Talk:Sybase Open Watcom Public License

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on July 6, 2006. The result of the discussion was article made saving throw; kept.

This article seems to contain nothing but marketing quotes and excerpts from the license in question; what little of actual content is present is obviously factually wrong.

For example, while the freeness of a license is often a point of heated political discussion, the GPL-compatibility is totally out of question. For example:

  • SOWPL has a click-wrap clause.
  • It forces an user to distribute any private modifications to the whole world. The GPL requires making the source available only to those you distribute the binary to.
  • SOWPL forces the user to keep distributing any modifications for a long period after any use ceases. The GPL allows distributing only for the period when you distribute the binary.
  • If your organization/company has any patents, not just software patents related to the software in question but any patent, such as a patent for a mousetrap or a drug, any use or distribution of covered software effectively makes those patents void, even for the purposes of fighting patent trolls.
  • There is a choice of venue clause. Anyone who is a defendant in a litigation, even a completely frivolous suit, is forced to travel to California.

-- all of these issues are restrictions over what is required by the GPL, and thus make the license incompatible.

I can't see how someone who wants to appear as a professional reviewer could fail to notice even one of these problems, and thus I assume that the current contents of the article are a troll.


Thus, it appears to me that the current article has nothing of redeeming value, and I'm not versed in legal matter good enough to write a proper replacement. --KiloByte 20:01, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

The original version of this article appears to have been an original analysis of the licence, composed directly here in Wikipedia, by Hannah Joseph. I've started afresh and given you a stub encyclopaedia article to work with, instead. Jonathan de Boyne Pollard 20:26, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Does this meet FSF criteria?

Does anyone know if FSF have commented on this licence? Or does anyone know of someone who has read the licence and judged whether it is a free software licence by FSF's criteria? Gronky 11:42, 10 October 2006 (UTC)