[Bug]: "METAPLEX(TM) NFT OPEN SOURCE LICENSE" is not open source

[mikemaccana]

Issue description

A discussion came up recently regarding the Metaplex MPL license. The license at https://github.com/metaplex-foundation/metaplex-program-library/blob/master/LICENSE has the title "METAPLEX(TM) NFT OPEN SOURCE LICENSE" but the license itself isn't an open source license:

That license includes:

Notwithstanding any other section of this License, You may not under any circumstances make modifications to the Work to use, produce and Distribute a Derivative Work, in Source Code or Object Code form, that is a Competitive Product.

Which conflicts with part 6 of the Open Source definition - the rules that define what Open Source is.

Likewise MPL wouldn't quality for Free Software either - to be free software, the license needs to meet the free software definition, the "METAPLEX(TM) NFT OPEN SOURCE LICENSE" license doesn't meet the 'Use' freedom

Compare this with well known open source projects:

• Solana is Apache 2 licensed, Apache 2 meets the open source definition.
• SPL is Apache 2 licensed, Apache 2 meets the open source definition.
• Rust is Apache 2 / MIT licensed, Apache 2 and MIT meets the open source definition.
• node is MIT licensed, MIT is open source because it meets the open source definition
• The Linux kernel is GPL 2 licensed, GPL 2 meets the open source definition

While people can view MPL's source code in github, the source code doesn't currently have an open source license.

The main concern is that people might be working on Solana commercially (whether their code is open source or not) and believe they can read and use MPL's source code when the current license says they cannot.

I fully believe this to be an innocent mistake and Metaplex can easily fix it depending on how and what they want to do:

• Pick an existing open source license. Many projects use MIT which is popular for people that want to allow anyone to use their code. If you want to ensure that there aren't non-open-source forks of Metaplex, Metaplex could pick GPL2 or something more restrictive.

• Update the existing license name and other materials to avoid describing Metaplex as open source.

• Create a new license that meets the open source definition (this is a hassle as well known open source licenses have been reviewed by lawyers).

Totally up to Metaplex to determine what Metaplex thinks is best. It's your code.

[chrisbbreuer]

Why not simply choose the MIT license?