Change ot topic, back to OVPL

[Alex Bligh]

Quoting Russell Nelson <nelson at crynwr.com>:

> Alex Bligh writes:
>  > To be clear, even if my client DID NOT want what you call the
> OVPL-specific
>  > terms, the changes to the CDDL would be necessary.
> 
> I agree!  So let's get them into the CDDL.

I agree! But that's no reason to make "fixing" one license a condition
of approval for another. The CDDL is the CDDL-folks' license (which
broadly means Sun's license), and it's up to them to determine whether
or not they want to take the "fix" (it may not be necessary or
desirable for them). Besides, I presume in order to incorporate the
fix, they'd have to go through another similar approval process.

>  > > If the license contains
>  > > terms that other parties in the open source community would
> object to,
>  > > we'll tell the submittor.
> 
> Specifically, I was thinking about the FSF and Debian-Legal folks,
> both of which have their own criteria for considering a license to
> be
> an open source license.

Sure - but I'm not asking the FSF or the Debian legal folks for
license approval. I'm asking the OSI. The OSI has different published
criteria for license approval. If the FSF's or Debian criteria are
better, then the OSI should (after transparent debate)
incorporate the better bits into its own criteria. Not reject licenses
that meet its own criteria on the basis of doubts they would meet
other's criteria.

I am not sure the FSF folks these days approve licenses as
"open-source" - AIUI they talk about free, copyleft, and
about GPL compatibility. Whether the FSF folks call the OVPL
free or copy-left or both or neither doesn't necessarily have
much of a bearing on whether the OVPL is or is not "open-source".
For what it's worth, I think it meets the criteria of their
four freedoms.

Note also The Debian-legal folks approve
*packages* with particular licenses, not licenses themselves,
hence the DSFG has "include source code" (rather than "offer source
cod") as a MUST. And finally (unsurprising considering common
ancestry) the DSFG criteria are strikingly similar to the OSI ones.
I can't see any DSFG term which the OVPL is likely to breach.

Alex