Questions to OSI Board quorum

[Ernest Prabhakar]

Hi David,

On Nov 15, 2005, at 5:44 PM, David Barrett wrote:
> But what comes immediately to mind is the absence of any mention of  
> contributor agreements, despite them proving to be a tremendously  
> important tool in some of the largest, well organized, and most  
> successful open source projects.

Its a question of scope.   The OSI has (historically) only focused on  
Open Source *licenses*.  Project governance issues, while quite  
important, are a very different beast.

The reason, IMHO, is that contributor agreements are an explicit *opt- 
in* tied to the project leadership at a given point in time -- not  
associated with the code for perpetuity.   Yes, it is an  
administrative convenience to be able to embed that in the license,  
but at the price of hard-coding that steward with every copy of the  
source code.

Whether or not you think it is worth the price, I think the OSi is  
correct to consider that a very different thing.

-- Ernie P.