On 8/13/2019 12:04 PM, Bruce Perens via License-discuss wrote:
It looks like this is the main reason for objection:
/*No Withholding User Data*/
/Throughout any period in which You exercise any of the
permissions granted to You under this License, You must also
provide to any Recipient to whom you provide services via the
Work, a no-charge copy, provided in a commonly used electronic
form, of the Recipient’s User Data in your possession, to the
extent that such User Data is available to You for use in
conjunction with the Work. /
[snip]
The ownership of the data /distracts from the main issue,/ however,
which is that the license attempts to /encumber data which is
processed by the program./ This is a slippery slope which OSI should
not embark upon, it ends with licenses like Kyle's which attempt to
encumber all software processed by the program and force placement of
that software under an Open Source license.
Even more fundamentally than that is that this section does something
that no open source license does (that I'm aware of anyway), which is to
create an obligation just by running an /unmodified/ program. While
this (surprisingly) doesn't violate any OSD section explicitly, it
violates a tenet of open source software - that the user can run
*unmodified* versions without worrying about legal ramifications (well,
copyright wise anyway). No good will come to opensource if company legal
has to get involved just to run a binary.
I submit that this language still runs awry of OSD#6, since a business
which sequesters customer data to its own advantage might be
obnoxious, but it's still a field of endeavor. And it runs awry of
OSD#9 to the extent that the data can be considered software.
I think the data part distracts from the actual issue. For the sake of
argument, replace "User Data" with "modified source to all open source
You use" (this way, we keep it in the source code arena). Would a
license like this pass (making an obligation on something that isn't a
derivative work)?
I am the guy on your TV saying "Let's champion data rights as human
rights!" A substantial part of the human race have seen that IBM spot
by now, it runs in Europe and Asia besides North America. I believe in
data rights, but this license is not the way to achieve them.
+1
Roger Fujii
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