RE: License Approval Process
Thanks for the suggestions. I just sent a copy directly to both Eric and Richard and will report back if I hear anything. Scott Hollenbeck (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Network Solutions, Inc. Registry -Original Message- From: Jacques Chester [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2000 9:55 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: License Approval Process Hello again all; J C Lawrence wrote: On Sun, 13 Feb 2000 18:40:26 -0500 Rafi M Goldberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [..] It is unfortunate that the powers that be @ opensource.org only seem to be interested in gaining the support of large corporations and those who decide to just use an existing license... I hope that's not actually the case, but it doesn't look good. ESR certainly receives considerable flammage to this effect, I am sure. Hopefully he's reading this and is prepared to defend himself. Hello, Eric! *waves* I'm not immune from my share of throwing stones from glass houses myself, so I guess I'll take the position as Devil's Advocate(1) on this one. I'm not prepared to hand Eric the prize for making the hacker community rise as fast and as far as it has. I *will* say that his impact in the process cannot be discounted. Whether you agree with his message or not, I think it's clear that the messenger certainly brought some of the memes into the corporate intelligences. I would suggest emailling the principles directly (ESR and Perens) in the case of slow response. With the caveat that Perens isn't at the OSI anymore. And, to give your license a baptism of fire, you may prefer to email it to Richard Stallman instead ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). You will have few email conversations quite as challenging, I assure you. be well; J C Lawrence Home: [EMAIL PROTECTED] JC. (1) Just a note on where that term comes from. The Catholic church, in deciding on whether to make someone into a saint, appoints a "Devil's Advocate", whose job it is to fight the approval of that person to sainthood. Your pointless trivia for the day.
Offer of help
In defence of OSI, it may be that there isn't a real mechanism in place to handle what is probably a growing flood of requests for license approval. I received a message from Bruce Perens 2.5 months ago inquiring about our license (for OpenDesk.com) which we submitted for OSI approval in November. I replied but haven't heard from him yet. I have about 50 programmers here ready to volunteer some time if OSI needs some sort of application/database to help them out. Of course, we'd use only OSI compliant tools :) Let me know, Raymond Luk President OPENDESK.COM [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Get free email, calendars, file sharing, and an Internet workspace at www.opendesk.com
OSI, licenses, MPL
In defence of OSI, it may be that there isn't a real mechanism in place to handle what is probably a growing flood of requests for license approval. I related, one other reader pointed out the desire of OSI to reasonably contain the number of, and encourage the use of the "pre-approved" licenses. i have to agree with him. the list of pre-approved licenses seems to vary widely in terms of general vs. specific use. for example, L/GPL are very general. on the other hand, MPL has a lot of Netscape-centric language that *must be changed* prior to it's use for a project other than Mozilla. do those changes constitute a new license? in the specific case of using MPL for a new open source project, which is currently in my crosshairs, a better solution might be an MPL 1.2 that preserves the core of MPL, but which provides more "fill in these blanks" to allow cusomization of the license to a specific project. regards, wes //\/\\//\\//\\/\//\\/\\//\\//\\/\\/\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\/\\//\\//\\//\\ Wes Bethel, R3vis Corporation [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.r3vis.com/ Phone: 415-898-0814 FAX: 415-898-2814 //\/\\//\\//\\/\//\\/\\//\\//\\/\\/\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\/\\//\\//\\//\\
Re: License Approval Process
I see a lot of people asking on this list why their licenses are not being approved. I think I've been on this list since it was created--in some small way I may have encouraged its creation-- but I don't actually remember seeing any license receive official OSI approval. I may well have forgotten a few in the early days. As I recall, the most active contributor and license commentator on this list has been Bruce Perens, who at the time the list was created was no longer officially an OSI member and thus presumably can not grant official OSI approval. I don't speak for anybody but myself. I'm not an OSI supporter. I can't say that it really saddens me to see this silence. However, I also don't like seeing people feeling rebuffed when they try to open up their software. So here are a few quick notes from my own personal perspective. First I'll note that you don't need OSI approval to put your code out there. Just do it. If people object to the license, fix it. Or don't. Continuing that, why do you want to put the code out there? If you want to get contributions from the net, then you should know that there are already too many licenses out