License Proliferation Dissatisfaction

[Lawrence Rosen]

Chris DiBona wrote:
> I think you might be a little too sensitive. Ranking anything will
> make proponents of those licenses ranked lower feel worse. Also,
> redundancy and popularity are very different things. There are a lot
> of redundant aspects in the licenses in the top tier.

Of course you're right about the differences between redundancy and
popularity, and about the redundancy of other licenses in the "top tier".
But the categorization of the licenses on OSI's website is wrong on both
counts. Not only is OSL 3.0 far more popular in terms of actual number of
open source licensors than CDDL (which made the cut because Sun's lawyer was
on the license proliferation committee), but OSL 3.0 is also unique (at
least among "popular" licenses) in containing an ASP provision. 

Categorizing certain open source licenses on OSI's website as "redundant" or
"popular" is misleading and incorrect.

This is not about sensitivity or happiness. I'm disappointed that an
organization that I helped for so long to review and approve licenses has so
little apparent legal understanding of them and has such a political view of
what to do about the problem of license proliferation. 

/Larry


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris DiBona [mailto:cdibona at gmail.com]
> Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2007 6:33 PM
> To: dave at gasaway.org
> Cc: license-discuss at opensource.org; license-proliferation-
> discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: License Proliferation Dissatisfaction
> 
> I think you might be a little too sensitive. Ranking anything will
> make proponents of those licenses ranked lower feel worse. Also,
> redundancy and popularity are very different things. There are a lot
> of redundant aspects in the licenses in the top tier.
> 
> Chris
> 
> On 4/22/07, David K. Gasaway <dave at gasaway.org> wrote:
> > On 22 Apr 2007 at 19:58, Russ Nelson wrote:
> >
> > > The board has approved the committee's report
> > > (http://opensource.org/lpc) and endorses the categorization
> > > (http://opensource.org/licenses/category).
> >
> > While I respect the committee's efforts and conclusions, please
> > reconsider the word "redundant".  It is poorly descriptive and even
> > inflammatory.  "Licenses with similar goals to more popular licenses"
> > or even "Less popular licenses" would probably go over more smoothly.
> > Surely the committee can find language that is appropriately dissuasive
> > without being offensive.
> >
> > --
> > -:-:- David K. Gasaway
> > -:-:- Email: dave at gasaway.org
> > -:-:- Web  : dave.gasaway.org
> >
> >
> >
> 
> 
> --
> Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc.
> Google's Open Source program can be found at http://code.google.com
> Personal Weblog: http://dibona.com