[beyond-licensing] Open By Rule

[Simon Phipps]

Hi everyone.

I once (in 2009) worked on a list of factors including but beyond licensing
that could be used to understand the open source character of a project as
a pair of OSI blog posts, before I joined the Board (*here
<http://www.opensource.org/node/472> and here
<http://www.opensource.org/node/476>).*  At the time I called it "Open By
Rule" and I proposed publication of a metric by all open source projects to
show their openness.

On my web site you'll find:

   - The seed idea, comparing "open source" and "organic food":
   https://webmink.com/essays/scorecard/
   - The benchmark itself: https://webmink.com/essays/open-by-rule/
   - Some evaluations of projects: https://webmink.com/tag/open-by-rule/

For non-link-followers, the seven factors are:

   - Has a modern license with patent grants
   - Does not accumulate copyrights
   - Has a community-centric trademark & policy
   - Releases to a public schedule
   - Has developers from multiple affiliations
   - Could reasonably be forked
   - Operates transparently, both for development & governance

The approach is clearly flawed - there's no measure of "gameability" for
example, and these days I'd add rules about how money is handled and
whether the code is complete or a teaser for some open core thing -  but
many people expressed interest and have asked for an updated version and it
may be a useful source of sand for our collective oyster.

Cheers,

Simon
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