License Approval Process

[Lawrence E. Rosen]

To the Open Source community:

The board of directors of OSI, which has responsibility to approve licenses,
is composed of volunteers.  They are doing their best to catch up with the
backlog of submitted licenses.  Given their other activities, this is taking
more time than we'd like.  I hope you can all be patient.

As OSI's new executive director, I am taking seriously the job of processing
license review requests in a timely manner.  At last month's board meeting,
six licenses were discussed and two approved (the CNRI license submitted by
Python and the Apache license submitted by the Apache Software Foundation).
The board has scheduled a meeting later this month to review licenses, and
they plan to meet on a regular basis in coming months to try to work their
way through the backlog of submitted licenses.

The community can help by considering carefully whether a new license is
really needed.  There are several very good licenses already approved.  Will
"yet another" license help?  Make sure you clearly explain your objectives
for creating your new license when you submit it for approval, so that the
OSI board can prioritize appropriately.

We're also trying to improve our procedures so that we can update our web
site more frequently as new licenses are submitted for review and then
either approved or disapproved.  If any of you know of someone in the
California Bay Area who'd like to be OSI's webmaster, please let me know.

OSI always welcomes suggestions for improvement.  Please feel free to
contact me, or you may write directly to members of the board of directors.

/Larry Rosen
Executive Director, OSI
650-366-3457
lrosen at rosenlaw.com
www.rosenlaw.com
www.opensource.org