OSD#5 needs a patch?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Chuck Swiger (chuck at codefab.com):

> Someone recently made a comment that the GPL will always be an
> OSD-approved license regardless of what the actual definitions are[0];
> if true, what does this imply if there exists privileged licenses that
> are not being evaluated on their merits against the OSD definitions as
> they are written?

The reason GPLv2[1] will always be OSD-compliant is that it complies
with the core notions of what open source is.  Those core notions aren't
likely to change.

> What happens if a proposed license is compliant with the OSD, yet
> conflicts with the GPL?

If applied in a suitable manner[2], the result is open-source software.

> Would it be accurate to say that a fair number of people criticised
> Sean not on the merits of his license vis-a-vis the OSD, but for it
> being "anti-GPL"?

Might be.  That would be what we call "off-topic chatter", having little
to do with this list's charter.  Welcome to the Internet.

> The OSD as written today is largely license-neutral, and it concerns
> me when people want to change the OSD to prefer some licenses over
> others.

Who, for example?  If those "people" aren't on the OSI Board (I'm not,
for example), then they only have opinions like other featherless
bipeds, and not a direct say in the matter.


[0] That would be what we call "petulance".  Welcome to the Internet.

[1] Obviously, future versions of that licence (that don't yet exist)
may be a different manner.

[2] Declaring that a codebase is under an OSI-approved licence doesn't
in itself suffice to make any particular instance of that codebase open
source, e.g., if you issue a binary-only copy and declare it to be
BSD-licensed.

-- 
Cheers,                        
Rick Moen                         This .signature intentionally left blank.
rick at linuxmafia.com  
--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3