BSD-like licenses and the OSI approval process

[Zac Bowling]

The problem isn't that those licenses are in use. That is fine and thats life.

The problem is that the number permissive licenses out there is huge
and most of these license variations make trivial modifications for
the needs of that particular project. They still fit the commonly
accepted definition of permissive and do not add any new novel ideas
over the existing approved permissive licenses.

I highly doubt anyone would have a case that the license being used
wasn't truly free and open source software. Perhaps maybe not a "OSI
approved Open Source license" so you can use the cute little logo on
your homepage, but its still open source.

Yes, each version permissive may have some significant user base, but
trying to debate over each and every one gains us very little in the
end and trying to only hurts the OSI and the license approval process
in the end.


On 10/15/07, John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org> wrote:
> Zac Bowling scripsit:
>
> > I'm just really annoyed because the license approval process is being
> > abused lately with tons of submitions of really trivial variations of
> > the same permissive licenses that are already approved by the OSI. I
> > don't want to offend anyone that may of submitted a license because of
> > the license submittions may have been legit.
>
> However, these licenses are actually in real use.  Currently, the PostgreSQL
> folks and their downstream users can't say their code is OSI Certified, and
> will get called baaaad if they say it's Open Source.  The only way around
> that is to change the license (apparently hard) or get it approved
> (which is what this list is for).  Yes, the differences are trivial, but
> similarly trivial changes can make the difference between OSS and non-OSS,
> so we do have to make the decisions.
>
> --
> John Cowan  cowan at ccil.org  http://ccil.org/~cowan
> The penguin geeks is happy / As under the waves they lark
> The closed-source geeks ain't happy / They sad cause they in the dark
> But geeks in the dark is lucky / They in for a worser treat
> One day when the Borg go belly-up / Guess who wind up on the street.
>


-- 
Zac Bowling
http://www.zacbowling.com
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