For Approval: Boost Software License - Version 1.0 - August 17th, 2003

[Zak Greant]

Aloha Alexander, Greetings All,

This is a part of the annotated triage mentioned here:
  http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mss:14786:ngjkcljnepmjhigfhnkn

If you want to avoid reading the large amount of messy mail this will
process generate, filter out messages that include [triage] in the
subject.

For more background on what the process is (at least, from a high
level) read this:
  http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3:mmn:14786

Please keep in mind that these are my personal views. I don't expect
anyone to be bound by them.

Never mind the sloppy writing - you'll still get the point, I hope. :)

-----

First, skim skim entire email to get a sense of it.

Search the ticket management system to see if there are existing
tickets that relate to the license.

As long as it does look like a real license approval request, start
triaging. Even if the request is poorly formed, we still want to track
that we have seen the license before and that we know something about
it.

Assuming that there is no existing ticket(s), create a new ticket for
the license.

Name the ticket after the license, including the version number - ie.
'Boost Software License v1.0'
 * Set the ticket type to 'review'
 * Set the ticket category to 'License Approval'
 * Set an appropriate ticket milestone (ie. When the license review
should be finished.)
 * Include the license submitter in the ticket Cc field
 * Assign the ticket to the current lead of the License Committee
 * Save the ticket

Next, start reviewing the content of the email and extracting the
useful information.

On 9/15/07, Alexander Terekhov <alexander.terekhov at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is not a troll.

Immaterial - skip.

> http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt

Skim the contents to avoid getting easily pranked.

Download the file and rename to:
  boost-software-license-v1-0.txt

This allows people who download the file to more easily find and
identify it in their filesystem - a filename like LICENSE_1_0.txt
isn't so good for this.

> Nor this is a structured approval request conforming to whatever rules
> you might have at the moment. Show initiative, OSI board.

If this were not an old discussion, you wouldprompt Alexander for
information on why he didn't follow the process.

You would start a new thread to do this. You don't want to mix the
approval information with concerns about governance.

> The reason for this "For Approval" request is this:
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c++.moderated/msg/2a1499e84847b558?dmode=source

Review the message to ensure that you understand the full context.

...

In this case, the content of the message doesn't map that well to what
is expected from an approval situation.

As we are triaging an old thread, you know that you don't (yet) need
to get more info from Alexander - there is a lot of info in the
responses.

Save a copy of the mailing list message and upload it to the ticket
for safe keeping.

Then note who submitted the request, when they submitted it and where
they submitted it (including a link to the submission) in the body of
the ticket.

(Note that I've added a little shortcut to Trac that lets me easily
reach specific messages in Russ's license-discuss mailng list archive
just by entering [license-discuss:xxx], where xxx is the number of a
message on the mailing list.)

Then list the message Alexander mentioned and put in a link to the
uploaded copy of the message.

Finally, you should add in a little Trac macro to help us find related
tickets. (Once ticket https://osi.osuosl.org/ticket/56 is fixed, we
won't need to do this the same way.)

----

eg.

Submitted by Alexander Terekhov on 2007-06-04T14:53+0200 to the
license-discuss at opensource.org mailing list in message
[license-discuss:14120]

Alexander provided an excerpt of
[http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c++.moderated/msg/2a1499e84847b558?dmode=source
a posting to the comp.lang.c++.moderated Google Group] as an
explanation for his submission.

A [attachment:ticket/45/boost-license-1.0-not-osi-compliant.txt copy
of this message is attached] to the ticket.

-----

== Related Tickets ==
[[TicketQuery(component=License Approval&type!=review&keywords=#45)]]

-----

Make sure to set the number after 'keywords=#' to the number of the ticket.

When I respond to Alexander's message, I'll include a link to the
ticket I created and a request that Alexander review it to ensure that
he is comfortable with the summary.

The link in this case is:
  https://osi.osuosl.org/ticket/45

> --
> "PJ points out that lawyers seem to have difficulty understanding the
> GPL. My main concern with GPLv3 is that - unlike v2 - non-lawyers can't
> understand it either."
>                                   -- Anonymous Groklaw Visitor

Perhaps the above comment makes you feel a strong urge to respond?
Don't. Stay focused on extracting the material parts of the license
approval request from this message.

-- 
Cheers!
--zak