Category talk:Licenses

OSI Approved License

While I'm finding a good license for my next robot, I ran across this page.

Can I call my program "Open Source" even if I don't use an approved license?

You can call you program "Bob" if you want, but if you call it "Open Source" without using an approved license, you will be confusing people. Please don't. Companies that confuse partners and potential customers tend to drive them away.

And as far as I know, only robot that use OSI-Approved license is Glacier. (zlib/libpng license is OSI-Approved license) Hmm... maybe we should send RWPCL and RWLPCL for OSI to approve. --Nat Pavasant 11:17, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

The RWLPCL always seemed kind of silly to me, to be honest. If the wiki ever goes offline, suddenly you can't use the code anymore! (Depending on your interpretation, that might mean that no one can use code from bots that were published under the RWLPCL on the old wiki.) It's possible to contrive similar issues with the RWPCL--e.g. someone publishes their bot without source but posts the code on the wiki, the wiki goes offline, suddenly distributing the bot is copyright infringement. The only reason I don't specify that my bots are under the MIT/X11 license is that I don't feel like pasting a big license block at the top of every one of my source files. « AaronR « Talk « 21:15, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I also dislike the "credit on the wiki" clause in the RWLPCL. For the RWPCL case, though, IANAL, but it seems to me that if you did publish it on the wiki, that would have been enough to fulfill the obligation. Not sure why anyone wouldn't package it with the bot, though... --Voidious 23:58, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

You can past them on the main Robot's file and in other source just specify something like (I decided to use Eclipse Public License, which is supersede to Common Public License, which use in Robocode, after some hard decision among MIT, EPL and LGPL) this:

/**
 * Copyright (c) 2009 Nat Pavasant
 * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
 * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
 * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
 * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
 */

Just as in Robocode's files. --Nat Pavasant 10:10, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

You can submit them if you want, but personally, I don't feel I need approval to use the term "open source". I believe those two licenses already comply with their definition of an open source license, and I've never heard of anyone being confused by our use of the term for our bots/licenses. --Voidious 23:58, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

My view is that the RWLPCL/RWPCL is that it's kind of silly for the same reasons as AaronR states. I see no reason to worry about the OSI either really. For a small in-community liscence it doesn't matter, besides, I don't think the RWLPCL/RWPCL are of high enough quality for them to approve even if it does comply. --Rednaxela 00:44, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I forgot the smiley, the "we should send RWPCL and RWLPCL for OSI to approve" is actually joking. I have read the definition of Open Source license on http://opensource.org/ (OSI) and, as Rednaxela and AaronR stated, the RW(L)?PCL license isn't true opensource. But as Voidious states, this is a small community. However I still feel that our RW licenses are not opensource licenses. Maybe it is just me being perfectionist... --Nat Pavasant 10:10, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

What about them isn't "true" open source? I didn't think AaronR or Rednaxela said that about them. The RWPCL seems very similar to a stripped down GPL to me. --Voidious 12:47, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

'If the wiki ever goes offline, suddenly you can't use the code anymore' seems to be 'not "true" open source' for me. But I agree that RWPCL and RWLPCL are like simplified version and RoboWiki-ize version of GPL and LGPL. --Nat Pavasant 14:59, 14 October 2009 (UTC)