there. Hackers hack code, not the law. If your license is different from standard licenses, you are putting up a barrier to any contributions. Rather than try to figure out your license, hackers won't use or contribute to your code. So if you want to get contributions, don't invent a new license. Use an existing one: GPL, LGPL, MPL, Artistic License, MIT, public domain. If you absolutely can not stomach that, then use an existing license with a caveat. Say: this code is under the GPL, with the additional exception that if you modify it, you must remove our trademarks unless we give you explicit permission to the contrary. (Don't lose too much sleep over legal issues, such as whether you can enforce your license. Most people will obey your license if they can understand it. The people who won't, would probably have ignored a much more restrictive license also.) If your code is exceptional, people will use it whatever the license is. However, most code is not exceptional. You will normally be best served by using an existing license. Don't create a new license merely because you can. That will not help you, and it will not help the free software community. I know a lot of people aren't going to listen to this advice, and that's too bad. Do yourself a favor and listen to what I'm saying. You may not think it applies to you, but it almost certainly does. (I feel I must add a note about getting contributions from the net. The OSI web pages at opensource.org make it sound as though just putting code out there will cause a flood of contributed patches and will make your code stronger, better, faster than it was before. It ain't so. It can happen. I've seen it happen with my own code. But, these days, most of the time, it doesn't. There's a lot of free software out there already, and there are only so many free software hackers.) Now, let's say that you don't really care about getting contributions. Perhaps you want to open up your code to help your customers, or to get a competitive advantage. Perhaps you simply want to help the free software community, although you don't expect any return. In that case, it doesn't much matter what license you use, and it doesn't much matter whether your license is approved by the OSI. Just do something reasonable, something which does not prevent your existing customers do what they need to do. Your goals will be satisfied, and you won't have to worry about the OSI's license approval process. The only other reason I can think of to get OSI approval for your license is for advertising purposes. In that case, I guess you'll just have to wait until somebody from the OSI speaks up. I'm no expert, but, personally, I don't think it's worth the trouble. So you can't put ``open source'' on your ads. Just say ``source code available'' instead. Big deal. Ian
Re: License Approval Process
On Mon, 14 Feb 2000, Ian Lance Taylor wrote: I see a lot of people asking on this list why their licenses are not being approved. I have to agree with most if not all of your points. There are getting to be too many licenses. And most of the ones being submitted are merely minor modifications of existing licenses. If you don't have a pressing need for a new license, don't create one! If you're a corporation and your lawyer says that the MPL, Jikes, etc., aren't suitable, make him explain why he's smarter than the Netscape or IBM lawyers. If you find that none of the existing licenses work for your project, be prepared to explain to others why your new license is any better than the existing. And please understand what Open Source software really is. There's been more than one time here where someone has submitted a license that fails the OSS definition on numerous points. That said, I will grant that there are a few large holes in the Free Software licensing spectrum. If your license manages to plug one of these holes, it will be welcomed. But if it is just another rewrite of the GPL or yet another one-product license, don't bother submitting it. -- Arandir... _ http://www.meer.net/~arandir/
Re: License Approval Process
On Mon, 14 Feb 2000, Chris F Clark wrote: The list is supposedly part of a process to certify licenses as "open source". There seems to be no indication that they will ever certify any new licenses (other than from "very large corporations") as qualifying. Among the licenses that have not been certified were ones that were essentially trivial modifications to already approved licenses. The "trivial modifications" are probably the very reason why they aren't getting approved. Bruce and Eric have always attempted to convince the VLC's to use the existing licenses. Why should they be any different with all the GPL and MIT clones? And you're also forgetting the "idiot filter" quality of this list. Someone submits a license. Everyone proceeds to call in the question the submitter's ancestry or proclivities. The submitters leaves in disgust. Those that do manage to stick around after the first two rounds of abuse end up getting a good hearing. I do recall a new certification within the past six months, and it was not from one of the VLC's. Just because there is no fanfare on this list does not mean that some aren't getting approved. What OSI really needs to do is keep the list updated better. -- Arandir... _ http://www.meer.net/~arandir/
