed software. Many of the legal rights of open source software licensors enforceable against users violating licensing agreements are untested by the U.S. legal system. Free and open source software (FOSS) is distributed under a variety of free-software licenses, which are unique among other software licenses. Legal action against open source licenses involves questions about their validity and enforceability.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Various Licenses and Comments about Them – GNU Project – Free Software Foundation (FSF)". Gnu.org. Retrieved March 4, 2012.
  2. ↑ "Open Source Initiative OSI – The Open Software License 3.0 (OSL-3.0:Licensing | Open Source Initiative". Opensource.org. October 31, 2006. Retrieved March 4, 2012.
  3. ↑ "DFSGLicenses – Debian Wiki". Wiki.debian.org. February 28, 2012. Retrieved March 4, 2012.
  4. ↑ "Open Source Initiative OSI - The "Open Software License":Licensing". Opensource.org. May 1, 2006. Archived from the original on May 1, 2006. Retrieved October 15, 2012.
  5. ↑ "BusinessWeek". February 6, 2006. Archived from the original on February 8, 2006. Retrieved March 4, 2012.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 "The Open Software License 3.0 (OSL-3.0)". opensource.org. Open Source Initiative. October 31, 2006. Retrieved April 21, 2021. CC-BY icon.svg Text was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
  7. ↑ "LinuxElectrons - Apache Software Foundation Position Regarding Sender ID". Linuxelectrons.com. October 31, 2005. Archived from the original on October 31, 2005. Retrieved October 15, 2012.
  8. ↑ "OSL 3.0 Explained". rosenlaw.com. Retrieved January 24, 2022.
  9. ↑ "Open Software License ("OSL") v. 3.0" (PDF). Retrieved October 15, 2012.
  10. ↑ "Philosophy of the GNU Project – GNU Project – Free Software Foundation (FSF)". Gnu.org. February 26, 2012. Retrieved March 4, 2012.
  11. 1 2 "Choosing an Open Source License". Airs.com. Retrieved March 4, 2012.
  12. ↑ "OSL 3.0 Explained". rosenlaw.com. Retrieved December 12, 2023.
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