For Approval: NASA Open Source Agreement Version 1.1

[Alex Rousskov]

On Fri, 13 Feb 2004, Richard Schilling wrote:

> I would rather know that more details about the product's use are
> being tracked than not.  When a company tracks the usage of their
> product they have an easier time gaining support from onlookers,
> which is good for the product.
>
> I want to write to my congress people and make a case for NASA
> spending a lot of money on open source development.  It's more
> compelling to do that if I can point out where the product is being
> used.
>
> Tracking information is meant to be held private, so it wouldn't be
> appropriate to release that inforamtion to the public anyway.
> Tracking information is absoutely key to a developer's ability to
> guage the success of their product.  For example, if you have
> reliable numbers to compare your downloads with, say sales figures
> from a comperable well-known product (e.g. MS Office), then you can
> promote that product more effectively.

Even if the above rhetoric makes sense on your planet, the above has
nothing to do with licensing discussion on this list. Here is the
registration-related summary:

	- If NASA wants to kindly ask users to register, license is
	  not the right place to do that. NASA should change the
	  license before OSI approves it (a simple quality control
	  issue)

	- If NASA wants to trick users into registering (while not
	  legally requiring that), then NASA should change the license
	  before OSI approves it (a simple honesty/openness of
	  intent issue).

	- If NASA wants to legally require registration, then NASA
	  should change the license to make that legal requirement
	  clear (a simple quality control issue). This change is
	  likely to reduce changes of NOSA being OSI certified,
	  I guess.

Alex.
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