[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Philip Hands) wrote: [...] > That's where the differences come from, the interpretation by individuals, > but it's all the same thing really, and the corner cases are really not > worth spending too much time on. Personally, if the FSF, Debian, and > OSI[1] don't like it, I avoid using it, and would certainly > not pass it on to my customers. > > Cheers, Phil. > > [1] Actually, I mostly ignore the OSI, but if you can point to something > that they don't like that FSF and Debian do like, then I'll consider > not using it.
Am I wrong in thinking that the OSI corporation uniquely works by having a lawyer advocate a licence to their board and the rest of the world can go feel[*] itself as far as OSI approval is concerned? The failed Open Source Initative has approved many many many more licences than FSF. They have been really slow to spot just how much of a pain in the bum licence proliferation is for hackers and act on it, but at least they have now. Automatic comparison of http://www.asheesh.org/note/software/osi-vs-fsf.html with http://www.uk.debian.org/legal/licenses/ and http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html and a little human filtering yielded the following three OSI-approved oddities:- Artistic License 1.0 (FSF list it as non-free because "it is too vague") NASA Open Source Agreement, version 1.3 (FSF: "it includes a provision requiring changes to be your "original creation"") Reciprocal Public License (FSF: "limits on prices ... notification ... publication") I just checked http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical and all three are still listed there. So anti-commericalism and forced publication of private versions are fine by them, I guess. The Debian project actually seems more conservative than both OSI and FSF, probably because its listed licences are for stuff it actually distributes, where as the others comment on any old licences. [*] - The answer to the obvious question about this word is yes. Regards, -- MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ (Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237 _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
