on the spirit of the APOSSL

[dave sag]

At 3:55 PM -0500 5/3/02, Matthew C. Weigel wrote:
>On Tuesday, March 5, 2002, at 02:45 p, dave sag wrote:
>
>>because it puts faith in individuals and empowers them.  OSS is 
>>pronoic in nature because you can simply express a need for tools 
>>and within a
>
>Then I don't understand the need for a 'pronoic' license, if free
>software in general accomplishes these goals.

free software does not address these issues in a framework that seeks 
to introduce a new term into common use. it emerged as a framework 
out of a belief in the power of free software; a new term at the 
time, but not now.

>It seems that a new license is *not* the way to encourage the spread of
>an idea, there are enough licenses already that do this, some are
>already lost in the noise (and many are completely ignored, as far as I
>can tell, cf the Democratic Software Foundation's license).

what difference does it make whether a licence is adopted by the 
masses or not for it to be acceptable as a valid OSSL?

>>we would like people to adopt similar pronoic attitudes and see 
>>this licence as a way for people to adopt them.  as an OSS licence 
>>goes it is clearly in the spirit of the OSD.
>
>In your opinion. However, the 'spirit' of the OSD is generally contrary
>to licenses done 'because they can be done.' The need you see this
>license fulfilling is not a need that I see this license being
>successful at fulfilling.

But you recognise the need.  It is succeeds then great, let it stand 
on it's own feet, but if it falls by the wayside, well what is the 
harm?  It is the only licence proposed to address this need and 
should better ones emerge I am happy to assess and discuss.

>>Right now Pronoic Ltd has developed some software it feels is 
>>exactly in the spirit of pronoia.  We wish to release our software 
>>onto sourceforge, which requires a valid OSSL.
>
>Not true; this was discussed in some detail awhile back.

I must defer to you on this. I had not examined the archives in enough detail.

The desire to host on sourceforge is not our primary driving concern 
here.  Our desire is simply to fill a niche and make a contribution 
to the language, and to do our part in a very pronoic manner by 
proposing counterpoints to the recent trends of gloom and conspiracy.

cheers

dave

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