license categories, was: I'm not supposed to use the ECL v2?

Matthew Flaschen matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu
Thu Dec 13 22:01:30 UTC 2007


Chris Travers wrote:
> On Nov 29, 2007 6:07 PM, Ernest Prabhakar <ernest.prabhakar at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>>
>> I've started a page on the Trac Wiki for that purpose:
>>
>> https://osi.osuosl.org/wiki/help/recommend
>>
>> Hopefully we'll soon have some editors who can work on it :-)
> 
> 
> I notice that any reasonable reading of that page would seem to suggest that
> the use of the GPL v3 (being incompatible with the GPL v2 and not as widely
> used) is strongly discouraged by the OSI.  I trust this was not the intent.
> 
> My own thinking here is that we may want to think a bit harder about the
> question of whether we want to recommend licenses on the basis of
> popularity.

Note that I was not suggesting this, exactly.  First, we would divide by
purpose.  So we wouldn't be telling "permissive" people to use GPL, even
though it's more popular; they would be in different categories.  The
most popular licenses in each category are generally most popular for a
reason.

I think alternative criteria within the category will prove divisive and
arbitrary.

Matt Flaschen



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