OSI Certification Process

[Mark Wells]

On Fri, 19 Nov 1999, John Cowan wrote:

> Alex Nicolaou wrote:
> 
> > In closing I should say that I think it is a mistake to withhold OSI
> > certification simply on the basis of a licence's merits, and not on some
> > more rational basis such as whether it meets the OSD or not.
> 
> I agree.  Failing to certify a license as Open Source when it meets the OSD
> would be both unprincipled and inexpedient.  But *requesting* someone to
> withdraw a license on grounds of redundancy is neither.

I've made this argument before.  Bruce said that if anyone actually
submitted $PATHOLOGICAL_LICENSE that exploits $OSD_LOOPHOLE[$n], he'd
refuse to certify it.  What this actually means is that the OSD is much
bigger and more complex than it looks, and a lot of it exists only in the
heads of OSI people, to be implemented by refusing to certify things even
though they pass all the formal requirements.

This bothers me.  What happens when Bruce and Eric Both Get Hit By
Buses(tm), and OSI ends up in the hands of people who have a different
understanding of these unwritten parts of the definition?  The whole point
of having a published set of criteria is that you don't spend most of your
time defending your objectivity.