[CAVO] Choosing an open source license

Fri May 1 17:36:36 UTC 2015

On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 12:26 PM, Dan Wallach <dwallach at cs.rice.edu
<mailto:dwallach at cs.rice.edu> > wrote:

I can't speak on behalf of Travis County, but I can explain why we're
talking about "suitable open source license" rather than picking a specific
one. In short, because lawyers. That's why MIT did their own. That's why
Apache did their own. Ditto for Android. It's too early in the game to write
down specific legal language. Instead, what matters is that we talk about
our intent.

The idea behind pointing specifically to the vote verification machinery as
distinct from the rest of the voting machine is that we haven't nailed down
the business specifics yet. That depends, in no small part, on who's paying
for it. However, it's essential to the security model that independent third
parties have the data and tools necessary to verify the cryptographic
aspects of the election, and the best way to make that happen is to develop
code that's easy to give away. (Again, under a "suitable" open source
license.) The intent is that the Democrats, the Republicans, the newspapers,
the League of Women Voters, etc., can take the reference code and build
their own bespoke web services or whatever else. 

Hi Dan, I was pleased to read the above in your email to Brent Turner. I
agree completely with your notion that election and voting software should
be under a "suitable" open source license. As former general counsel for
Open Source Initiative and a long-time attorney for the Apache Software
Foundation, this is the same prayer I make every night. I'm glad Texas (or
at least Travis County) is on-board. 

In CAVO we've been discussing this very topic. I even wrote an article about
it that recommends GPLv3, but other open source licenses - including Apache
- are compatible with GPLv3. So long as the result is truly open source
software that we and others can distribute under GPLv3, I'll be personally
satisfied.

We're trying to build an open source community for this software that can
cooperate around the world. Our parochial current name is "CAVO" but we
expect industry standards and open source software to apply everywhere.
Texas belongs here too.

We should have Travis County representatives and you in our community and on
our email list. That way we can discuss your concerns effectively in an open
source way.

Please subscribe to our discussion email list. Go to this link and
subscribe:

http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/cavo 

We'd like to welcome you there.

/Larry

Lawrence Rosen

Rosenlaw & Einschlag (www.rosenlaw.com <http://www.rosenlaw.com/> ) 

3001 King Ranch Rd., Ukiah, CA 95482

Cell: 707-478-8932 

LinkedIn: http://lnkd.in/D9CWhD 

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