Mike Linksvayer

Name the only license both explicitly called out by the Free Software Foundation as non-free for matters of substance and approved by the Open Source Initiative.

The Reciprocal Public License.

Here’s why the FSF says the RPL is non-free:

1. It puts limits on prices charged for an initial copy. 2. It requires notification of the original developer for publication of a modified version. 3. It requires publication of any modified version that an organization uses, even privately.

For more on why these might be problems see debian-legal tests for Debian Free Software Guidelines compliance.

Further trivia: The Artisitc License is the only OSI-approved license rejected by the FSF for matters of wording:

We cannot say that this is a free software license because it is too vague; some passages are too clever for their own good, and their meaning is not clear.

Addendum 20050311: I looked up the RPL and discovered these bits of trivia after reading that FX is considering the license.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 5th, 2005 at 18:36 and is filed under Open Source, Prediction Markets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.