Please see discussion in https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2016-September/013164.html and #446:
Neither PD, nor OPL are acceptable open source "licenses". This pull changes BIP1 such that CC0 can be chosen as a legally valid alternative to PD and CC-BY-SA-4.0 as an alternative to OPL. Additionally, the BSD 2-clause license is added to the list of acceptable licenses, such that BIPs which are currently dual-licensed under OPL and BSD 2-clause can stay in the repo.
The OPL enables the author to both prohibit modifications
without their explicit approval, as well as enabling them
to prohibit distribution in print form.
This is antithetical to the goals of having transparent,
public, collaborative, community standards for interoperability
and I don't believe it was anyone's intention here.
ACK 8310d7e
@super3 Merging this does not delay BIP2 in any way, so I don't understand the NACK.
However, merging this sooner than later would help to fix the licensing issue which existed since day 1. I don't consider any input by @genjix is necessary prior to merging this, as pointed out in chat: https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-core-dev/2016-10-01/?msg=74047486&page=2. But the final call is on @luke-jr for this one.
Don't get me wrong here. I am in favor of BIP2, but it is not clear how long it will take to get it out of the 'Draft' status...
@MarcoFalke Yes, I believe @genjix's input is not necessary to be merged, but I believe someone may have to take over as owner of BIP 1 if we are following the guidelines. That would be up to @luke-jr to decide. From #412, it seems he would rather have BIP 2 accepted, than make improvements to BIP 1.
Upon further research, I discovered that this was taken verbatim from the PEP 1, and considering #412 probably unintentionally so. I believe licensing choices should be made by the original author, but I can't find anything in @genjix's history to indicate any support of licensing and not just a copy/paste from PEP 1.
If we are modifying BIP 1, than I suggest that the entire license block from BIP 2 should be used as a full fix.
ACK https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/453/commits/8310d7e89340e7b533e5af8dc18f26d6998669d5
If we're concerned about putting words in @genjix's mouth, I'd suggest we change the Author line to be "Author: Originally Amir Taaki genjix@riseup.net, with subsequent modifications by others."
ACK 8310d7e. Can find no evidence that OPL was intended by the author.
ACK 8310d7e89340e7b533e5af8dc18f26d6998669d5. Previously: #446 (comment)
A few more thoughts:
We should not recommend "public domain" without also mentioning (or perhaps linking to something about) not all jurisdictions working the same way. In the link that @btcdrak gave in #446 (comment) the Creative Commons people mention that CC0 seems to work in most jurisdictions for public domain contributions ( https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Public_domain ), although we should probably just encourage people to think carefully about these issues instead of providing legal advice for all possible jurisdictions.
Also, while I personally prefer OSI-approved licenses, we should probably be wary of future OSI license changes which might inadvertently shifting the landscape out from under BIP1. Specifically when BIP1 says "OSI-approved" we should probably say something about "conforming to xyz-date OSI principles/values" or something. OTOH, perhaps nobody will ever get confused about why OSI is mentioned at all and this is a moot, nitpicking point.
OK with updating author line per @petertodd suggestion ( #453 (comment) ).
OK with hearing proposals to change BIP1 maintainership as suggested in #453 (comment)
Not sure whether it's true that @luke-jr "has the final call" as mentioned in #453 (comment) -- I know it was just a way of simplifying the discussion of course, that's fine.
As for this one:
If we are modifying BIP 1, than I suggest that the entire license block from BIP 2 should be used as a full fix.
Uhh maybe; I looked and found another section that uses OPL to license BIP2-- and then later in the same doc it recommends against OPL.
This BIP is dual-licensed under the Open Publication License and BSD 2-clause license.
I agree that bip1 should continue to be updated and clarified. I don't know what to do with bip2.
BIP 1 has been Replaced by BIP 2.