OSD#5 needs a patch?

[Chuck Swiger]

On Thursday, October 9, 2003, at 01:26 PM, John Cowan wrote:
> Chuck Swiger scripsit:
>> Someone recently made a comment that the GPL will always be an 
>> OSD-approved
>> license regardless of what the actual definitions are; 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?
>
> Because the OSD (or rather its ancestor, the DFSG) is an abstraction 
> from
> the details of the then-known free/open-source software licenses: the 
> GPL,
> the BSD, the X11, the Artistic, the LGPL.  The definition's been 
> refined
> since then, and lots of new OSD-conformant licenses have been designed,
> but if the OSD is refined so that these original licenses can't be 
> called
> Open Source any more, then it's been effectively refined out of 
> existence.

We are in agreement that the OSD should not change in a fashion that 
would invalidate the classic open source licenses you've mentioned.  My 
concern is not to favor one of those licenses over the others with 
regard to proposed changes to the OSD.

>> What happens if a proposed license is compliant with the OSD, yet 
>> conflicts
>> with the GPL?
>
> There are already plenty of Open Source licenses that are incompatible 
> with
> the GPL by the terms of the GPL.

Agreed.

> So far there are none that are incompatible
> with the GPL by their own terms.  I don't see that this makes much 
> difference.

By this you mean that you do not see any particular problem with Sean's 
license "being incompatible with the GPL by it's own terms", and that 
you view his license as being OSD-compliant?

-- 
-Chuck

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