For Approval: Open Source Software Alliance License

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Brian Behlendorf (brian at collab.net):

> The essential device of an OSI license - the right to distribute modified
> works without the copyright holders' consent - does mean there's a whole
> host of business models the copyright holder simply can't make viable,
> especially on a startup budget.  That's not a defect, or even necessarily
> a shame - the balance of power in OSI-approved licenses is intentionally
> weighted in favor of everyone but the authors.  This makes it hard to
> reconcile, though, with the traditional model for small software
> developers - that you get paid proportionate to the amount of value your
> product is providing to people, roughly expressed as the number of people
> using your product.  The fact that such a philosophy can't be supported
> (at least not predictably and directly) by OSI licenses is what causes
> people to see OSI licenses as "cheerleading for the GPL".

I just want to perform a little semantic janitorial duty, here:  

Surely the allegation discussed at the end of your paragraph is
objectively a factual error.  In anyone else's hands, I'd have suspected
it was intended as flamebait.

-- 
Cheers,
Rick Moen                                          ROMANI, ITE DOMVM!
rick at linuxmafia.com
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