License List -- as of 9-11-00

[Matthew C. Weigel]

On Fri, 1 Jun 2001, John Cowan wrote:

> Speaking only for myself, I think it unlikely that it was rejected.
> The OSI board is a group of overworked volunteers (sound familiar?) and
> things do get dropped on the floor from time to time.

They are a group of overworked volunteers who claim to represent the
wider open source community.  In addition to 'dropping things on the
floor,' they also occasionally make calls contrary to the stated
opinions of the wider open source community - and when they do so, they
do so quietly so that no one notices.

After the on-going confusion as to the OSI Certified(sm) nature of
Darwin (and the qualifying nature of the APSL 1.2), which resulted in a
misinformed journalist lambasting Apple for not acting in good faith in
proclaiming Darwin as open source, I think it is necessary to do two
things: stick to the lists published on opensource.org as 'OSI
Certified,' and light a fire under the hiney of whoever's
responsibility it is to update that list.

At this point, there are two kinds of licenses not included - licenses
that someone hasn't 'gotten to,' and licenses which don't qualify.  As
long as there is such confusion, the OSI can avoid discussing its
decisions to exclude licenses (because they might be on the todo list),
and the wider open source community can be misled.
-- 
 Matthew Weigel
 Research Systems Programmer
 weigel+ at pitt.edu