approved licenses web page not being updated

Rick Moen rick at linuxmafia.com
Sat Aug 4 18:28:15 UTC 2001


begin SamBC quotation:

> I think this would be a bad thing, but I agree that the OSI needs to
> either get their act together *or* stand down and dissolve or find a
> new mission.

I cannot help noticing that you, unlike Matthew Weigel, have not
volunteered to assist OSI -- which redeemed partially his outburst, and
not yours.

OSI's main and most-valuable role, plainly, is as a public-information /
marketing service, making the case for open-source software and its
definition via the OSD.  That role has been _enormously_ helpful, over
the last few years.  Suggesting that it should dissolve because some
volunteer failed to update a Web page is utter idiocy.

On the matter under recent discussion, here's a clue:  The OSI
inadvertantly opened up what an enormous number of dim-witted corporate
executives saw as an _invitation_ to create new, one-off, gratuitously
incompatible licences for their individual companies, and submit them to
the OSI Board for certificaton.

That tendency is, of course, a stupid thing to do, and unclear on the
nature of the open-source development model & licence-compatibility
issues -- but Papa Darwin has a backlog of boardrooms to visit.  (I'm
not referring to obviously needed adjustments like IBM's Common Public
License, but rather pointless corporate-counsel spew like the Vovida
Software License and the Intel Open Source License.)

So, that is the context of OSI being mobbed by idiots waving their
corporate lawyers' weekend scribblings -- and, for all I know, of the
Web site's maintainers getting tired of being lackeys for the shallow
end of the corporate gene pool.  If OSI is a little slow helping such
companies add their poorly-conceived creations to the list -- or even a
_lot_ slow -- as far as I'm concerned, good.

> My two penn'orth.

Refund duly tendered.

(My personal views; yours for a modest clickwrap licence fee and waiver
of reverse-engineering rights.)

-- 
Cheers,                                     The Viking's Reminder:
Rick Moen                                   Pillage first, _then_ burn.
rick at linuxmafia.com



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