[Aldor-l] Licensing and contracts

[Jacques Carette]

Hello,

Perhaps it is worthwhile  taking a step back and taking a look at the 
purpose of software licenses, as instances of contracts.  I am sure many 
of you know this, but I know I find this kind of background easy to 
forget in the heat of a discussion.

The purpose of a contract is two-fold: First, it sets up expectations of 
2 (or more) parties, in other words, what is "expected" of everyone in 
normal circumstances.  The second part, which is what trips up many a 
well-intentioned but inexperienced negotiator, is the "abnormal 
circumstances" section(s); in other words, what to do when something, 
anything, goes wrong.  This is often where a contract has clauses that 
seem rather strange, but often start to make more sense when put in the 
spotlight of "look at the pre-conditions!".

Licenses are instances of contracts, and thus contain both kinds of 
clauses.  Licenses are also special in that they are intended to cover 
the "general" case.  What that really means is that any piece of 
software can be licensed under license X in general, but it can also be 
licensed under Y for the specific purposes of Z.  I will come back to 
this below.

Here is how I understand clauses 4 and 5 of APL2.

Clause 5: this is rather simple -- the Aldor authors do not wish other 
people to make money from Aldor, at least not without them getting a 
chance to see whether getting involved is worth it.  This is 
understandable.  If you are going to make tons of money from Aldor, it 
is only fair that the original authors get some benefit, and they should 
get a chance to negotiate what that should be.  If you are going to make 
small amounts of money from Aldor, then it may well be in the author's 
best interests to let you do that [freely], because the support burden 
may far outweigh the returns!  [Unlike many universities' IP policies, 
who do not make that distinction].

Clause 4: in my mind, this is clearly a "general clause".  Basically, 
this is meant to cover small to medium scale modifications to Aldor, to 
insure that the Aldor authors get a chance to integrate ``improvements'' 
to Aldor if they so wish.  And clearly it makes sense for small-scale 
modifications to be covered by such a clause.  Where this clause falls 
apart (and the recent discussion shows this) is when the modifications 
are small but involve a large piece of independent IP.  If one assumes 
good will, then clearly clause 4 was never meant to cover such cases.

In other words, I don't think that APL2 was written to cover the purpose 
of a tight integration of Axiom and Aldor.  The licensing for that may 
well have to be negotiated separately.

===================

Note that there is a technological way to get around the viral issue of 
clause 4:
1) make Aldor an optional component of Axiom, but one that can be "fully 
integrated"
2) for users who want this integration, have them download Axiom and 
Aldor separately
3) have a small bit of code that runs in the installer which "patches" a 
standard installation of Aldor to work with a standard install of Axiom
4) make this small bit of code separate from "standard" Axiom.

APL2 means that the code for the "patcher" needs to be provided to the 
ASO, as it is a modification of Aldor.  The rest of Axiom is not 
affected by this in any way.

That this perfectly legal (though mildly awkward) solution exists to 
getting around Clause 4's perceived viral attributes towards Axiom makes 
me believe that APL2 was not written as 'the' license to cover a proper 
integration of Aldor and Axiom, but rather to cover the more pedestrian 
improvements to Aldor.

Jacques, who really ought to be doing something else right now.