Question on OSI position on BSD/MIT licenses

[Philippe Verdy]

Unless the OSI has registered the terms “open source” as a protected
trademark requiring such approval, the only thing protected is the OSI
compliance logo and the declaration of compliance or approval by OSI. I
don’t think that “open source” is protected, just because OSI has initiated
a process to verify these assertions, simply because the terms pre-existed
and was used long before OSI started its campaign. We’ve seen the terms
“open source” (with or without hyphen, with or without capitals) used since
the early time of BSD and MIT or FSF licences, or even in sources donated to
the “public domain”.

 

These past claims remain valid and OSI cannot become the exclusive owner of
these terms. What makes the OSI approval important is the fact that the
approval is recognized by other companies or sites (like SourceFourge) as
offering a good protection for those sites against possible copyright
infringement claims (so the policy of these third-party sites includes some
requirement such as the OSI approval for ensuring the compatibility of the
hosted projects using these licences).

 

  _____  

De : Chris Travers [mailto:chris.travers at gmail.com] 
Envoyé : lundi 1 octobre 2007 23:24
À : License Discuss
Objet : Re: Question on OSI position on BSD/MIT licenses

 

So am I right then that the OSI's position is that every possible wording of
the MIT, BSD, and similar licenses do not need to be approved for people to
claim that a project is Open Source?  I.e. that meeting the OSD is what is
important, not having the specific wording approved? 

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

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