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

[Chris Travers]

On Nov 28, 2007 6:59 AM, Tzeng, Nigel H. <Nigel.Tzeng at jhuapl.edu> wrote:

> Oddly ECL v2.0 is not on the category list.  The category list is somewhat
> out
> of date...and honestly not too useful.  There seems no implication that
> folks
> shouldn't use Special Purpose Licenses if they happen to have the
> same special purposes.  Non-reusable licenses and retired licenses make
> sense to be less re-usable by definition.

Personally I think we need to rethink the category premises altogether.

As I understand it (I wasn't here so I could be wrong), the category
system came out of license proliferation concerns.  The approach was
to categorize licenses by how widespread they were.  In short it seems
to me that this was more of a ranking system than a real
categorization system.  The category view IMO would be nearly useless
even if it was up to date to me, as a developer, because I want to
know about the licenses I am choosing and don't really care how
popular they are.  I also think that any responsible project leader
would feel the same way.  Hence I am going to suggest we ditch the
current popularity category system altogether.

I would suggest instead a set of categories as:
Permissive, weak copyleft, strong copyleft, other

If we want to have popularity rankings here, let's agree on a third
party source of those rankings (percentages of projects on
Sourceforge, statistics from Black Duck, or whatever) to minimize the
politics involved.  However, this sort of ranking could conceivably
cause more license proliferation (and hence we are back to my argument
for a separate track of approval of license variations).

While I have a business to run and a heavy workload at the moment, I
would be more than happy to help create a category list of such
licenses.  If I would create the draft list my myself it would take me
at least a month with my current workload, but I am a fan of the idea
that in an open community that if you are proposing something, you are
also volunteering to help make it happen.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers