[od-discuss] Fwd: [cc-licenses] 4.0: fourth (and final) license draft ready for comment

Fri Sep 13 20:24:17 UTC 2013

On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 4:04 AM, Kent Mewhort <kent at openissues.ca> wrote:

>  I just gave this latest draft a careful line-by-line read over and it
> looks conformant to me (other than the clearly non-conformant NC clause in
> this license type).
>
> Although I don't think it makes it non-conformant, I completely agree with
> Herb that the new requirement in 4.0 to identify the author "in any
> reasonable manner requested by the Licensor (including by pseudonym or
> trademark if designated)" is a slippery slope and a cause for concern.
> There's a similar clause in GPLv3 which allows licensors to attach
> additional terms for the "preservation of specified reasonable legal
> notices or author attributions".  In at least a of couple cases, this has
> been abused to require obnoxiously visible brand advertising and
> watermarking (eg. Flexpaper and SugarCRM).
>
> Certainly, the "reasonable" tempers the scope of what a licensor can
> require and brand advertising demands may very well be out of scope;
> however, in any case, it's easy enough for a licensor to use a heavy-hand
> in crafting these attribution obligations, creating uncertainty for
> licensees.
>

Hmm, I failed to notice the word trademark previously, though it was
introduced in the previous (3rd) draft. If one is requiring a use of a
trademark for attribution, should not one also be granting a limited
trademark permission for the purpose of attribution? Or is one implicitly
doing so?

There's a recent software license that explicitly attempts to use requiring
retaining trademarks and not granting trademark permission to turn a
seemingly open source license into a non-commercial-only license, which I
find kind of ugly, see 4.2 and 4.3 of
https://github.com/system76/beansbooks/blob/master/BEANSBOOKS.LICENSE.md(and
clearly not open).

Mike
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