BSD-like licenses and the OSI approval process

[Matthew Flaschen]

Chris Travers wrote:
> On 10/16/07, Matthew Flaschen <matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu> wrote:
>> Chris Travers wrote:
>>> 2)  Go with the theme-and-variations approach I mentioned earlier.
>>> Have a separate track for approving minor wording changes, and list
>>> them in the parent licenses listing.
>> I don't think this will solve, or even reduce, the license proliferation
>> problem.  True, it will minimoze the number of licenses on the main
>> list.  But it will encourage proliferation in general.
> 
> I suppose it depends on how you define license proliferation.
> 
> I would point out that only a miniscule percentage of actual open
> source licenses have their wording approved by the OSI.

OSI is concerned with open source software, not open source licenses per
se.  Most open source software uses an approved license.

> Telling projects to change their licenses is a nonstarter.

Many projects have already started (and finished!) this process, so this
is clearly false.  Encouraging projects to change to an approved license
is a useful way of reducing license proliferation.

Matt Flaschen