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Comment by galaxyLogic | Hacker News Reader

I wonder could they do that? Doesn't ElasticSearch own the copyright to that license? Is it even legal to copy it without their permission?

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Anyone could do it, but Elastic should do it since it's in everyone's collective best interests to standardize behind a single sustainable license model with shared goals but that can't happen if it stays branded.

MongoDB and Elastic are likely the biggest companies with licenses of similar goals, but I don't ever see Mongo adopting a commercially branded license, they both need to come together to unify behind a single one to lead the way for others to adopt it.

Check this out: https://www.reddit.com/r/elasticsearch/comments/mv9vxw/can_i...

I read that and it’s hilarious. “Hey Sally, can some other company use our license?” “Sure Bob, tell them no sweat.” <time passes> Corp press release: to protect our biz model and IP . . .

> own the copyright to that license?

should the text of the license itself be copyright-able at all?

I'm not a lawyer but I think any unique text you write you own the copyright to by default. It's a different question whether this should be so or not.

Could part of text be a release of the inherent copyright stemming from creation?

Sure. If you want your text to be as close to public domain as possible, the Creative Commons No Rights Reserved license (AKA CC0) should work: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc...

I don’t see any disclaimer of copyright for the license text. If another organization took that license text and promoted it as if it were their own, would Creative Commons have grounds to pursue infringement against that other organization?

https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode

My guess is they could, unless they state somewhere that the license text is licensed with the Creative Commons License or some other permissive license

GPL begins with following:

> GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

> Version 3, 29 June 2007

> Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

This is one reason I think SSPL is bit problematic as afaik it's just AGPL with changes, something that is explicitly forbidden.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL

It is allowed.

You're not allowed to change a GPL license's terms and conditions and still call it GPL. But if you call it something else you can use some of their terms and add/remove whatever you want.

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