tunnckocore/protect-origin-license

[Draft] Protect Origin License - Unique, sustainable, general purpose weak copyleft license, encouraging contribution back to the original work, meaningful competition and improvements.

Draft of Protect Origin Licenses

Meant for meaningful competition, improvement, easier discovery and protecting the original version.

Inspired by various free and non-free software licenses such as NASA's License, Open Software License, Apache License, Eclipse Public License, Mozilla Public License, Artistic License 2.0 and BSD.

Meant not only for software, hm.

Licensed under that same draft license.

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Preamble

... add the thoughts and reasons ... For now, see Issue #1

Definitions

• "License" shall mean the terms and conditions for use, reproduction, and distribution as defined by this document.

• "Licensor" shall mean the copyright owner, Legal Entity or entity authorized by the copyright owner that is granting the License.

• "Legal Entity" shall mean the union of the acting entity and all other entities that control, are controlled by, or are under common control with that entity. For the purposes of this definition, "control" means:

  • the power, direct or indirect, to cause the direction or management of such entity, whether by contract or otherwise, or
  • ownership of fifty percent (50%) or more of the outstanding shares, or
  • beneficial ownership of such entity.

• "Use" shall mean any kind of usage (including distributing, redistributing, copying and selling) and extending on top of the Licensed Work without modifications to the Raw and/or Transformed forms of the Licensed Work. For example, using original version APIs for building larger work, combined library, program or application.

• "Licensed Work" shall mean the work of authorship, whether in Raw or Transformed form, made available under the License by the Licensor as indicated by a copyright notice that is included in or attached to the work.

• "Modified Work" shall mean any work in and/or changes to the Raw and/or Transformed forms that results from an addition to, deletion from, or modification of the contents of the Raw and/or Transformed forms of the Licensed Work.

• "Raw" form shall mean the preferred form for making modifications, including but not limited to software source code, documentation source, and configuration files.

• "Transformed" form shall mean any form resulting from mechanical transformation or translation of a Raw form, including but not limited to compiled object code, generated documentation, obfuscated and/or minified Raw form, and conversions to other media types.

Conditions

1. The Use of the Raw form of the Licensed Work must retain: a) the copyright notice and b) this License or at least its name (or identifier), link to freely available copy of it and its version.

2. The Use of the Transformed form of the Licensed Work must reproduce in the documentation and/or in other materials provided with the distribution: a) the copyright notice and b) this License or at least its name (or identifier), link to freely available copy of it and its version.

3. You must try to contribute the Modified Work back to the Licensor for inclusion in the original version of the Licensed Work. For the purposes of this definition, "try to contribute ... back" means any form of electronic, verbal, or written communication sent to the Licensor or its representatives, including but not limited to communication on electronic mailing lists, source code control systems, and issue tracking systems that are managed by, or on behalf of, the Licensor for the purpose of discussing and improving the Licensed Work.

4. If above condition is not met or can't happen for whatever reason, including but not limited to fail in communication or self preferences in both sides, then you must choose between the following

• a) purchise private/commercial license, if any available:
  • i) check if somewhere somehow is stated that such license is possible; or
  • ii) contact directly the Licensor or its representatives to get such individual license; or
  • iii) if such license not exist or is declined for whatever reason, you must follow condition 4.b from this License.
• b) apply all of the following for that Modified Work:
  • i) must make it publicly available and released under this same License. (Make note that you can license under any terms you choose the other files and/or parts that are entirely your own work and do not contain code from the Licensed Work. You are not forced to release your whole application, program, derivative work and/or larger work, only the Modified Work); and
  • ii) you must state and/or link the reasons for that case to happen and document all the differences from the original version of the Licensed Work; and
  • iii) you are agree that your failed-to-be-accepted changes may be included in the original version of the Licensed Work in any future point of time, by the Licensor of or contributors to Licensed Work. In such event, you will be notified so you can decide to either start using the original version again or continue maintaining your own copy.

Grant Copyright License

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Grant Patent License

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No warranties, no liability, no trademarks

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License for this License

It is licensed under itself. Any use and reproductions are permitted provided that you follow this License.

protect-origin-license's Issues

Preamble

Current open source licenses suck. Maintainer needs to get more reward, while still ensuring that people are free to modify his code, free to use their modified code for free, but have to share it back. (or pay for the privilege of closed sourcing their modifications, and pay for requested modifications and added features)

But I have no clear statement of what the problem is, or how the solution should work, and was hoping to find such a statement in your license.

That needs to be stated and explained in your preamble: what you are trying to do, and how you hope your solution to work in practice.

The spirit of the license should imply that I should pay you for getting the license into form that I could use, or else contribute to your project by creating a suitable preamble that states the spirit, intent, and purpose, of the license.

But, of course, the problem is that I don't really have any coherent account of what is wrong with current licenses, how the system is failing, or what could be done to make it better.