[Fwd: FW: For Approval: Generic Attribution Provision]

[Andrew C. Oliver]

I'd much rather have more head on discussion on whether OSI should 
certify pixel based attribution requirements at all and if so why and to 
what limits (in my blog post referred to in Rich's article I attempted 
to show the logical extreme) than start off with meaningless discussions 
of theoretical ethical market democracy and name calling.

For my own position I obviously believe, regardless of whether OSI 
ultimately approves licenses that say I must have a vendor's logo 
constantly on the screen which links to their site, that they are not 
open source and should never be called such and that OSI should not 
approve such a license.  I do not think the present 
(http://www.opensource.org/licenses/attribution.php) goes too far 
because the unqualified banner means it is no more intrusive than the 
original BSD licenses.  However, I think that some of the licenses under 
consideration especially those that lay claim to specific screen real 
estate run afoul of what can be practically open source (especially 
since I cannot aggregate two which use the exact same license).  I'd 
argue that if you are truly that scared of people stealing your work 
that you should not open the source in the first place.

Perhaps you disagree?  Why?  How far should OSI go with its definition 
of "open source" with regards to pixel/link-based attribution?

-andy

Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Scythereal (scythereal at bitmeta.org):
>
>   
>> Ironically, those are the principles the open source idea is against.
>>     
>
> Freedom to misappropriate the term "open source" when convenient (e.g., 
> for licences obviously designed to impair third-party commercial use)
> is, actually, not among our core values.  Is it possible that you're
> confusing "open source" with "empty head"?
>
>   


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