SocialText license discussion--call for closure of arguments

[Matthew Flaschen]

Michael Tiemann wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-01-19 at 18:42 -0500, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
>> Michael Tiemann wrote:
>>> Therefore, we'd like to invite those who think we should not
>>> approve the SocialText license to work out a common position on *why* we
>>> should not approve it, which could inform how SocialText could remedy
>>> your concerns.  And we'd like to invite those who think we should
>>> approve it (or should approve it with some minor change) to work out a
>>> common position on why we *should* approve it.  If one or both sides are
>>> willing to do this, I think that the Board's decision process will
>>> appear much more transparent.
>> I don't understand why the Board feels this is necessary.  This is a
>> discussion list, and I think people's arguments have naturally developed
>> that way.
> 
> Usually the discussions have led to a fairly strong consensus, making
> the approval process quite straightforward.

I suppose that's true.  However, if you read carefully, you will see
almost no one who says the provision should be approved in its current
form, i.e. with no changes and applicable to any other OSI licenses.

There are plenty of people who say the license would be fine with one or
another changes, but those changes haven't been made and Socialtext
doesn't seem to want to make them.

  As I said, if nobody wants
> to collect all the bits and try to present them coherently, we'll work
> with what we have, but there's already an effort to do that, which I
> believe will lead to a better result (both a better decision and a
> better understanding as to why the decision was reached).
> 
>>   This level of formality has never been requested before (to
>> my knowledge), and seems a bit like instruction creep.  I certainly
>> oppose the idea of creating separate lists and IRC channels.
> 
> Yes--me too.  We can organize the thoughts without excluding people from
> the process.

Well, we're now using the wiki pages
(http://www.buni.org/mediawiki/index.php/GAP_For and
http://www.buni.org/mediawiki/index.php/GAP_Against), but I would
encourage people who don't feel like registering or using them to keep
using the list.  Their arguments should be incorporated as appropriate.

Matthew Flaschen

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