When to evaluate dual licenses

[Michael Tiemann]

On Dec 13, 2007 6:17 PM, Matthew Flaschen <matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu>
wrote:

>
> But, again, "GPLv2 or later" is not a software license and is outside
> OSI's scope.


You make a fascinating point.  I would agree that "GPLv2 or later" is
outside our scope, because we cannot predict whether future versions of the
GPL will be OSD-compliant or not.  However, in a different case, such as
"GPLv2 or any other OSI-approved, copyleft license", may well be within our
scope.  The OSI does not see itself as exclusively limited to discussing
only the 0-1 question of whether a license is open source.  Our mission
includes education and advocacy, and things like our logo are important to
people who wish to show their affiliation with our cause.  A license choice,
as opposed a strict license, can be within the OSI's scope as long as all
the choices remain within the OSI's scope.  And in fact, a license that
permits one to escape outside the world of open source (such as the BSD
license, which permits proprietary forks) is still within our scope, so
maybe we should consider such a license choice to be within our larger
scope, recognizing that some things within our scope are not within our
strict terms of approval.

M
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