Bruce Perens, one of the authors of the Open Source definition and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, presented the first draft of a new license called "Post-Open Zero-Cost," aimed at addressing the accumulated issues related to the interaction between open source software developers and commercial companies in the context of receiving fair returns from the commercial use of code. The license reflects the possibility of imposing additional conditions on commercial use, for example, companies are offered to pay for the benefits gained from using open source software either through participation in development or by paying royalties that will be distributed among the direct developers.
A key distinction of the Post-Open license from existing open licenses, such as the GPL, is the introduction of a contractual component that can be terminated in case of violation of the license terms. There are two types of contractual agreements — free and paid. The paid agreement allows for the possibility of entering into an agreement for additional rights and is applied when commercially distributing products or making changes without publicly disclosing them.
The license also defines the organization "POST-OPEN ADMINISTRATION," which acts on behalf of the licensors, serving as their legal representative, defending their rights if necessary, and managing the distribution of funds received, taking into account contributions to the development. The structure of the organization, which is expected to utilize transparent processes and financial mechanisms in its activities, has not yet been defined and is subject to future discussions.
Among the situations that can lead to the termination of contractual terms are: violations of license conditions; filing claims for patent infringement; imposition of additional conditions (for example, adding sanctions in contracts with clients in the event of dissemination of information about vulnerability fixes); making changes that fall under export control laws (for instance, for military purposes and weapon creation); concealing information about vulnerabilities or obstructing their disclosure; using code to train machine learning models that are distributed under different terms. Contractual relationships are not terminated immediately but only after 60 days following notification of a violation. If the violations are remedied within 60 days, the rights granted remain in force.
Among the problems with the GPL that the new license aims to address is that the GPL focuses only on granting rights without the possibility of revoking someone’s rights. This feature allows companies to circumvent the requirements of the GPL license regarding the provision of unlimited access to source code. In particular, loopholes are used to limit access to code through the imposition of additional contractual conditions with end users, which restrict the secondary distribution of the open code underlying the product.
For instance, when purchasing a RHEL distribution, the client signs a support and update agreement with Red Hat, which restricts the redistribution of the data and mentions the right to terminate the agreement if the actual number of installed and purchased copies of RHEL does not match. This forces a choice between the freedom to manage the software and maintaining the status of a Red Hat client. The patches provided for RHEL that address vulnerabilities apply to GPL code, and according to the license, the user has the right to distribute them, but this can be perceived as a violation of the agreement with Red Hat and may lead to the termination of services by the company.
Previously, when changes were published in the CentOS repository, the community turned a blind eye to such manipulations. However, after the policy change regarding access to the source texts of RHEL packages, there arose a need to reconsider the mechanisms for interaction between developers of open projects and companies that utilize their work.
Source: opennet.ru
