Three new proposed OSD terms

[Alex Rousskov]

On Wed, 2005/03/02 (MST), <nelson at crynwr.com> wrote:

> Matthew Garrett writes:
>
> > Duplicative licenses aren't a major problem *as long as they're>  
> mutually compatible*.
>
> Not true.  Martin Fink has a problem at HP.  He can only deploy
> software if HP's IT department has approved the license.

This is not a major problem, IMO. HP can allocate enough resources to  
quickly review all 100 or 200 licenses that OSI is going to approve in the  
next few years (and licenses outside of OSI are outside of this discussion  
scope). Moreover, I doubt the terms you propose will significantly  
decrease HP overheads long-term.


If the proposed terms are added outside of OSD (as many have proposed), we  
will contribute to "license class" proliferation, a much worse phenomenon  
compared to license proliferation:

	- Licenses that meet OSD, currently OSI-certifiable, and OSI-certified
	- Licenses that meet OSD, not currently OSI-certifiable, but OSI-certified
	- Licenses that meet OSD, not currently OSI-certifiable, and not  
OSI-certified

If you separate certification criteria from OSD, what are the chances that  
somebody will start another initiative to simply certify OSD-compliant  
licenses? Would that be a good thing for Open Source? Do we not have  
enough complexity already?

To summarize, I think the proposed terms add another degree of complexity  
but will not significantly reduce the number of licenses that OSI approves  
in the next 10 years.

Thanks,

Alex.