[CAVO] [License-review] Submission of OSET Public License for Approval

Brent Turner turnerbrentm at gmail.com
Sun Sep 6 17:01:15 UTC 2015


One concern is this newly  licensed code becoming corporate owned code, and
that possible " back-door"  issue may diminish the enthusiasm of the coders
 work toward best election system efforts. Though this might not be a point
of irritation for academics, the election system open source and security
community has noted this and is curious what is compelling OSET to avoid
 GPLv3 ..   Will the code eventually go to Kapor's friends at Apple ?

Kapor's noted involvement is only as relevant as his close ties with Apple
and other commercial entities that may be the benefactors here. In the
space of elections and vote counting, we have witnessed much sleight of
hand, so applications that avoid GPLv3 for voting system use raises
eyebrows, as does OSETS previous political actions.

CAVO considers all the humans to be " stakeholders" here.  and does not
anticipate "special" harm.




On Sun, Sep 6, 2015 at 7:36 AM, Richard Fontana <fontana at sharpeleven.org>
wrote:

>
> How would CAVO, or the open source voting systems space generally, be
> harmed if this license were approved? (How is it any different than if
> the OSET Foundation decided to use an existing non-GPLv3 OSI-approved
> license, such as MPL 2.0 ... or even "GPLv2 only"?)
>
> I think the politics lurking behind these license submissions are
> worth bringing to light and examining (something which hasn't been
> done enough in the past, IMO) but all I'm seeing here so far is
> general concern about the OSET Foundation's close connection to the
> wealthy Mr. Kapor.
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 04, 2015 at 07:50:14PM -0700, Brent Turner wrote:
> > Maybe there are answers in the sidebar- - What compels someone like
> Mitch Kapor
> > to create a new license for election systems ?  What compels him to be
> in the
> > space of "open source "  voting systems to begin with ?   Certainly we
> assume
> > he has more than  enough money but is it just greed for more ?  Is it
> the power
> > that comes with pioneering a new license so that he can be the " kingpin
> " of
> > voting ?  This is the concern of the open source voting pioneer
> community. OSET
> > has consistently ignored. the open source community and now this new
> license
> > issue is upon us.  Why would we need a new license rather than use GPLv3
> ? .
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 4:51 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> >     There is nobody more qualified than Heather Meeker to shepherd the
> creation
> >     of a new open source license. She's an expert.
> >
> >
> >
> >     Intelligent and serious consideration went into the OSET Public
> License
> >     (OPL). After a detailed review by this OSI license-review@
> committee and
> >     perhaps some slight modifications by its authors, this license will
> almost
> >     certainly be approved.
> >
> >
> >
> >     What concerns me still, though, is how this new license will be
> absorbed by
> >     the open source community and by election officials around the world.
> >     Heather correctly criticized me earlier for arguing that this new
> license
> >     is addressing "a non-existent problem." Actually, it is mostly
> adding to an
> >     existing difficult problem.
> >
> >
> >
> >     David Webber here accurately described "an open source solution
> stack for a
> >     typical voting solution today [that[ includes a whole raft of
> licenses."
> >     Any government agency that intends to acquire an open source election
> >     system will inevitably require components such as an operating
> system,
> >     database, printer and scanner drivers, and a main voting software
> module,
> >     presumably under a cornucopia of licenses including Apache, MPL,
> ECL, GPL,
> >     and a whole lot of BSD. We expect FOSS and commercial add-ons that
> >     aggregate with that election stuff.
> >
> >
> >
> >     Add to this one more open source license.
> >
> >
> >
> >     We'll also have to wait for all the potentially interested developer
> >     foundations and commercial distributors and customers to understand
> if the
> >     new license is compatible with what they are already doing –
> specifically
> >     for derivative works.
> >
> >
> >
> >     Does anyone here believe that a new open source license will cure the
> >     existing confusion among government agencies that already engage in
> FOSS
> >     licensing?
> >
> >
> >
> >     As for me, I'm personally rather bored with evaluating (yet another)
> open
> >     source license, so I leave the rest of that fun discussion to
> everyone
> >     else. :-)
> >
> >
> >
> >     Have a great holiday weekend!
> >
> >
> >
> >     /Larry
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >     _______________________________________________
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> >     CAVO at opensource.org
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> >
> >
> >
>
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>
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