The Open Source Initiative has approved the three open source licences written by the government of the Canadian province of Quebec. The Licence Libre du Québec (Québec Free and Open-Source Licence, LiliQ) should encourage the province’s public administrations to share their ICT solutions, establishing the government of Quebec as the licence authority.
In 2014 the Quebec government published three licences. One places minimal restrictions on the redistribution - similar to the Apache licence, a second preserves copyright and adds a disclaimer - similar to the MPL/LGPL licence, and the third lets end-users use, study, share (copy), and modify the software while retaining those rights - similar to the GPL.
Last autumn, the three licences were submitted to the Open Source Initiative for approval. The review process aims to ensure that licenses conform to community norms and expectations. OSI also tries to prevent licence proliferation; having many licences can make it harder to chose the right one. It can also create complexities or even conflict with other licences.
Acceptance of the LiliQ was announced by OSI Director Richard Fontana on the OSI mailing list on 13 January.
More information:
OSI board announcement
Licences Libre du Québec (LiliQ, in the section “International licenses”)
OSOR news item
EUPL on Joinup
Comments
It's also worth noting that this approval represents the first use by OSI of a new process for approving non-English language licenses. LiLiQ-* are only approved in French, with English certified translations available for non-French speakers. The new approach allows valid concerns about use of local language and law to be addressed without opening the door to proliferation of English language licenses.
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