Plan 9 license

[Ralph Mellor]

John Cowan said:
> > Could you please specify wherein the Plan 9
> > license fails of Open Sourceness

I, Ralph Mellor said:
> [response]

So, as of Nov 3, 2002, regarding the Plan 9 license:

  o The license is not "Open Source" per OSI;

  o The license claims to be "Open Source";

  o The Plan 9 community knows this;

  o This situation is 2 years old;

  o This situation causes a lot of wasted
    time either investigating the license
    or getting involved with Plan 9 only
    to discover the problems later;

  o This situation is something that should
    concern OSI.

Recall that it took me hours to determine if the
Plan 9 license was really open source or not. I
believe the problem was a license left in limbo:

  o It was not certified, but I decided to see if
    it was in process, a reasonable thing to do;

  o Indeed the certification process had begun;

  o Changes were made and it seemed to be headed
    for approval;

  o It ended up in limbo, neither approved nor
    rejected.

Perhaps OSI would list licenses that have ended
in limbo (neither rejected nor approved) and/or
list licenses that claim to be "open source" but
which are not (yet) certified by the OSI.

--
ralph
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