OSI approval of Plan 9 license

[Ralph Mellor]

As per my recent post to comp.os.plan9, a copy
of which is at the end of this email, I'm thinking
of asking for the current Plan 9 license to be
approved by OSI.

Given that I'm just a member of the public, and
not the owner of the license, can I do that? If I
can, are all relevant parties happy for me to do so?

--
ralph

PS. If you wish to use my email address, delete
the XXX from the start.


=====================================

Subject: "Plan 9 teeters on the edge of freeness but...
Date: 2002-09-09 03:00:03 PST

...falls howling into the abyss of doom..." [1]
(A rather colorful way of saying that the Plan 9
license, as it stood when the statement was made,
should not be considered "open source". [2])

Afaict, there was a clear good faith effort at
one point to respond to RMS' points and to have
the Plan 9 license OKed by the OSI. [3]

It seems the license got close. [4]

But, for some reason, there was no closure on the
process; and at some later date someone at Lucent
apparently decided to take the position that Lucent
would not subject their licenses to certification
by 3rd parties, and this presumably stalled the
attempt to modify to meet the needs of the open
source community and have it certified by OSI. [5]

Is this about right as an assessment? Is there
really some fundamental issue that means Plan 9
is destined to never become genuinely open source?

Could *I* try to see if I can get the license
certified?

--
ralph

[1]
At least, a poster stated as much a couple years
ago in:	http://tinyurl.com/1chc
It looks like the license was subsequently changed
in a way that I suspect would have satisfied the
quoted poster. But the "teeters on the edge" quote
still seems apropos for the reasons stated in the
rest of this email.

[2]
By "open source", I mean as defined by the OSI
(http://www.opensource.org/), the body trusted by
many hackers to identify what is and is not open
source.

[3]
"Rob Pike has submitted the plan9 license..."
    (cut/paste next two lines together):
    http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?
    3:mss:1988:200007:aankcpfkdbioplpjjacb

[4]
Two lists of issues I found from the FSF and
opensource.org web sites were, respectively:

    RMS' summary of Plan 9 license issues as of Oct 5 2000:
      http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/plan-nine.html

    John Cowan's summary of Plan 9 license issues
    as of Aug 20 2000:
     EITHER full URL (cut/paste next two lines together):
      http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?
      3:mss:2173:aankcpfkdbioplpjjacb
     OR short alternate URL:
      http://tinyurl.com/1ch9

I note several license modifications that appear
to be attempts to address many of the key points
raised.

[5]
Apparently there was a "Lucent policy decision"
not to pursue license approvals:
http://www.crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:5

--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3