Discuss: Request for OSI approval

[Karsten M. Self]

on Fri, Apr 26, 2002, Chris Knight (cknight at ghostwheel.com) wrote:
> At 09:36 PM 4/25/2002 -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> >Quoting Russell Nelson (nelson at crynwr.com):

> >Personal opinion, but very widely held:  HTML in e-mail is obnoxious.
> >It should be confined to the Web.
> 
> It was an attachment, not the body of the email.  Even a purist can't
> complain about that, unless they have a poorly configured mail client
> that in-lined an attachment.

To the contrary.  Discussing licenses often means focusing tightly on
specific clauses.  The ability to do this in manner that presents the
content uniformly to all recipients of a list, supports "reply below
quoted" responses, and doesn't leave the reader subject to vagueries of
interpretation of nonstandard charactersets, is a boon to the license
submitter.  This is my own strongly held and frequently expressed
opinion.  It's not part of the OSI guidelines (last I checked), but
IMVAO ought to be.

You've now engaged yourself in a fight with the group whose assistance
you're seeking in having your license reviewed.  Bad form.

> >Observation:  The OSL submissions guidelines, item #1, ask submitters
> >to put the licence on the _Web_ in HTML format.  The separate item
> >about posting to this mailing list does _not_ say post in HTML
> >format.
> 
> My first post did not include the license as an attachment, I was
> requested to attach the license and resend.  Also, I did not post IN
> HTML format; again, it was an attachment.  I suggest you check the
> configuration of your mail client.

Specious.

> Do you have a USEFUL critique of the license or is your only complaint
> that it had CHARACTERS which offended you?  

The presentation of the license on this list impairs meaningful
discussion.  Rick's formatting of the license to ASCII was a generous
and appreciated measure.  Note that while such efforts are appreciated,
neither he, the reviewers, nor the license submitter, should assume that
there were no legally significant changes in the text as a result of
this process.  Given that you are using a characterset in which
quotation delimiters -- presumably a significant component of the
document -- cannot be rendered on my platform (and yes, my client _does_
display HTML, inline), this may not be a minor consideration.  I've had
this same discussion with internel counsel regarding documents submitted
in MS Word format, in which discrepencies between the proprietary and
ASCII forms of the document were noted.

> I'm much more interested in working towards having an OSI approved
> license than I am in petty complaints over the text formatting.  I'm
> sure other members of the list have more important things to worry
> about as well.

Yes, we've got better things to worry about than deciphering your
document format.  I'd strongly recommend cleaning the slate and starting
either from a vetting of Rick's work, or preferably, submitting your own
verified text version of the document.  These issues are not seperable.

Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>        http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
   A guide to GNU/Linux backups:
     http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Linux/FAQs/backups.html
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