[Fedora-legal-list] amap license

[Richard Fontana]

On Thu, Jan 07, 2010 at 02:09:13PM -0500, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
> On 01/07/2010 01:40 PM, Julius Davies wrote:
> > Hi, Tom,
> > 
> > Limiting ourselves to copyright (ignoring patents and trademarks and
> > other IP), in general would you say a copyright license must either?
> > 
> > 1.  Be "Free" according to FSF:  http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
> > 
> > or
> > 
> > 2.  Be "Open Source" according to OSI:  http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd
> 
> It depends upon what context you're asking that question.
> 
> If you mean "Does a copyright license have to be either "Free" according
> to the FSF definition of "Free" or "Open Source" according to the OSI
> definition of "Open Source" in order to be acceptable for Fedora", then
> the answer is no.
> 
> In Fedora, a copyright license _MUST_ be considered "Free" according to
> the FSF definition of "Free". Whether or not a license is considered
> "Open Source" by the OSI is irrelevant to Fedora.
> 
> The reasoning for this is that while effectively all "Free" copyright
> licenses meet the criteria to be considered "Open Source", the inverse
> is not true. Historically, some rather poorly worded licenses have been
> OSI approved as "Open Source", most notably, the Artistic 1.0 license.

Interestingly, Artistic 1.0 was effectively grandfathered into the
Debian Free Software Guidelines, of which the Open Source Definition
is a derivative. 

As I recall, there are several OSI-approved licenses that we have
determined do not meet the free software definition. Others include
certain of the corporate 'vanity licenses' that were in vogue some
years ago.

There was one case where the OSI rejected a license as failing to meet
the OSD where we determined that it met the free software
definition. I forget which license that was.

- Richard