BSD-like licenses and the OSI approval process

[Chris Travers]

On 10/16/07, Matthew Flaschen <matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu> wrote:

> Doesn't that risk the eventual possibility of a court having to decide
> whether something is OSD-compliant (to settle a trademark lawsuit)?...

What makes you think that the OSI could even justify or win such a
lawsuit?  To be clear, it is not a lawsuit I am worried about but
rather public pressure on the part of a relatively powerful
organization in the community.

Does the OSI have any sort of trademark rights to the term "open
source?"  If not, then this isn't at all a problem.  (I am not sure
that even a registered trademark would be valid as it seems to have
widespread generic use predating the trademark, but IANAL.)

In short approval of a license class could be done in such a way as to
say "We, at the OSI, have no problem with people calling these
licenses open source?

> Even if it were appropriate for the court to make that judgment, I
> really don't want OSI to have to sue just because some blatantly
> proprietary vendor insists they're legitimately self-certified.

So the alternative in your mind is to certify every reasonable BSDL
variant individually?  Or do we insist on PostgreSQL not being "Open
Source?"

>  People
> can already abuse the trademark, but it's obvious from the license list
> they're not approved and thus it's unlikely to get to court.

Which trademark?  You are right that I would not support the use of
"OSI-Approved or OSI Certified" for such licenses.  More along the
lines of "Meets the standards of OSI License Class X."

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers