Further notes on licensing following conversation between [Patrick

Patrick Andrews], [Hugo

Hugo Spowers] and lawyer [Andrew Katz

http://www.moorcrofts.com/index.php?PageName=Services&SubName=Open+Source+Software&MenuID=2&SubID=23] 27 April 2010

###Academic or reciprocal license? 40 Fires should opt for an “academic” license similar to the BSD, allowing licensees to redistribute data with only limited restrictions, (e.g. you can’t use the trademark without entering into a separate license) and no obligation to share. At the same time, we would highlight the benefits of sharing data with the community and that 40 Fires has been established with the intention of encouraging sharing to the maximum extent, consistent with commercial success for those participants who need to make a living from their participation.

We should consider requiring attribution of 40 Fires in the license, or at least strongly encouraging licensors to acknowledge 40 Fires.

One option would be to require people to inform us if they are using the data, and for what purpose (you might call this a mild-copyleft).

Another option is to require anyone modifying the data to say what they’ve changed.

###Royalty 40 Fires should charge no royalty but rather seek funds through a combination of voluntary contributions or sponsorship from business members of the community, as well as providing consulting services. If we do charge a fee, we could call it a membership fee or charge for using the name, rather than calling it a royalty.

In terms of charging fees for using the trademark, there are two different routes that are commonly applied. Canonical just sticks to one trademark, Ubuntu, whether or not the end user is a commercial venture or not. Red Hat has two trademarks it licenses. There is Red Hat (restricted version) and Fedora (community version). It is easy to associate your name with Fedora. By contrast you can’t use the Red Hat name without permission and lots of restrictions. Mozilla do something similar with Mozilla and Firefox names.

###Crash test results Crash test results don’t have to be shared, but the manufacturer can choose to share them with other community members in return for a fee. Crash test is less transferable than some things are. A bit of change and you invalidate the certification. You certify a whole car. But Aston Martin among others have divided up their certification (e.g. certify a door handle).

One option would be to encourage an approach somewhat like the VISA approach to sharing developments. To encourage manufacturers to share test results, you could encourage an approach where the second user pays 60% of the cost to the first, the third party pays 30%, the fourth pays 15%, the fifth pays 7.5%, sixth pays 3.75% and after that it is freely available. In addition we would encourage people to collaborate on their testing.

###Patents 40 Fires would aim to accumulate patents, which could serve mainly as a defence mechanism against attacks by other patent holders.

Individual members of the community shall be free to enter into close collaborations with other members, sharing more information than they do in public through the 40 Fires platform.

We should change the licence under which data is currently made available and permit commercial usage of the data currently available on the site. (Patrick says: OK – this is now done).