[beyond-licensing] quick review of scope, resources, and goals

Allison Randal allison at opensource.org
Tue Apr 12 02:38:10 UTC 2016


On 04/10/2016 10:08 PM, Luis Villa wrote:
> The common theme among all of these, of course, is how developers work
> together. Doing that right gives you most of the benefits of open
> source, regardless of licensing. That's why proprietary software is
> embracing these things pretty wholesale. It's telling, I think, that no
> one calls these "free" development practices; they're /open/ development
> practices (recent example
> <https://github.com/WhiteHouse/source-code-policy/issues/129>).
> 
> So, yeah, I think OSI does itself, open development practices, and the
> broader movement a disfavor by tying itself too deeply to software
> freedom. When those are (incorrectly) touted as synonyms, important
> nuance is lost.

Good points, and while I self-identify as belonging in "software
freedom" (as well as "open source" and "free software"), I may not be
the best person to state definitively what is or isn't within the
concerns of software freedom. I consider the Software Freedom
Conservancy as one of the authoritative sources, so I'll note that in
addition to licensing requirements their criteria for becoming a
Conservancy project include:

==========
The project should have an existing, vibrant, diverse community that
develops and documents the software. For example, projects that have
been under development for less than a year or only a “proof of concept”
implementation are generally not eligible.

[...]

Conservancy favors projects that are well-established and have some
track record of substantial contributions from a community of volunteer
developers. Furthermore, Conservancy does give higher priority to
projects that have an established userbase and interest, but also tries
to accept some smaller projects with strong potential.
==========

This set of concerns are strikingly similar to your list, to some of the
things we've been talking about on the OSI board for the past couple of
years, and to the idea behind beyond-licensing.

> [1] As some of you even saw in person, I've started talking about a
> non-licensing theory of software freedom myself, but it's very
> definitely in an overall vacuum: http://lu.is/?p=2917

I don't think you are talking in a vacuum, or at least not any more. I
see this awareness of the importance of elements beyond licensing
growing equally in open source, free software, and software freedom.
(And, BTW, the capabilities approach in that talk provides a very nice
framework for explaining why abstract freedoms are often best measured
through practical outcomes.)

> [2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html uses "user" 16 times,
> developer 6x, "community" 2x

I've even seen RMS using "community-oriented" more and more to describe
free software lately, which absolutely thrills me.

> [3] ESR engaged in a lot of revisionist history in old versions of
> http://www.opensource.org/history, but one claim that I think was
> accurate (and left in when I rewrote it) was the statement that OSI grew
> out of a determination to "advocate for the superiority of an open
> /development/ process". (emphasis added by me in this email)

Yes, historically this was one of the fundamental points of
disagreement. TBH, I think one of the great tragedies in the divorce
between ESR and RMS was the division of the children: one disowning
"freedom" and the other disowning "community" and "benefits of
collaboration". It's a whole coherent system, much stronger together
than as fragmented shards.


Fortunately, though, we don't have to tackle all that here. We'll find
plenty of commonality exploring more straightforward topics like "What
makes a vibrant, diverse community?"

Allison



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