Russell Nelson wrote: > Chris Gray writes: > > Dear all, > > > > I was disappointed to see that our licence > > (URL:http://wonka.acunia.com/wonkapl.html) seems not to have made > > it onto the agenda of last Wednesday's meeting. Since the WPL is > > now really just revised-BSD with a polite request tacked onto the > > end (we removed an Apache-style clause because it conflicted with > > the GPL), I propose that we self-certify, so to speak: that is, in > > our communications we (ACUNIA) simply state that our licence is > > fully compliant with the OSD, just as we assert that it is > > GPL-compatible. Of course an OSI-certified gong would still be > > very welcome. > > If the request is no legal meaning, why do you need your license > approved?
Arguably we don't "need" it any more: like I said, we can "self-certify". Being able to refer to a specific decision or an official list is nice-to-have, but not mission-critical. Suppose I replace the current text at http://wonka.acunia.com by the following: An Open-Source VM Wonka is available under a genuine Open Source license conceived with the needs of embedded system developers in mind: the conditions it imposes are the same as the well-known BSD licence [http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.html]. You don't have to make your entire business open-source in order to use Wonka, nor do we insist you join a ``community process'' . See the licensing page for details. I think this is legal, honest, and decent, and says what we want to say: and includes a desirable element of joint marketing (we implicitly identify ourselves with the aims of OSI, inflating your citation index and allowing us to bathe in your warmth). > If the request indeed has legal import, what problem is it solving? Both the Apache-style trademark clause and the Mach-style request were added as sweeteners, to solve the problem of "how do we persuade the Project Approval Comittee and the Board of Directors to give away many man-years worth of valuable intellectual property?". When the exact nature of the conflict with the GPL was explained to me, I was able to justify a request to delete the Apache clause. At the moment I don't think I have a convincing argument for removing sweetener no. 2. If an opportunity arises to quietly drop it then I will. > In any case, if you resubmit it according to the new submission > instructions, I'll get it on the agenda if I have any spare time after > dealing with getting my mother home from the hospital. If no one on this list objects to the self-certification solution then I don't think we need to burden either you or the board with this. I'm sorry to hear that your mother has been ill, and I hope that your needing to get her home means that she is better or improving. Regards Chris Gray VM Architect, ACUNIA -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3