I'd love a change of topic -- me too

[Seth Alan Woolley]

Personally, I find the license non-proliferation stuff kinda pointless 
and distracting the license approval process as Larry points out. I'm 
not sure why it takes ten people to flesh out in private which licenses 
are redundant.  I see this taking one person who says, "hey, these are 
the redundancies, let's vote on which one stays if there are no 
substantive objections."

Then again, add one more to the committee and the issue would probably 
go away, at least in the face of the public.  Yes, you'll have to deal 
with another ego, but by the time it's over, people will think, hey, 
institutions are working just fine.

It leaves me curious, though -- I really want to know, besides "too many 
lawyers" what exactly Bruce wants to sway within the committee.

I might then actually care.

In the meantime, somebody's gone through immense effort to propose a 
license that's been proposed a couple times with five or six different 
proddings.  I don't care what the ideologues think -- if it meets the 
criteria without a templatable equivalent, you should approve it.

That's what the community expects.  If you can't handle the diversity, 
make a more organic classification system and some cute web-based tools 
to illustrate what the licenses do, are most similar to, and contrast 
against.

As far as the public is concerned, you're no longer just the OSI, 
you're a group that wants to control the term Open Source (yeah, fine 
with me, but I agree with Ian, don't lie if it's just your personal 
mission) to whatever your whims dictate, regardless of the "definition" 
(not fine with me).  Then you refuse Perens a seat -- how pointless, 
personal, and petty.  All this arguing and there's still no good reason 
not to let him be on the committee.  Want to silence voices?  Put them 
on a committee -- an advisory one no less -- didn't they teach you guys 
that in Politics 101?

This is one reason I'm more confortable with the FSF handling my 
licenses.  They aren't fast to respond, but they sure are reliable.

And I thought the "lefties" debated amongst themselves too much...

On Mon, Aug 22, 2005 at 08:38:54PM -0700, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
> The unfortunate thread of the past few days about who is and who isn't on
> the License Proliferation Committee is distracting us from some really
> important issues. There are a few new licenses and some license revisions
> actually on the table, but I hear too much whining (on both sides) about
> process and very little about that substance.
> 
> Everyone who sees this email is free to participate on license-discuss. If
> there's a substantive topic to discuss, bring it here. Nobody is required to
> report to some committee of the OSI board. Meanwhile, I hope that License
> Proliferation Committee produces some suggestions soon, so that those
> suggestions can be discussed on license-discuss. 
> 
> Nobody has ever been silenced from license-discuss. Call it a "committee of
> the whole" and let's get on with important topics.
> 
> Please?
> 
> /Larry Rosen 
> 

-- 
Seth Alan Woolley [seth at positivism.org], SPAM/UCE is unauthorized
Quality Assurance Team Leader & Security Team: Source Mage GNU/linux
Linux so advanced, it may as well be magic http://www.sourcemage.org
Secretary Pacific Green Party of Oregon http://www.pacificgreens.org
Key id FDCEE733 = 5302 B414 64C4 6112 3454  E082 99F0 69DC FDCE E733
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