OVPL vote results

Russell Nelson nelson at crynwr.com
Sat Nov 12 17:17:14 UTC 2005


Your opinions are your own and you are entitled to express them
without objection.  You have, however, made a few logical errors which
I feel I should comment on.

David Ryan writes:
 > As you will expect, I am very disappointed with this outcome.  I believe 
 > the OSI board has made the wrong decision and are viewing the OSD to 
 > meet their goals, when and how they see fit.

Any fixed text needs to have someone interpret it.  The term for this
is hermeneutics.  You cannot criticize someone for doing something
that must be done; you can only criticize them for doing it badly.

 > The OSI board have previously approved a similar license; namely
 > the QPL.

What if we made a mistake *then*?  Should we be required to make the
same mistake forever on?  As a guiding principle I must reject this.

It is reasonable to ask us if we now think we made a mistake on the
QPL (and Ernie has asked that question; I will bring it to the board).

 > The second, and more important, issue that I would like to point out to 
 > the board is that large companies with open source products demand more 
 > than the OVPL.  To contribute to these large projects you must sign a 
 > copyright assignment of some kind.

The OVPL blesses *one* party as the recipient of a license to all
contributions.  Under other licenses, any party may ask contributors
to execute a copyright assignment.  In this regard you are mistaking
the reason why the OVPL has not been approved.

 > The OSI board are currently representive of many companies

Stop.  Right.  There.  The OSI board does not have ANY corporate
representatives on it.  I have yet to see any board member take any
action which favors their employer; in fact much the reverse, as board
members typically recuse themselves from any decision particular to
their employer.

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