How about license-review at opensource.org?

[Justin Wells]

While some of the discussion seems to have gone too far afield, I think 
perhaps much of it was important. 

I question the viability of an opensource license discussion list on 
which opensource philosophy is off topic. How can we say what is or 
isn't in the licensing interests of the opensource community if we are
not allowed to talk about what those interests really are?

It seems to me that a good portion of the ESR-vs-RMS slug-a-thon
was actually on topic, in that it explored the issues surrounding
what is and is not beneficial to the opensource community, and what
that community is trying to do, and why. Ultimately an opensource
license is a document which attempts to codify those benefits and
desires into something that stands up in court.

You can't very well create a license if you don't know what you want 
it to say. Perhaps the OSD in itself is enough and we have no further
need of opensource philosophy; but on the other hand perhaps some 
license that is OSD compliant woulb be greatly improved by the deletion
of some term that runs counter to our interests, but happens to be 
technically acceptable. A license drafter might be willing to bend to 
our wants a little in order to gain our support, rather than just 
our approval.

As to the key players embarassing us by showing that we have a community
with deep philosophical divides, politics, attitudes, and beliefs--I 
actually think that any prospective licensee would do well to learn 
what those different opinions are, what attitudes they're likely to 
encounter, and what the objectives embodied in existing licenses are. 

I'm not sure we would be doing anyone ignorant of these things any 
favours by sheltering them from it here. 

While the personal hygiene and table manners of list members is no
doubt off topic here, I think a philosophical debate on the motivations
of opensource hackers is probably not that far off the mark.

Perhaps there should be a "digest" version of the list available. Some 
people may simply be interested in what we have to say about their license,
and not want to recieve numerous messages about other topics (or even 
about other licenses). Providing a "digest" subscription, or even a 
browseable web archive, would enable such people to avoid the topics 
they are not particularly interested in.

I might feel differently about the philosophical discussions if this 
list were higher volume. The volume of posts talking about whether RMS
and ESR are off topic now seems to be louder than their discussion, which
itself only generated a couple of messages a day.

Justin


On Tue, Sep 21, 1999 at 03:24:42AM -0000, bruce at perens.com wrote:
> From: Andrew J Bromage <ajb at buzzword.cc.monash.edu.au>
> > As a matter of interest, was my question (i.e. "here are my constraints,
> > what licence would suit my purpose") on topic on license-discuss?
> 
> Nobody would have objected to that message. The problem is arguments between
> various key players regarding their free software policies, where those
> policies are legitimate topics of argument, but not of interest (or
> embarassing to us) when read by various people who are here to have their
> licenses reviewed.
> 
> 	Thanks
> 
> 	Bruce