[License-discuss] Logo for an (O)pen (S)ource (Li)cense (C)ompendium

[Reincke, Karsten]

Dear Nigel,

we discussed your detailed answer during the last days. Many thanks. We already implemented what we had had to conclude:

> It might be even more useful for developers* to discuss a 
> wider range of licenses than falls under OSI approved 
> licenses much like CC covers licenses ranging from CC0 to 
> CC-NC-ND.  [...] That would, of course, require 
> your own new logo as it would be out of scope for the OSI.

A valid view, particularly because we ourselves are licensing the OSLiC under [the non OSI-license] CC BY-SA 3.0 (because it's a document, not a piece of software). Your argument might by read as first reason not to limit our future by a logo - although we for the first time stick to focus on the OSI licenses. We do not want to lose ourselves in the jungle of details ;-)

> Large IT companies have legal departments that should 
> understand IP issues and will have to know the requirements 
> for all the jurisdictions where they have presence.

Yeep, but's simply too expensive to involve one lawyer into each of the many company projects using OS software. It's better to write a compendium together with developers AND lawyers. 

> What jurisdictions were you thinking of covering in your compendium?

This is one of the most "dangerous" questions: No question there are different legal systems. For example: In USA the No-Warranty-Clauses seem to be necessary and valid. In Germany they are simply invalid and are automatically be replaced by the rules of making a present. But trying to explain / to treat all country specific aspects will blow up the work and will probably prevent us from finishing it.

We want to solve this issue by using a simple and (perhaps) naive strategy: Our goal is, to find one way (for each use-case for each license) to use Open Source Software in a regular manner. We want to take the licenses as they are (and as they are meant / have to be interpreted from the viewpoint of an honest and reasonable reader / user). We want to show one way on which followers can trust that the OS community / the OS developer will effectly say: yes, indeed, by going this way they fulfilled our conditions (they "payed" the price for using our software). There may by other ways. Probably there will be many other ways - especially with respect to the legal systems of specific countries. But if we take the license text seriously we should find one way being valid for all (many?) cases. Hence we do not wan't to do the job of a lawyer. We do not want to "judge" / consult companies, wether the specific way they used is correct or not or what they could do to fulfill the license in the weakest way. We want to formulate one concrete, valid reliable way, even if the companies (etc.), who follow this way, then do more than they must do according to their legal system.

> Will DTAG give OSI oversight and edit powers on the 
> compendium?  [...] What does "develop this compendium 
> together with the community" really mean in this context?
 
Yes, like everyone who wants to collaborate. This participation is organized by the methods of GitHub. For details you now may already have a look at http://dtag-dbu.github.com/oslic/en/collaboration/community.html and https://github.com/dtag-dbu/oslic. At least by using the GitHub method 'fork' you and the OSI already have an access to all sources. But we strongly invite you and the OSI to become a real collaborator in the sense of GitHub. (Although for the moment we expect that you will probably wait until more concrete content will be filled into the OSLiC: it's still a little bit empty. That's the flipside of 'publishing early, publishing often ;-) )

> A logo that looks like the OSI logo implies that 
> OSI approves of your interpretations.  Especially if the OSI 
> explicitly grants you permission to use a similar logo. [...]
> A product carrying a logo similar looking to the OSI logo but 
> isn't actually from the OSI strikes me as sketchy.

This is a second very important reason, not to use the logo we proposed. We ourselves (from an internal view into the world) wanted to express with the logo that we want to respect the OSI, the OSD, and their background informations as a leading source and as a directive instance. You (from the external view into the OSLiC world) got the impression the we would try to obtain an approval surreptitiously. This misleading must not happen again (and probably would happen even to other if we stick on the logo). Therefore we changed the logo during this weekend.

> Why not first attempt do it under the auspices of the OSI 
> itself?  I would 
> imagine the OSI would welcome this kind of help and you might 
> get more contributors.

This is that what we prefer. natrually we are starting to write the OSLiC as we planned to do. But each comment /advice is welcome, espcially by the OSI! And when/if the OSI finally will say [again: for the moment that seems to be a little to early] 'Let us convert this compendium to an OSI compendium', we would be very proud.

> Your domain is also blocked by our websense filters as a 
> potentially damaging site.  You should have your webadmin 
> look into that.

I am sorry: You were right, this was only a test instance hosted on my private page. [Bad to hear, that my private work is taken as  potentially damaging site ;-) ]. As originally planned now http://www.oslic.org/ is a redirect to http://dtag-dbu.github.com/oslic/. http://www.oslic.de/ will become my private site containing additional information like list of bibliographic data and so on. But I still need a little time. The old logo in this site will be replaced during the next days.

With best regards
Karsten
herzlichst
K. Reincke
---
Deutsche Telekom AG
Products & Innovation
Karsten Reincke, PMP®
Fach-Senior Manager T&P/A&S/TM
T-Online-Allee 1
64295 Darmstadt
Tel.: +49 6151 680 - 8941
Fax.: +49 6151 680 - 2529
E-Mail k.reincke at telekom.de
http://www.telekom.de/

Erleben, was verbindet.

Deutsche Telekom AG
Aufsichtsrat: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Lehner (Vorsitzender)
Vorstand: René Obermann (Vorsitzender),
Dr. Manfred Balz, Reinhard Clemens, Niek Jan van Damme, Timotheus Höttges, Claudia Nemat, Thomas Sattelberger
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