[License-discuss] proposal to revise and slightly reorganize the OSI licensing pages

[Lawrence Rosen]

Karl Fogel wrote:

I'm so definitely, certainly, positively not interested in having off-list
conversations about this process.  It's hard enough keeping up with the
on-list stuff! :-) 

 

I'm now with Karl on this. Sorry for going private too early in the game. 

 

Now I'll say it publicly: I formally object to any attempt by OSI to pretend
that the current list of "recommended licenses" has any value or validity,
and I request that you NOT patch it by putting useless explanations around
it. Please start a meaningful community process to develop license selection
guidelines and explanations of the differences among licenses, and leave the
politics and biases on the cutting room floor.

 

/Larry

 

P.S. Some added thoughts since my previous emails as simple examples of the
biases that I've seen:

 

[I'll add something now about MPL 2.0: It was submitted for approval in
early December of last year and approved within a few months, as it should
have been; it is a good license. Yet it appears already on the list of
OSI-approved licenses" as "popular, widely used, or have strong
communities." Is it because there are defenders of the MPL 2.0 on the OSI
board?  Is that honest, fair, unbiased and legitimate?]

 

[I'll add something also about the absence of the AGPL or the OSL 3.0 on the
list: Both of those licenses have been rejected by Google internally because
such licenses are not friendly to their SaaS models. Is that why they both
are omitted from the list despite their popularity, wide use, and strong
communities?]

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Karl Fogel [mailto:kfogel at red-bean.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2012 8:24 AM
To: lrosen at rosenlaw.com
Cc: Luis Villa
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] proposal to revise and slightly reorganize
the OSI licensing pages

 

"Lawrence Rosen" < <mailto:lrosen at rosenlaw.com> lrosen at rosenlaw.com> writes:

>Karl, lest you mistakenly conclude that I support this proposal, I 

>attach a private email I sent to Luis this weekend. I'm not going 

>public yet, because I hope there is some chance still to avoid 

>resurrecting this entire argument again and avoid having to convince an 

>unsuspecting public that OSI's popularity list is useless for any 

>analytical purposes. But I will try my best to do that if OSI continues 

>on this path without a valid intellectual basis for its list. Do you really
need that?

> 

>Feel free to copy the OSI board. 

 

I'm so definitely, certainly, positively not interested in having off-list
conversations about this process.  It's hard enough keeping up with the
on-list stuff! :-)

 

Thanks,

-Karl

 

****************

 

Here's the email I sent to Luis:

 

[off-list]

 

Hi Luis,

 

I appreciate that you're trying to do good here on an issue that has
lingered for a long time, but I'll fight OSI all the way on this. Any
attempt to list such licenses as CDDL or MPL 2.0 while omitting OSL/AFL/NOSL
3.0 will be met with resistance. There is FAR more use of my licenses than
CDDL or some others. MPL 2.0 is mostly Mozilla, which has some "friends" on
the OSI board. 

 

This selection process is riddled with cronyism, misinformation, and
unnecessary politics. Not good at all!!!!

 

/Larry

 

> 

> 

>-----Original Message-----

>From: Karl Fogel  <mailto:[mailto:kfogel at red-bean.com]>
[mailto:kfogel at red-bean.com]

>Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2012 4:14 PM

>To:  <mailto:license-discuss at opensource.org> license-discuss at opensource.org

>Subject: Re: [License-discuss] proposal to revise and slightly 

>reorganize the OSI licensing pages

<snip> 

 

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