RE: [InChI-discuss] Re: InChI software license

[Rich A. <rap...@oc...>]

On Wed, 5 Oct 2005 09:34:45 +0100, Alan wrote
> Dear Rich and other inchi-discuss members
> 
> The project registered on SourceForge is to "develop facilities for using
> and applying the InChI algorithm"; any resulting applications would 
> then be available under the Artistic Licence. As you would expect, a 
> previous application to include the InChI code itself in a more 
> comprehensive project was turned down because of the nature of the 
> present InChI licence.

Fair enough. One minor point. The InChI distribution I downloaded from the
IUPAC site did not come with any license and no copyright information that I
could find (readme.txt has nothing on the subject, for example). Because the
current InChI license allows for redistribution, this appears to me to be a
rather large hole in the current license strategy.

For example, Developer A downloads the distribution, and in accordance with
the license she read before downloading, gives a copy to Developer B. Now
developer B has the complete package, but he did not agree to any terms and no
terms appear in the distribution he now has. There is also no copyright and no
license. The software could at this point (wrongly) be considered by some to
be in the public domain and not copyrighted or licensed at all.

> As Geoff points out, I said in June that the matter of the InChI license
> could be reconsidered, and that I would be happier to do this when 
> we were able to make conformance-testing routines available. This 
> work is not yet complete. However, I will be talking to various 
> people about changing the InChI licence during the next few weeks, 
> and should appreciate any advice on what OS licence might be most 
> appropriate, bearing in mind some remaining anxiety about preserving 
> the integrity of the InChI code.

I've heard the lamentation that the wonderful thing about standards is that
there are so many of them. Ditto for Open Source licenses. Nevertheless, I can
think of two or three high-quality open source licenses would go a long way to
preventing the corruption of the source code that some in the InChI project
are rightly concerned about.

The book "Open Source Licensing" by Lawrence Rosen should be required reading,
cover-to-cover, by everyone involved in making the decision, before the
decision is made. The material is understandable by all. The book provides a
clear framework for thinking about i.p. licensing in general, and dispatches
many widespread open source myths. This book can be freely read online, or
bought in softcover form:

http://www.rosenlaw.com/oslbook.htm

If I were doing this, I would read the book, and pick two or three open source
licenses that appear to most closely match the goals of the project. Then I
would pay a good lawyer to evaulate the top choices against the project goals. 

cheers,
rich